Lucky in Love: My Own Real-Life Romance Story

My husband and I met online, longer ago than I'm willing to admit. We'd both just gotten out of what we thought were long-term, "forever" relationships, and really didn't believe that the line about "soul mates" was real. 

And then AOL's personal online dating service went and intervened. 600+ miles apart, both reeling from soured break-ups, we defied the odds. Stumbling across my personals ad after reading about 1,000 of them, he took a chance and emailed me. After receiving loads of "Hey, baby, we live in the same city -- wanna fuck?" messages (recognize that line from Her First Billionaire? LOL) I was close to ignoring them all.

And then his came. Earnest and funny, it made my heart swell and my hopes rise. Could there really be a real person behind this?

Yes. Call it luck, chance, serendipity. Call it crazy.

But he called me.

We spoke on the phone within a week, sent pictures shortly after, and met in person within a handful of weeks. The rest is history -- messy, chaotic, complicated history (it's always complicated...).

Fate gave me my best friend, my passionate lover, my intellectual equal, my goofy comedian, the best father to my children I could ever dream up, and my unfailingly loyal buddy all in one person.I got lucky the day we "met" through bits and bytes online.

We can't know, or plan, or predict when our lives crack open and everything changes. The best laid plans of characters reflect real life, from Michael Bournham's ambitions backfiring spectacularly and threatening the love of his life (ooo, mini-spoiler!) to Lydia's year-long plan to get a promotion coming to a shocking halt when a series of behind-the-scenes plans rocks her world.

Unintended consequences show us we can't organize and manipulate and connive and contrive -- even out of deep love -- and always get exactly what we think we want.

Instead, sometimes the universe (or God, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or your mom) knows better, and being open to possibility -- what some call luck -- is what we need the very most to get what completes us.

May you be luck in love this St. Patrick's Day and all year long!

Also -- one lucky reader/commenter will win a $10 Amazon gift certificate. Answer the following question in the comments: Which statistic in Lydia's talk with Matt/Mike in Maliciously Obedient was NOT TRUE? a) 40% of all books sold in the U.S. are romance novels b) sales of vibrators shot up 414% when people buy Fifty Shades of Grey c) 9% of romance novel readers are men.

I'll draw a random winner from the correct answers! Deadline: March 19, 2013, 1 a.m. EST.