Listling Without Commentary: How You Met Your Significant Other(s)

On this year’s Autostraddle Reader Survey, we asked those of you with one or more significant other to tell us where you met your very special someone(s). 26% of you met at school, 23% online, 20% through friends, 9% through work, 5% at a bar or party and 5% at an LGBT Event.

But 10% of you indicated “other” and provided us with your answer as a write-in. What we learned from this exercise is that next year Roller Derby, Autostraddle Meet-Up and Rugby should be listed as actual options.

Now, here are just some of the cutest, queerest, most unique and Most Weirdo ways y’all met up with your very special someone(s).

1. At the lesbian bookstore she worked at. I carried around a copy of “Out” magazine like a pride flag so she’d know I was a homo.

2. We play Quidditch together

3. In the board of an umbrella organization for Stockholm’s University Orchestras

4. On a bus, because of fancy socks

5. At auditions for The Vagina Monologues

6. At a meeting of Xena: Warrior Princess in Brazil

7. Mother and baby group!

8. Homeschool camp when we were teenagers

9. Walking around Whole Foods

10. I was an impressionable young intern, and she seduced me with her feminine wiles.

11. At the French Communist Youth Movement

12. Rehab!

13. Member-run anarchist women’s and trans theater collective

14. I wanted to click “LGBT event.” But it was really an Andrea Gibson show, which I guess is pretty much the same thing.

15. Met one partner at a BDSM Club, met other at Autostraddle Brunch

16. I emailed her because her face was on the Campus Gay People poster and I was hoping to make friends

17. Weird goucher fate

18. World of Warcraft

19. Shakespearean acting workshop

20. Online, but knew each other as kids. Adorable!

21. At a queer feminist festival in Sweden

22. In the woods

23. At a queer zine poetry event. I know, I know!

24. We met at a Halls thing on the first night of uni and were best friends for six years before we got together. I couldn’t have imagined then that we would have this now.

25. Guys: through connecting here and agreeing to go to lesbian book club together! THANKS!

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Riese

Riese is the 41-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3238 articles for us.

91 Comments

    • Socks are the most fun accessory. In mass, I have more socks than pants and shirts combined.

  7. Well, one girlfriend I met in basic training….yep.

    Another I met while volunteering for an LGBT youth group.

    Currently single though….I’m going to have to start going to Whole Foods I see.

  8. I’ve met two of my exes while they strutted down the aisle at campus biannual drag shows. One was a drag king, the other was tipping a drag queen, and both times I was just like, damn.
    Still dating one of them, my longest relationship, my best relationship ;)

  11. She held the door for me at the library. She said she was writing a poorly researched paper. As a good library school student, I offered her reference help. You guys, I have every lesbrarian’s dream how-we-met story.

  12. My girlfriend and I are discussing which of us is the author of #14, as we evidently both wrote almost exactly the same thing.

    I say it’s me. She says it’s her. One thing is for sure… we’re insufferable. Thanks Andrea.

    • three people said some variation on #14, actually! i considered publishing all three, i thought that might be even funnier, but made the game time decision against it. so now i’ve just further complicated your process of figuring out if it was you or not. ;-)

      • Well, that one is either me or Kathleen for sure, based on wording. The third person is very mysterious and we wonder whether we might be put in touch… We have a theory that if enough of us form a coalition and tell Andrea Gibson that we fucked as a direct result of her activities, then she’ll write us a poem. Just for us!

        And then we could have a party on Autostraddle where everyone froths a lot and jumps up and down.

  14. THERE’S ANOTHER ANARCHOSTRADDLER?! Omg let’s hang out, who are you? I met one of my lovers at an anarchist vegan cafe/bookstore cooperative and bonded over Copwatch, clearly we have much to discuss

  16. Awww, this is great! I’m #13. I signed up to be her assistant lighting designer, she took me out for coffee to get to know each other before we started working together, the following week we went back to her place after our theater meeting for a glass of wine, and the rest, as they say, is history! :)

  17. This is extremely helpful. Being recently single I’ve been trying to figure out one does dating. The internet just keeps landing me in an infinite loop of discussing Buffy and never meeting in person. I think I’m going to try wandering around the woods this weekend.

  18. So I’m perpetually single, but I did join rugby because I had a HUGE crush on this girl on the team, does that count for anything? :) haha

    • I joined the Rugby team at my uni hoping to meet other queers…i was the only one. I was like their little gay mascot that made them feel like a proper women’s rugby team…their words not mine. After I left loads of lesbians turned up and were told the tale of the first ever-me. I went back for old girls matches like a frickin celebrity. Rugby is awesome. Made some amazing friends playing.

  19. Aww, I love these! I’m putting most of them on my to do list, gonna try to make something happen! :P

    Can’t believe it, but my last girlfriend, I met on OKCupid. First person I talked to and met. It’ll never happen again, it was too crazy to work out the first time, no way it’s gonna the second! ;)

    • That’s how I met my girlf – sorted my matches by percent, contacted the second one, and a few months later I moved in with her, and now it’s been almost a year and a half :)

      So clearly it’s happened more than once, is what I’m saying!

    • Yep, same here. Plenty of Fish. I had reluctantly signed up the day before. She was the first person to message me. We chatted for a few days, met up, and have never looked back.

