Before I met Ted, I did not believe in soul mates, marriage, or true romance.  Fiction, I thought them.  Happily ever after is the creation of books and movies. 

The week before we met, I had lamented that I would never meet anyone, as swamped as I was in work.

The night we met, I had said I did not want to go out.  I had said I was tired.  I had said I could not be bothered.

Then a friend from my teaching days in Japan, who was in town for the holidays, came over to my apartment and coaxed me out.   We went to a bar, where one of her friends from university is the manager, and we met up with another of her friends from university, my future husband.

I took him home, and I kept him.

Were these my fairy tale tests of worthiness?  My secular form of love thrice denied?

Because I am living in a fairy tale now.  It look luck to start our story, and it takes work to keep it going, but it is a fairy tale with all the trappings.  Happily ever after could so easily not have happened.  I will often make plans to go out, and then opt, instead, for the comforts of home.  Perhaps because I did not believe in them, I feel more free to use the old clichés in earnest.  Ted completes me, he is my soul mate, and he is my home.

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