#90 HOW I MET MY YORKSHIRE HUSBAND: PART ONE
Or the real reason I’m writing ‘Why We Met’
In my final chapter about Benoit, I forgot to mention that the husbands of my Germany ladies were invited to Jessica and Benoit’s wedding. The wives, out of respect for our friendship, didn’t attend. No one told me he was getting remarried before he married Jessica but they let me know after that they’d been invited and refrained out of solidarity – and I have always found that to be such a kind, loving gesture. Catch up on the end of that story here, if you missed it.
Thanks to my influx of new Subscribers. Welcome! I’m Elaine (or Lainey) and I write about the dating disasters (and some successes) that led me to meet my lovely husband, Michael. It’s called Why We Met as in the (very long) journey to him.
Now onto Michael.
Considering I have chronicled about five million relationships that didn’t work out – maybe because I was a hot mess and maybe because I dated some fuckwits (both, neither, whatever) – you may NOT be inclined to believe me when I say I FOUND MY PERSON. My lobster if that’s a reference you get (Thanks, childhood friend Kate) – although I haven’t seen that film.
My amazing Yorkshire husband, who is quirky, weird, handsome, intelligent, and lovely is the whole reason I started chronicling everything over the last year and a bit.
My first post was in September 2023, so thanks for following along no matter when you subscribed along the timeline.
I suppose this whole thing is very unfeminist and un-Bechdel-Wallace Test of me. Are women socially conditioned to search for partners and talk about them as if they are the most important bit of their lives? Maybe! But of course, I have lots of things outside my husband – but probably precisely because I now have a good partner, I can focus on so many other things.
This isn’t true for all women and some women are perfectly happy along various spectrums from single to happily married to staying in it for the children and everything in between.
My various lists and emails
I’d always kept a list of people I slept with and people I kissed and emailed my feelings to myself so did past me know I’d want to use this information in some way? I have no clue, really, but here we are.
Maybe after the 130 or so planned chapters, I’ll chronicle my life via friendships or something or family, which have equally been important to me in my quest for true love.
This year, Michael and I will have been together nine years. Nine whole years since I moved back to England. Many days – and I never take this for granted – I can’t believe my luck at finally being happy. Truly truly. Not the delusional kind where I have to convince myself between fits of crying in the bathroom. But the actual kind. The kind where I smile sometimes and want to pinch myself for being so lucky.
The kind where I tell my therapist I think happening on Michael is like some kind of fairytale and fate combo accident to which she tells me that’s called growth.
In fact, my therapist says luck is something that happens to people and choosing the right partner isn’t luck at all. Either way, I’m glad I learned the lessons of the past.
I’ve learned to sit with the ‘boring bits of life’ and enjoy that stable, emotionally healthy relationships can feel a little ‘staid’ to those who seek the adrenaline rush of toxicity.
Not at all to imply that Michael is any way boring to me. He loves routine, yes, but he surprises me daily and truly makes me belly laugh. In fact, he seems to love nothing more than to make me laugh.
He will even call me out on it when I haven’t laughed enough at a joke he found particularly funny: “Did you hear my joke?” he might ask. And I deadpan that he isn’t that funny and then crawl in his lap, throw my arms around his neck, and kiss him. He will smile and kiss me back and tell me he ‘needs to get’ on because the man cannot keep still!
Michael’s dating journey
Michael used to have his own version of “Why We Met” chronicled orally/aurally to his Post Office comrades Dez, Rob, Antonio, Jason, Ellie, Tess, and the like (they all have nicknames but some are quite unkind which they all call ‘banter’ such as one colleague they called ‘stinky Pete’ – not his real name to protect him – and another called ‘the love machine’ and so on).
Michael’s Royal Mail colleagues enjoyed his tales of his latest dates (i.e. That time he crawled through a window to escape because his date’s aggressive boyfriend came home – he didn’t know she had a boyfriend; That time he had a fourteen-hour date; That time he got a blow job on a walk or at the zoo or whatever; That time one of his fwb kept getting back with her boyfriend to make him jealous and commit, which he never did). These snippets will give you an impression of the kind of person Michael was but you would be wrong (as you’ll see).
