Tell us how you met your partner. E-mail: howwemet@thetimes.co.uk
Tom Pollock, 26
Lizzie and I strayed into each other’s orbits a few times before we spoke to each other. We shared some friends and were in the same university theatre group, but it wasn’t until I was dating her flatmate that we got to be close.
It didn’t start promisingly, though — she dragged me into their kitchen to threaten me with the contents of the knife rack should I hurt her friend. I remember telling her that her friend had kissed me and if we were going to talk about this it would help if she switched on the lights and maybe stepped back far enough so that I could focus on more than just her nose.
We saw more and more of each other over the next few years. I began to look forward to seeing her more than anyone else; I knew that she’d make me laugh and vice versa. If she was there, we’d have a good time.
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When my girlfriend and I split in 2008, Lizzie and I began to spend a lot of time together. We’d call each other up and drop round at next to no notice. We flirted, went clubbing and had long conversations late at night. But she still kept going out on dates and discussing them with me in depressing detail. I got a buzz whenever I saw her, and a worrying feeling that if I didn’t act, I was heading for the friend zone.
One weekend after starting a new job in Milton Keynes, I came down to London. I figured that I had nothing to lose but a lot of face and a little hope. I knew by then that we cared enough about each other that if she didn’t reciprocate we’d be able to work through the weird. So I gathered my courage and kissed her.
Much to my delight — and shock — she kissed me back.
Elizabeth Barrett, 29
I’d heard of Tom before I met him, because my flatmate was directing him in a play at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The night that she kissed him I was very disapproving as she’d just broken up with a very good friend of mine and she’d been flirting with him for a while. I blamed him, thinking that he was “the other man”. I’m pretty protective of my friends, and I pulled him into the kitchen and told him that if he broke my friend’s heart I’d kill him.
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We had a good conversation about it two weeks later and I was struck with how mature he was. I’d thought that he was going to be a flighty rugger-bugger type as he was from a posh school and had blond posh-boy hair. I wasn’t at all attracted to him then. He was too young. Besides, he had something going on with one of my best friends and I had my own boyfriend.
The first time that I ever thought of him as a man in his own right instead of just my friend’s boyfriend was when we were arguing over some book or other, and he picked me up and moved me so that he could go get something to eat. He’s very strong, and I remember thinking, “That was hot”, but pushing it right out of my mind.
About nine months later, he and my friend split up amicably, but because they were living together he ended up crashing on my sofa bed a lot. I thought that he had a crush on my flatmate because he was over so often. I was slowly realising that I liked him, and confided that to my stepsister, saying that I didn’t think he liked me back.
I had resigned myself to an unrequited crush, so much so that I was pimping him out to my colleagues at the bar one night. It was pretty clear to them that I was a bit smitten, and I was drinking too much wine because I hadn’t seen him for a month (he’d moved away for work) and I’d felt nervous about seeing him again.
He seemed really pleased to see me when he turned up, and I was flirting because I didn’t think anything would ever happen. We went outside and he ended up kissing me. We’ve been together now for two and a half years.