5 Years Ago....

I met the love of my life. 
At someone elses wedding, while I was dating someone else.  Oops?

Let me back up a little bit.  In college I dated a very nice boy, D.  D and I met at the end of our freshmen year and started to hang out.  He was, shall we say, alternative? when we met.  Meaning he only shopped at Hot Topic and didn't own blue jeans (18 year old me thought this was way weird).  He was very fond of the black t-shirts with the sayings on them like "if I throw a stick will you leave?" etc.  Despite his outward appearance, he was also a very nice guy, great soccer player and a frat boy.  I know.  (Although the frat boy thing was fine, since I was in a sorority.)  He seemed nice, he was pretty cute once I got past the slightly different clothing we started to hang out. We dated all the way through college and were "that" couple for the first few years of it, lovey dovey, always together, light of each others lives etc. 
Over the years his clothing changed from Hot Topic to Gap, and then to country, complete with boots and cowboy hat.  Those weren't the only changes that happened. I started to be really unhappy in our relationship, when I look back at it I was just generally really unhappy with me as a person, but since the biggest part of my life was my relationship with D they were pretty intertwined.  Being a stubborn girl (and after all, we were in love, we were going to get married, I couldn't REALLY be unhappy right?) I refused to walk away from it and by the end we were "THAT" couple.  The ones who fight, who go "on breaks", who really don't seem to have anything in common anymore etc. 
We were on again, off again and so forth for about the last year.
The last straw for me was when I had a wedding to attend for one of my sorority sisters.  D had told me he'd asked off work and was good to go with me, (I really am not a fan of going to weddings without someone to walk in with and sit with, I know I'm weird).  The day of the wedding, turns out he hadn't actually asked off work and didn't tell me till I was on my way to pick him up.  He said he was afraid I'd be mad at him because he forgot.  -- one of the issues we were "working" on this time around was him being honest with me and not telling me things I wanted to hear--  There were a lot of things that this day triggered for me, but mostly it was that I was done.  Done trying to pretend that this was going to work, done trying to pretend to be happy etc.  So I went to the wedding, alone.  Well, alone with 15 of my closest friends, but dateless.  As I sat in the pew, I was contemplating the talk that D and I would need to have the next day to discuss our lack of future, and I was trying very hard not to let anyone know because I'm pretty sure I was mortified that everything my friends and family had been telling me for the past 18 mos about mine and D's relationship was true.  Ugh, I hate it when I'm wrong...... 
And then.......the cutest boy I'd EVER seen was walking people down the aisle.  I mean seriously.  I nudged my friend and commented on the fact that the usher was WAY cute.  The wedding happened, and then the cute usher made another appearance at the reception, (well duh).  After a while I noticed him staring, so I walked up and said something witty like "so are you going to stare at me all night, or did you plan on asking me to dance at some point?"  I know, I have some guts after a few beers.  (I found out later that he hadn't really been staring "at me" he tends to stare when he's had a few drinks, I prefer the version when he was staring at me and thought I was awesome, so usually I stick to that version, he tells me that he did think I was pretty awesome)

There were a lot of mitigating factors that evening, my mental state was unstable, there was a LOT of beer and the usher was WAY cute.  Way cute, and I was pretty sure D and I were done anyway, it was a small detail that he hadn't been informed of that yet.  Oh the tangled webs we weave......

The usher and I hung out after the reception, he drunkenly offered me flip flops from his apartment so I could go on a drunken walk (I do like to go on drunken walks) and we ended up staying up till 5 am the next day talking in his room.  (yes we were actually talking, that's not code for anything else thankyouverymuch.)
Not long after that night D and I were done for good**

So, I don't recommend meeting your future husband when you have a boyfriend, but I do recommend being honest with yourself about your feelings and not dragging an already wounded relationship through the mud on your way out.  Pretty much the only thing I'd do differently if given the opportunity was to know myself well enough and to have been honest with myself when I knew that D and I weren't going to work.  Because, it was way before the day I met Spencer.

** D is now happily married with a baby on the way, he and I don't really talk anymore (which is understandable given the fact that I didn't exactly handle our break up like an adult), but facebook stalking is a great way to keep up with people.