When I was searching for someone in the before times, when I was in uni and grad school – someone who fit my perfect checklist – I hadn’t realised that I needed someone a little out of the ordinary. Someone quirky. Someone a bit weird. Someone who didn’t go in for ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ or who fit too closely in ‘with society.’ I don’t mean someone who gave off weirdo serial killer vibes or was an anarchist who ate food out of a skip or anything but someone a bit out there. And that was Michael.
Michael has always been his own person and I love that about him. He’s friendly and polite to people but he’s always had boundaries and never done anything because it’s expected. But that said, he didn’t move out of his childhood home because that was expected either. He stayed living with his Father after his parents split to take care of him (his father had serious health issues from his forties onward). And his Dad was his favourite person in the whole entire world. They were peas in a pod, as the cliche goes. And they both made me laugh, a comedy duo of sorts.
Searching OkCupid for Prince Charming
If you’re looking for some charming man, the first place you may look is OkCupid. That’s a joke, obvi. But that was the first place I looked.
The only place really. I couldn’t get Tinder to work for me – no idea why – but I think this was tech God fate. I don’t think I’d have gotten on with Tinder. My heart would have been further fragmented. And my foray into Plenty of Fish back in the day was a bit of a shitshow. I wasn’t going there again. I don’t think I actually met anyone from that platform but the messages were bad enough.
OkCupid back in 2016 and prior to that wasn’t what I have heard it is now. That sentence is confusing, but basically I’ve heard now to get any of the good stuff you have to pay, but back then it was free and it had these compatibility quizzes and useful information.
I met many of my past conquests on OkCupid: the Hot Jewish Doctor, Air Force Guy, The Kind Captain, and others. There was obviously no Starbucks in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, so I couldn’t hope to find a handsome man by chance (ala Starbucks Guy #1, SBG #2, SBG #3, and I guess we shouldn’t mention my ex-husband, Starbucks Guy #4 – these are all linked but Substack doesn’t show links these days). Besides, Michael has never been the type of person to go out for something you could make perfectly well at home (rolls eyes).
Back when I was first on OkCupid in my pre-iPhone flip phone days (that was just because I was poor and couldn’t afford an iPhone), I used my actual laptop to look up profiles, but now I had graduated to technological heights. I had an iPhone 6 (or something) and could use an app to search for Mr Right or Mr Right Now.
I remember setting my search parameters to Todmorden and surrounding areas. Approximately two people came up. Michael and this other man called something I’ll now make up: Archibald. His actual name was a lovely name from an Evelyn Waugh novel, Brideshead Revisited, and a name that I thought I’d name my imaginary future son. It was that sort of posh-ish name. I’ll tell you more about him later because I did actually go on dates with Archie as well.
But there was Michael and there was Archie. Michael said he was 31 (he was actually 37 but more on that later) and Archie was 42, significantly more than my 29 years.
Michael’s profile picture was his abs in a towel. His photos were gorgeous. His abs were gorgeous. He had a series of photos in what I later called his “douchebag t-shirt collection.” Basically, he wore t-shirts that featured naked or attractive women in various suggestive poses. He was giving “I’m a bit of a tool” vibes. But looks wise, he was right up my pre-marriage street. He was 6’2” (IRL I think he’s 6’3” but Michael doesn’t claim it). Check. He was handsome with dark hair and unusual green eyes. Check.
His profile looked as if it was written by someone with a broken keyboard but also said he was a bit of a nerd. All missing punctuation and things. Minus. He didn’t have a degree. Another minus. I didn’t say I’d evolved in the right way just yet. Hold your horses! He didn’t have children. Plus point for me as I was only twenty-nine and still hoped eventually I’d find someone to have a child with (spoiler-ish: we don’t have children).
But he was hot! Past me just slept with men for the ego boost. Maybe he’d be some hot hookup mistake that I’d laugh about later. It didn’t matter that despite losing the breakup weight, I felt utterly vile in my body. Maybe despite being super hot, he’d be okay with my body. I’d just have to see.
Side note: I think later I learned that the engineering thingy he did before becoming a postman was a bachelor’s equivalent but I also didn’t know that then and, besides, when I’d gotten to know him none of that mattered and I’ve since become way less of a dickhead about things that don’t matter. Michael has only had two jobs: engineer and postman and two homes, both childhood ones, and we currently live in his second childhood home; I often romanticise what my life would have been like if I’d had my husband’s lived experience – if only I could have had two homes instead of fifteen-ish but I lost count after that and I’d certainly lose count on jobs I’ve done – from call centres to tutoring to dishwashing to writing to editorial to teaching and so many inbetween! I’m sure this steadiness in Michael is something I admire.