  20. THESE ARE SO FRICKIN’ ADORABLE!!!

    For me and my cutiepie, we actually met briefly at a Queer Youth event 4 years ago here in Vermont where we’re both from, then parted ways until December of last year when they came across my tumblr, we started talking, realized we knew each other and really connected again! They go to school in Colorado, it’s hard being 2000 miles apart, but I love them dearly and I got to spend an amazing birthday week with them in my arms and I’m just the happiest girl in the world <3

  22. Actually, quite a bit of my queer friends have dated girls through the french communist youth events. The personal is political, and everything.

    • OK I am losing my mind over this information. This is the greatest thing I’ve heard. I need to know more!!!

  23. I just put “at school” for this question, but the long answer is that my partner can be quite shy and so she decided to preemptively counteract shyness at the start of college by introducing herself to everyone in our entire dorm building. She literally came by and knocked on my door. We started talking about music and then suddenly it was three hours later and I was sitting on her bed while we jammed together on ukulele and guitar.

    • This is perfect! Have you heard ode to kulele by Mal Blum? I also put school but it was more complex. So from one “school” answerer to another I salute you.

  27. i met my girlfriend in a toy box! it was between het and Dora, I think I made the right decision.

  29. I am one of team Roller Derby. But I only even went to the first night of newbies two years ago because of a comment Crystal made in an Autostraddle How to meet Girls article. I would never have gone otherwise.

    IT’S THE CIRCLLLE OF LIIIIIIIIFE

    (P.S. Now I’m on a national team, so good job Crystal!)

    • Can you comment on what was being reinacted? I’m curious, and my mind is only 49% in the gutter.

  32. We met in college when I was a freshman and she was a senior – but she was dating a guy. He was jerk but I kept going over to their place because she and I would talk for hours. After they broke up she moved away and I lost touch with her. Four years later she got the idea that she should find me and showed up in town looking for me. Fortunately she succeeded and we’ve been together for 20 years.

  33. I totally get the weird Goucher fate! I’m glad to see my alma mater on the list of ways Autostraddle people have met, haha.

  34. French Communist Youth Movement comrades: Who are you and can I follow you on your Tumblr? Are you actually the lesbian version of the couple at the very beginning of the Second Sex? DM seriously.

  36. I said “If we both end up at A-Camp in May, we should hook up” and um, now we’ve been dating for almost five months.

  37. I answered work on the survey but it was way more complicated than that. She was my student at the hospital!! (Scandal!!) We became great friends which quickly moved to great love.

  38. IN THE WOODS. #22 i want to eat cookies by a fireplace while you tell me the story of your love.

    • It was me! Maybe I should write a book. It is a long and complicated story but it started with a lot of spooning in my tent.

  39. Unofficial Autostraddle chatroom. Definitely a fluke. She got bored one night and entered the room. We exchanged witty flirtatious banter, noticed we were of similar ilk and that was all she wrote, 8 months later. Now we’re making spit babies.

  40. My wife and I met virtually on the gay christian network message boards, then IRL at a GCN east coast picnic (yea, like a church picnic). We had the priest who sat between us at the picnic table marry us.

  47. Me: puts out call on various Facebook groups needing volunteers for a suicide awareness event.
    Her: Volunteers.

    Moral of the story? Volunteering is good for everyone.

  48. My awesome story: saw each other on the bus one night, made lots of eye contact but didn’t actually talk. She wrote a craigslist missed connection, which I saw the next day (I somehow had the random hope that she would, and amazingly she did!). We made plans to meet up and in the meantime we discovered a friend in common (because, of course we did). Six years later and we still think it’s amazing how it happened!

  49. Work/Bar?

    I had a rule at the time to “never meet a girl at a bar,” mostly because whiskey and impulse always bit the best of me. After college I got a job bartending. That meant I was on duty and sober as this adorable girl laughed, and drank beer, and eyed me from across the room. Eventually, weeks down the road, I enthusiastically agreed to see a movie I’d barely heard of. Four years later, it’s the best decision I ever made!

  50. Another meetup (I hosted). Only two people signed up and showed. One is my girlfriend, the other my girlfriend and I are going bowling with next weekend. I went with zero interest in flirting or picking anybody up. You never know.

  51. I met the guy I dated in undergrad by ramming into his kayak and flipping him over. Whilst pretending to be a pirate. As you do.

    My former research assistant (also queer) likes to say that she met me in a pub, had a thirty-second interview, got offered a job on the spot, slept with me that night, punched me in the face, and then got hired. This is all technically true, though the sleeping was literal — we were on a hiking trip, sharing a bed in a B&B — and the punching was 100% accidental.

  54. LOL #22. In my head it went like this: Girl taking a meditative stroll through the woods gaining inspiration for the poetry she’ll write back at her campsite. Suddenly she spots another lone woman jogging along with a machete, training for the Tough Mudder. They lock eyes, both plans abandoned.

  55. I saw “Mother and Baby Group!” and thought, hey, that’s where I met my girlfriend. Then I thought, maybe that was what she put in her survey, then I noticed she was sleeping, so decided not to wake her up to show her. So, I showed it to her now, and she said that it was her. That she even put the exclamation point in.

    I don’t think the group was expecting the mums to hook up… Not that we did so straight away. It did take a few years, but it is totally how we met.

    We made it onto Autostraddle!

  57. My partner and I actually met on Xbox, Call of Duty to be exact. We’ve been doing the long distance thing for a while, traveling back and forth. She’s moving in with me next week, so no more long distance! Yay! It started off as innocent flirting, and now we’re engaged. Who would have thought?

  58. I met my love at a Christian acting summer camp when I was thirteen… we were in a scene together in which I played a six-year old boy and they were played my kidnapper.

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