How do most soul mates engage in a relationship? Where do they usually meet? Most end up meeting through either family, mutual friends, working colleagues or perhaps in some other atypical fashion. While there is certainly not anything wrong with meeting through the commodity of ways included above, our story is much more unique and interesting. A fairy tale, if you must.
Michelle and myself were both at the point of our lives where we’ve been there and done that. We’ve had our share of relationships, and we knew what we wanted in our life-long partner for when the time came. Unfortunately there were barriers that prevented us from meeting in your typical list of ways as disclaimed above. These barriers were two tiny entities known as job and school. I’m not talking about your regular job and your regular school either.
Michelle is a full-time student at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. She’s also at the top of her class, pulling in A’s in classes most people only dream of such as neurology. Staying ahead of the curve and keeping top notch grades at such a prestigious institute requires a great sacrifice, and that sacrifice is your free time. Michelle at this point had become extremely goal orientated and determined to achieve the grades she needs in order to one day get into a competitive residency of her choice which is yet to be determined. Her social life was severely impacted by the sacrifice she’s made to one day become a caring physician.
I myself, while not a doctor (god help any of you if I was…), made the decision to return to school as a self-fulfillment to myself. At the same time of working to complete my degree and being employed at one of the most bleeding edge technology firms in Manhattan (Lime rocks!), found myself more and more with less time to go to the places I enjoyed going. It seemed meeting misses right was next to impossible to find and all hope was lost.
What to do next? Do I just sit around? After countless attempts of dating, nothing above that of mediocracy really hit my radar. There just wasn’t that spark that gave me the butterflies, and I am certainly not one to settle. I needed to expand my options. I need to give the Internet a chance. In basic economics classes, some of you may remember the term ‘Cost of Opportunity’. This is exactly the sacrifice I was making by not giving this new trend, Internet dating, a chance.
Welcome to the wonderful world of JDate!
So what can I say. I’ve heard amazing things about this place known as JDate. I finally gave up on resisting and signed up. Totally not impressed with surfing the first batch of matches that were given to me, I decided what the heck — my buddy Cost of Opportunity will bite me in the ass in the event something good does come up. For once in my life I was optimistic. That’s quite a leap forward for those who know me well.
With all intricate details of dating aside, I’ve had some okay dates, and some horrible dates — all from JDate. I was getting somewhere I normally was having difficulty in with the preoccupied lifestyle I have. My search for my soul mate continued.
I’ll never forget the day my cousin Marcel mentioned that there are some interesting matches in good ol Philadelphia. I thought he was nuts for expanding his search out of the New Jersey/New York area. His conversation did engage me to at least take a peak, so I enabled my preferences to allow me to search members located in Philadelphia.
My friends, never will I forget the day I laid eyes upon a 23 year old female from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her name was Michelle Segalov. She was a godess. Although admittingly I was pessimistic and figured she put up modeling photos that did not resemble her in person, I still had to engage in conversation. Michelle was not a subscriber on jdate, but she was clever enough to create a profile name which matched her screen name on AIM. Fortunately I was clever enough to give that screen name a message for a shot in hell that whoever the girl behind SweetBella7BA0 was the potential love of my life.
Michelle and I began exchanging casual messages. Folks, I’m not going to exaggerate — since the day we started chatting, there was never a conversation that was shorter than 3 hours long a day. We continued chatting for two weeks straight for hours at a time. I had to get a date with this girl to see if the hype behind the profile and instant messages would live up in person. I asked Michelle if she’d be interested in joining me for dinner at Roy’s Restaurant in Philadelphia.
I’ll never forget the day I picked up Michelle from her apartment. It was love at first site when she left the front gate to meet me face to face for the first time. She was the only girl I’ve ever met that had me so shy, that I could barely speak in the car. I did have to put the music up some to make sure she didn’t hear the butterflies in my stomache.
Exactly 9 months later, I proposed to Michelle on a private helicopter ride over Manhattan. It was one of the most romantic ventures I could have thought of. We’ve been extremely grateful to have each other ever since and we are extremely grateful to the Internet and JDate for letting our love be possible. I also do need to accredit my cousin Marcel for opening up my search to Philadelphia. I owe you big time, Macya!