Michael versus Archie
Michael’s user name was ‘50 Shades of Blue X’ – he said his Plenty of Fish username used to be ‘Best of Both Worlds’ I guess to denote that he was simultaneously a festival-goer partier and an old man trapped in a younger man’s body. My compatibility score with Michael was 38% but I’d like to think that was mostly because he didn’t answer very many questions.
Archie, on the other hand, had a 70% match score with me. He was an English teacher at a university in Leeds. He was self-proclaimed outdoorsy, not quite 6’ tall, handsome, lean, with blonde hair and blue eyes. He’d been divorced but didn’t have children, but adored his niblings.
Living in semi-small cities and towns in the US when dating, I’d never dated people who lived all that far away. The times I had (i.e. Scandi Lit Prof), it hadn’t gone all that well – I mean nothing went all that well but you get what I mean.
Maybe Manchester, Leeds, London, Liverpool, and further afield offered prime choice men, but I was a little on the intense side in dating, and I couldn’t imagine travelling an hour for a booty call. If I was into someone, I wanted to see them several times per week (every day if poss), not every once in a while when I could be arsed driving somewhere.
Plus, I was now in the unenviable position of divorcing, heartbroken, and living with a parent. (Obvs I’m so glad I did move home with my Daddy, but you don’t think that at the time when you’re 29 and have lived in your ‘own home’ for years and you’ve suddenly had the rug pulled from under your life.) And, besides, I didn’t even have a car yet. I was using a rental that my ex had gotten me to use for a fortnight.
The fortnight countdown
During those two weeks, I drove all over the show to see all my friends and family. Caroline, my niece, being adorable and cute and only four years old, took up much of my time as well. I’m sure my sister was sick of seeing me, but I went to see Caroline as much as I could, and since I had no job, that was most days. Poor Daddy!
My cousins Pam and Michelle had just given birth to their baby sons, and I also saw them as much as possible as well as Grammy, Grandad and Grandma Gill, Jenny and Derek, and childhood friends Joanne, Ruby, and Kate.
Cousin Pam had given Cousin Michelle and I free Rhianna concert tickets that June, too, (she got so many free NHS staff tickets and she wasn’t able to go for some reason) and thanks to my old Russian roommate playing Rhianna songs over and over again in her room (namely “Umbrella”) when I went to the concert, I found I’d heard more of the songs than I’d imagined I would. Drake even made an appearance. Is he cancelled now? It was a fun night anyway.
Maybe my family hoped I’d do the emotionally healthy thing and just be single for a while. But my utterly shattered emotional self thought that the fastest way to move on was to do exactly what I’d done in the past: serial date the hurt away. Um, maybe that was part of the reason I was divorcing in the first place.
I chatted with multiple men, so many I could barely keep them all straight. At which point many of them probably thought I was a scammer because I still had an American number for my WhatsApp because my ex was still paying the phone bill – for now at least. I remember scrolling at first thinking no one was as impressive and had all the tick-list qualities of my ex. My ex was intelligent and talented and no one could live up to him and I was just so so sad because I’d been discarded like trash. If you’ve read the chapters about my ex, you’ll realise the wool was eventually pulled from my rose-tinted eyes.
Eventually, I came around and saw a few people I liked. I got loads of messages and I’ve always liked to engage with everyone because I have always thought it was rude to ghost but then again, maybe that gave people false hope if I was going to rule them out? Thoughts, anyone?
I had a sort of boilerplate paste job that gave a spiel of how I had just moved to England and was divorcing, blah blah, and one man very rudely called me out on it and straight up rejected me and he’d been quite handsome and successful seeming but also in London and I remember that stinging a little. Then, another rude man sort of sent me a nasty message about how I’d linked my profile with my Instagram feed and still had pictures of my ex on there as if this was somehow both hilarious and pathetic of me.
I mean now we know that hurt people hurt people and these people are just trolls. Like if someone is a bit heartbroken, why go out of your way to cut them down further? What is to be gained by being that little bit cruel and nasty? Even at my most morally ambiguous and worst points (a la the Married Professor), I have never been knowingly actively cruel to anyone.
