Dexter Morgan

Internet.

I was already married at the time, a really dumbshit move on my part because I'd gotten pregnant and was basically scared. The relationship was okay at the time, so we just put everything on the backburner for the baby - including analyzing where our relationship was even headed. Not a fun thing to resume after you've already tied the knot, only to find everything severely lacking. But I digress.

We honestly became friends without the slightest hint of intention of there ever being more - I was married, he lived thousands of miles across the world, so if the fleeting thought ever even crossed either of our minds, it was promptly dismissed as some outlandish joke. So all we did was talk. And talk. And talk. All the time. It didn't take him long to become one of my best friends. And at that time in my life, it was more like my BEST friend, since ex-husband thought it a necessity to more or less discourage any contact with real-life friends, some of which I'd had since grade school.

Eventually, it wasn't just two people shooting the breeze about random stuff, but two people completely opening up to one another about all kinds of things happening in our lives - family troubles, my disintegrating marriage, job woes, all of it. When he wasn't making me laugh hysterically, he was listening to me pour my heart out, and vice versa. Before we knew it, three years had passed. Within that time, the idea that we were in love was . . . pretty well established, but of course there was just too much in the way.

Fast forward to 2007, when I finally moved out and separated from my ex-husband (not a separation, really, more of a "We'll get divorced when I figure out how to draw up the papers myself". I'm also an incurable DIY-er, as a non sequitur). By then, we were both WELL aware of how we felt about each other, we were telling each other as much, but we were both quite uncertain how realistic the proposition of our ever being together was. Love, we could handle; United States immigration? Little tougher.

We met in person in August of 2007, when the moons aligned just right and he managed to come virtually live with me for a full month. It was . . . bliss. It honestly felt the way it was SUPPOSED to feel, a way I'd never once experienced with my ex-husband at any point in our relationship. And no, it wasn't anything whirlwind or dramatically romantic. I don't live in a big, exotic city (more like the OPPOSITE of that). I'm not wealthy, nor is he. It was just two people . . . living together. My son loved him. My friends loved him. My parents loved him. It was just IT.

So, once he went back (which just about killed me - and to this very day, it's been over a year since I've seen him in the flesh), we knew the next step was to appease the bureaucrats and give them their precious paperwork. Truthfully, neither of us were keen on marriage; he's never aspired to be married, and I never wanted to even glance sideways at it again after my divorce. But, we know we're it for each other. Married or not just doesn't really make a difference. So, marriage it was.

Since late September of 2007, I arranged and executed my entire divorce (save for the part where the judge signs the papers), gathered the 400 million things required by INS, waited (and waited and waited and waited), saved money, waited some more - until now. My honey is merely 10 days away from touching down on American soil, never to have to leave again. Four and a half years ago, I'd have said you were sniffing ether if you told me we'd be getting married. Now . . . it's probably the rightest thing I've ever done.