The Serendipity Principle

A few years ago today I met my now-wife (I suppose RMGF, but we'll shorten that to RM) for a drink (or in fact several) in Manchester.  We knew each other from working together previously and had agreed to meet for a drink on the basis that possible feelings were emerging...

The rest is not quite history.  We were both amidst messy divorces and with one child each involved neither of us could forsee what the future would hold. We took things tentatively. There were several years of long-distance relationship either side of the Pennines and a lot of M62 and Northern Rail journeys, a pandemic where we didn't see each other for nearly 5 months as myself and my son (aka The Bo) headed south to stay with my mum, made more agonising by the fact that RM works in healthcare and was headed to the ward daily with no PPE...the divorces and associated matters dragged on and neither were easy, and long term health issues occasionally tripped us up along the way. But here we are.  We've still spent less time living together than we have apart, which will eventually, one hopes, even itself out, but that felt strange when I worked it out the other day.  It feels that it has been foreverly this.

Somewhere in the midst of it all, quite early on, the concept of Serendipty became important to us.  RM once bought me a card that said "I wish I'd found you sooner", but when we talk about that, we talk about the fact that I was too scary for her (my pink mohawk playing in a metal band phase was apparently terrifying) and she was far too academically minded for me (studying professionally and a love of numbers *shudders*).  We would never have found ourselves in the same space either literally or mentally.  And so it was we found ourselves together when it was the right time for us to be together. Serendipity. At some point along our journey (I genuinely can't remember when, these things matter until they don't) I got the word "serendipity" inked on my skin in her handwriting, and she has it in mine.  We have found that once you let serendipity into your life it's amazing how often it appears...