All of these men were a bit too far away or there was something that didn’t appeal – as lovely and handsome as some of them were – because I only actually met up with about four people for dates. And every time, my brain would wander back to Michael.
Early messages
I’m not sure when we messaged first on OkCupid. I have the screenshots somewhere but I need to figure out how to dig them out and I’ll share the text when I find them, but we moved over to WhatsApp around 26 June 2016. I say ‘around’ and then give the specific date. LOLs.
Michael regaled me with very unusual, funny, and not very flirty messages and a meme that included the In Betweeners that said something like “What the US think growing up in the UK is like” [image of Harry Potter] versus what it’s actually like [scene from In Betweeners where Will is carrying the yellow car door].
Michael asked me who my English crush was and I said James Norton and he asked if I’d seen him in War and Peace and then said he was as camp as “Louis Spencer” – not sure if Michael meant the Viscount Althorp or someone else. Besides, neither of them are actually camp. Told you my Grantchester and ASMR thing would come around again. I asked him his crush. He said he was eating his tea.
Then he asked me, “What one thing would you take to a desert island?”
I said, “Moisturiser? A survival expert? A multitool? A fuelled boat? I’d hope not to be on a desert island mostly…”
Michael: How does that count as one? Will let you have Bear [Grylls] because he’s a proper tool but don’t blame me when he’s making you drink wee and sleep in dead camels.
He said he’d bring Catniss from The Hunger Games but called her ‘Agnes’ instead which went over my head as to what the fuck he was even on about. I’d also never watched Bear Grylls anything at this point.
Most of our conversations were like that. Funny. Random. A bit on the batshit scale. He sent me a bunch of photos of him dressed up in various costumes, some next to hot women I’d presumed he had slept with (he hadn’t).
He confided in me after sending a photo of him at his sister’s wedding the year before: “I still find it hard to do a natural smile after years of having bad teeth and zero confidence.” I said I couldn’t believe he had no confidence because he was so handsome. I said I bet he got hit on all the time. He said he was bullied in high school but he made the decision to make drastic changes: Invisalign, veneers, working out – superficial things that he said made him feel better and more confident. He said he had a ‘non-history’ with women, which tended to worry them.
I wasn’t picking up on it, but that was his way of saying he’d not dated a ton and he’d never had an official long-term girlfriend. He said that that signalled to women that he was broken.
We sent so so many messages to each other, had phone calls, and I found myself excited to talk to him. This random handsome, quirky, yet honest man. It was so refreshing. He made me feel giddy. Like those early feelings of crushes and first loves.
He told me, “It’s really strange, you know, because I feel I have known or seen you before, but that’s not possible. I was pretty much a recluse, and you emigrated?”
I said I’d been coming to visit Todmorden for over a decade. He said maybe we’d crossed paths and it would “be kinda cool to go back over a timeline and see if and where our paths crossed.” I said we could do that when we met. He said he might have been an “ugly duckling” back then.
He said how the mind and body needed stimulation and that he couldn’t “fancy just a shell of a person, even one with a beautiful shell.” I told him he was insightful.
He also told me he’d never been to Starbucks or Nando’s.
We chatted back and forth during the time I was seeing family and meeting new babies (belonging to my cousins).
He asked if I was getting a lot of messages on the dating sites. I said I was getting about twelve per hour. He said he wasn’t surprised. I said I was only interested in two people.
Then when Michael said he was going for a haircut, things got confusing.
The man in the chair: was I being catfished?
Michael sent me a picture of his hairdresser but with another man in the chair. I thought Michael had actually just gained two-hundred pounds and was trying to tell me that. Mum, cousin Pam, and I all had a back and forth. Mum and I thought it was Michael. Pam said it definitely wasn’t. I said I was confused and asked for some selfies. He sent them to me, probably having no idea what I was even on about.
After days of talking, I said we needed to arrange to meet. He said that we should meet for a “quick brew or fruit cider somewhere” and he wouldn't take up much of my time because he wasn’t planning to break his first date record of twelve hours. I felt slightly jealous.
I said I didn’t have time before Friday because I was making full use of the rental car, but I could meet then.
