I met my husband in high school. At the time, I was dating someone else. Tim was just a friend. He was cute, kind of goofy, very sweet. He was in the school bands (not cool), and he dressed kind of funky (less cool), but he was appealing in a rollicking puppy sort of way. He made an impression.
My freshman year of college, my boyfriend broke up with me. Over Christmas break, I went to a party and saw my boyfriend. Tim was there too. I flirted with Tim in an effort to convince my ex that I didn’t give a flying rip that he’d dumped me. (I was 18—what can I say?) I discovered that Tim was fun, attentive, a gentleman. He was creative, interesting, kind, and gentle. He played the piano for me, loved my dog, was polite to my parents. I started being glad my boyfriend dumped me. Tim and I started dating.
We dated for three weeks. He went off to Army Basic Training. I returned to college. We exchanged letters. Then I stopped hearing from him. I returned to our home town for Spring Break, and he was there. I went to see him. He was totally different—cold, distant, closed down.
He’d witnessed a buddy dying in a training accident. It had messed with his head.
When I went back to school, I wrote Tim several more letters. He never wrote me back. I moved on.
I met my first husband in my sophomore year. We married after graduation, went to law school together, moved to a new state, got jobs, bought a house, made a life.
I never forgot Tim.
I’d think of him from time to time, always with appreciation for the time we’d spent together. I wondered where he was and what he was doing.
After my first husband and I split up, I found myself fantasizing from time to time about finding Tim and getting back together with him. I always saw it as a beautiful love story—he was his old self in my imagination—loving, kind, warm, and gentle, still creative and playing music.
I didn’t obsess over him. In fact, I spent months not thinking of him at all, but when I did think of him, I saw us together.
At the end of 2000, I had a dream about Tim. I don’t remember the dream, but I remember waking up with a powerful thought pulsing in the forefront of my mind: Find Tim.
This wasn’t an idle notion. It felt like a directive.
So I went looking for him.
I looked on the internet. I found four possibilities—four men with first and last name matching his. None of them were in the state where we went to school, so I didn’t know which one was the right one, if any. I was too shy to pick up the phone.
I stumbled into classmates.com and checked our school and graduating class (1978). He wasn’t there. Not a big surprise. We had over 700 people in our graduating class. I signed up, and then I let it go.
I didn’t know what else to do, so I said to the universe, “If I’m meant to find Tim, bring him to me.”
Two weeks later, I got an e-mail from classmates.com telling me that new people from my class had joined the site. On a whim, I checked, and one of those people was Tim! We’d stumbled into the site within 2 weeks of each other.
I sent him an e-mail. He replied. His e-mail started with, “Hello Beautiful!”
Like the movie line goes, he “had me at hello.”
We exchanged dozens of e-mails. Had a couple phone conversations. Spent hours in a chat room.
He was at the end of a marriage. He was on the other side of the country.
A month, to the day, after I sent my e-mail to him, he left his home and drove across the country to move in with me.
My friends thought I was crazy. I was warned that he could be an alcoholic, wife beater, drug addict. One friend suggested Tim could have turned into an ax murderer, for all I knew.
Twenty years is a long time, I was warned. He might not be the same person.
God, I hoped not. I had no interest in being with an 18-year old guy.
When he arrived, it was as if we’d never been apart.
He’s the same Tim, only much better. Not an alcoholic or wife beater or drug addict … or ax murderer.
We married a year later.
Like I keep saying, we get what we focus on.
When I moved into my current home after divorcing my first husband, I settled in to write. It was me and Muggins. I didn’t go out much.
My mother and friends warned me, “You’re never going to find a man if you don’t go out there and join things.” I was told to join a church, local clubs. I was told to go to bars, ball games, etc.
Those things weren’t for me. Hanging out at home and taking long walks on the beach was for me.
The experts said I’d never find a man that way.
See what the experts know?
Tim is my walking, talking, cute and wonderful reminder that what I want can come to me in extraordinarily unexpected ways.
How many women in their forties are looking for a great guy? I don’t know the stats, but I’d guess it’s millions. I have something many women think is impossible to get—a man who thinks I’m beautiful no matter what size I am, a man who loves and respects me, supports me, desires me, and calls me his best friend.
If I can create that, how hard can it be to create financial abundance?
