Almost 16yrs ago, a friend of mine told me she wanted to introduce me to her then-boyfriends cousin. I avoided meeting him a few times. He was in the Marines, and I had no interest in dating anyone in the military. Finally, I gave in and agreed to meet him. It ended up being a small group of us hanging out. He didn’t talk to me for the first few hours. Once we did start talking, we didn’t stop. We talked all night long. I knew I was gonna marry him. When you know you’ve met The One, you know. I left in the morning to go back to my place. He went back to his base. This was a Sunday. He called me that night and told me he was getting sent to Iraq on Friday. He had told me the night before that he would most likely be going, but he didn’t think it would be for a little while. I was devastated. Here I was, just met this great guy, and he’s going to Iraq for God knows how long. We spent as much time together as we could the week before he left. I wrote him letters, sent him care packages. I got a few letters from him, and a phone call (only because his mom didn’t answer when he called her lol). He was there a few months. It could’ve been longer, but he was put on stop-loss to go there. When he came home, we moved in together. Fast forward 15yrs, we’ve been married for 13 yrs now, with two kids. I’m thankful everyday that I agreed to meet him.