He said – and this is the cheesiest and cutest line he’s ever used on me and he would never say anything of the sort to me now – “You could be the one to unlock my heart.”
He refreshingly also never ever sent a dick pic. (Until after we’d firmly been dating.)
I sent him a selfie of me looking what I thought was chubby so he’d be ‘prepared’ – and so he didn't think I was catfishing him. I was dripping in insecurity.
I said that my ex had thought I got too fat, and Michael said: “He obviously just didn’t love you for who you are,” and he also said he can be happy in a messy room or a clean one (the background of my picture was very messy). Things like that didn’t bother him. These were the kind of things I needed to hear. Balm to my heart. The exact opposite of my ex in every way possible.
Revisiting these messages, Michael was good at being honest and true to himself – and that was what I found so intriguing about him. There was no ‘front,’ no trying to impress me. He was just how he was, and I loved that about him. I still love that about him.
Our first date
I met my childhood friend Kate that day for lunch and told her about the man I was going to go on a date with. She was newly dating the man she’d have two daughters with (and they are also still together). She drove to Todmorden and we ate at a cafe that would become my favourite, The Little Bird Cafe, unfortunately a COVID-19 casualty.
I remember putting on a Banana Republic dress that I had bought when I was with Captain Thor, but it was a tiny bit snug and I thought that when I sat down the waistband would dig in and make me look like sausage casing – and after having the incident with the Hot Jewish Doctor where he told me I looked fat when we’d pre-met before our date and he had almost cancelled only to tell me later that I wasn’t fat, just bad at dressing (sigh) – I had gone to meet my Dad at his local pub for a quick soft drink and Michael would pick me up outside, but then I decided the outfit was wrong and went back to change again. Dad, who always said Jae and I were beautiful even when we were in sweatpants, said I’d looked fine either way.
I told Micahel I changed my dress from a tight one to a looser one. He said he was going smart casual.
Our date was set for 8 pm. He told me he set off early because he couldn’t wait any longer, which I thought was sweet. Knowing him now, I’m sure he was pacing the living room with his dad, George, giving encouragement.
He sent me a text to, “Look right” as he pulled up to the curb. He told me to please excuse his ‘chav car.’ I didn’t know what a chav was then. It was just a red car with some white stripes painted on it. I mean he hadn’t known my shitty red Mustang days. I get that we can’t always choose our car. Sometimes we get a car in budget. He didn’t get out of the car. He used his ‘giraffe arm’ (which is what I call his very long arms) to fling the door open and I got in and we hugged awkwardly.
We went to a pub in nearby Cliviger called The Kettledrum and parked next to a skip (very romantic) and Michael opened the glove box of his car and offered me shots of Nutella flavoured vodka with gold flecks in it. Should I have been worried? Should I have run a mile? It all felt very much like being back in uni, which made me smile. He didn’t have shots because he was driving. We went inside where he introduced me to Mixed Fruit Kopparberg. We sipped our drinks and had easy conversation, about what I have no clue. Everyone in the pub was watching some important football game except us.
We got onto the topic of our disabled Dads, a bonding point, and when he spoke of his Father’s ill health, some tears came to his eyes, and I placed my hand instinctively on his arm; we shared a moment.
He told me that when he was in the toilets, a man asked where he’d met me and he told him online. He also proceeded to confess that he’d broken his belt and he was wearing a broken watch – an ICE watch that he liked for the look but hadn’t gotten fixed.
I asked for a selfie in the guise of sending it to my sister so I didn’t get kidnapped.
I found his honesty endearing and comical. Most people on dates try and cover up these types of mistakes, but not Michael.
At one point on the date – and I found this very hot – he just went in for a kiss.
After the date
Michael drove me back home. We only had the one cider. I’m sure he would have bought us another round – he did offer – but we spent so long talking that we lost track of everything. He also confessed one time he’d had an awkward date where, in his nervousness, he’d meant to buy the round but she ‘threw him off’ by offering to buy and he mumbled, ‘okay,’ and then there wasn’t chance to buy a second round and she hadn’t seen him again.
He parked up outside my Dad’s stone terraced cottage and we made out like teenagers.
I immediately wanted to sleep with him. I asked if we could go back to his place. He told me no.
Michael later told me after he’d rejected me, he panicked that I’d not want to see him again for rejecting me. I semi-panicked that he’d think I slept with everyone super immediately. I probably did, but also internalised misogyny at play.
