I’m really not the kind of person to share details about our relationship, especially not online. And neither is Tanner for that matter. But we’ve been dating for some time now and in the spirit of Valentine’s Day, it’s totally acceptable to make a cheesy post about how much I love him. I started this post in a super casual “I love you dude” Instagram caption, where only a few people would see it because I really don’t like sharing personal information. But it accidentally turned into a novel. And the more I wrote, the more excited and comfortable I got with the idea of sharing the story of our very first date ever!

11 years ago on Valentine’s Day, before Tanner and I began officially dating, we went to a movie together. We were both in high school, and it was only a couple weeks prior that we had started casually chatting on AIM (like Facebook Messenger but from the earlier days of the internet haha). We had several mutual friends at the time, and for Valentine’s Day we all went as a group to see the movie Jumper (anyone remember this movie from 2008?! It was pretty good!). At this point it wasn’t technically a date. I remember exactly where we sat – to the left of the theater, 3/4’s of the way towards the back, two seats in. For most of the movie, I just kept trying to muster up the courage to rest my head on his shoulder. As the movie got closer and closer to the ending, it was either do it or miss my chance to show Tanner that I liked him. Cue high school girl flirty head rest.

Once the movie was over, my stomach was definitely in knots. I wasn’t positive if the feeling was mutual or not (who needs verbal communication, am I right?). I got home, headed up the stairs, and turned on AIM as quickly as possible to see if Tanner had logged on yet. Almost immediately I got a message from him (eeeep, butterflies)! The message said something along the lines of “smooth move with that head rest” in a joking type of manner. Ugh, to be or not to be mortified. It’s now past midnight, and after chatting each other up a bit about the movie, Tanner asked if he could call me. I instantly ran to my room so my parents wouldn’t hear me talking to my crush on the phone (seriously though, high schoolers, jeez). A few minutes of super lame flirting later, he asked me if I’d be his girlfriend.

The thing is, Tanner does not consider this our first date, because technically it wasn’t. So I’ll give him that. But if this wasn’t our first date, then that means that Arby’s for dinner on a school night while I wore sweatpants was our first date. And that’s definitely not anywhere near as cute of a story. Tanner and I ended up only dating for a few months back in high school, and decided to part ways and remain great friends when he went to off to college. We’d see each other a few times a year to catch up (I’ll have to share some of those stories later!), but for 6 years after our first date, the timing just never worked out. It was always in the back of both of our minds that maybe we’d get the timing right at some point. And lucky for us, here we are now, 5 years into the best relationship I could ever hope for! So Happy Valentine’s Day to all you lovebirds and sweethearts out there! We hope you are cherishing every single second with each other!