He texted when he arrived home.
Michael: Hair looks okay despite your best efforts. I had a really good time. Hope you are okay that we didn’t take it further tonight. Just no fair on my old man. (I assume we would have made lots of noise haha). He is cool about stuff but I think a different time is better. I hope that makes sense. You are an attractive woman. Those neck kisses. I was in heaven.
Again, his Dad was his favourite person in the world and he didn’t want to disturb his sleep. I also didn’t know that with every woman Michael had slept with in the past, he asked his Dad to leave the house and entertain himself, so that George – nor anyone in his family – had ever met anyone Michael had dated.
Elaine: I think it’s for the best we didn’t. But I had an amazing time.
Michael: Me too. No rush.
Elaine: Not at all.
I mean I would have loved to have had sex but I got it. I understood his boundaries. I’d never navigated dating whilst living with a parent. I’d had my high school sweetheart but I’d soon moved away from home so I didn’t have that awkward thing where I was fucking someone I was dating at a home where my parents were. Plus, my Dad had never been privy to any of that. He’d met high school sweetheart and then my first husband and no one in between – due to the fact I grew up in Georgia and not England.
I’m sure to deflect my growing giddiness and feelings for Michael but I just found him super-hot. I told him, at this point, I wanted us to be friends with benefits. I was clearly trying to protect myself. Then, I messaged the next day to say my suggesting fwb might be a barrier to something greater.
In our messages, we talked about this woman Michael had been seeing in Milnrow and he said he didn’t see a spark and he needed to end things. I somehow felt badly for this woman I’d not met who’d gone on four dates with my future husband. He said she reminded him of his old life where she just wanted to go to work and come home; she didn’t want adventures.
He invited me to films and cuddles the next night but I had plans with my sister. He said we could hang out on Sunday instead. More on this later.
General wisdom
Writer and Substacker,
, wrote a piece recently (like, sometime last week?) that resonated with me on attraction type. She gravitated towards the gruffer bad boys who needed to be saved by a good woman, realising eventually that that type is bad news. And whilst Michael met my type as far as being incredibly handsome to me, he didn’t meet my ‘type’ in any other ways, but meeting someone like him has changed my life.
In further discussion of the importance of timing in partner selection in
’s new book I Do (I Think), she notes, “...beyond the ways our picky preferences can hold us back, another part of partner selection that can be especially elusive is timing, particularly the timing of where each partner is on their individual journeys. The Allison of today is very different from the Allison of yesteryear and impacted what type of relationships I’ve been able to have. If we had met in our twenties, I don’t think John and I would have ended up marrying each other or even dating that seriously” (Chapter 2, “I Take You (Whoever You Are)”).
She goes on to say that at the time, her husband, who is a perfect partner for her now, was looking for someone who liked wine tasting whilst Allison doesn’t drink. She continues, “Meeting at an older age also meant we were both better at regulating our emotions and communicating directly. It’s easy to say, given the ease of our relationship, that we are ‘just right for each other’ when in reality, we are both just better at being partners. Sometimes it’s not that we haven’t found the right partner, it’s that we aren’t fully ready for the kind of relationship we think we want.”
That hit the nail on the head for me. By the time I’d dated so, so, so many people and had a failed marriage under my belt, I just knew what it was to be a better partner. Michael, having no experience in this arena, was willing to learn how to have a partner, and things progressed from there.
Coming up next, tune in for part two where I talk about our second date, the first time we hooked up, that time we went on a date to an STD clinic, and more.
New here or haven’t followed from the beginning, why don’t you catch up on the other eighty-nine posts I’ve written, including the one on why I’m writing these chapters in the first place – with the odd “present day snippet” of what is happening in my world lately.
If you’re happily married, how did you know your spouse was the one? What was it about them that was different?
haha okcupid was wild! I have to admit, it saddens me a bit how you describe yourself and your perceived size... you write such witty and accurate articles ( I mean, the actual image from whatsapp?! come on) and we're all here to enjoy your wild ride to married happiness, not a single thought on how the banana republic dress fit you ~ talk to yourself with kindness because you deserve it
Timing IS everything (for BOTH parties) when searching for a potential mate. If only we knew then what we know now we could've saved ourselves time and heartache.