I met my girlfriend through an online dating service. I had taken the IQ test and a bunch of the personality tests there, and so had she, and the site claimed that we were 95% compatible. I wasn't impressed by her picture and thought she was too young for me, but we had very similar taste in music, and she only lived 5 miles away. After trading a couple of short, friendly messages, she gave me her phone number. I called her up and that first phone call lasted three hours.
A few days later, we went out on our first date, to a punk rock gig headlined by the Misfits. She was interested in giving punk rock a try, and I was into the early stuff back in the day. When I met her, I was stunned at how pretty she looked, compared to her very plain profile picture. We had a good time at the show, though we didn't spend long in the mosh pit. The opening acts were fun, but the Misfits were too loud and too harsh, and I could tell she wasn't enjoying it. Then the next song started up, a cover of an old Ramones song, because Marky Ramone was on drums for this Misfits tour. Anyway, I knew that they were playing "The KKK Took My Baby Away," but she thought they were just chanting "KKK KKK KKK." She was furious to discover that I took her to an apparently racist event and stomped out of there. I didn't understand the situation, but I chased after her and reminded her that she had left her purse in my trunk for safekeeping. That calmed her down, though she was still fuming for the whole drive home.
Over the next couple of days, I kept in touch by email, working to salvage the situation. I explained about the Ramones song, and sent her links to sites where she could verify the lyrics. Then I invited her to see Tori Amos in concert that Friday, remembering from our long phone call that she was a fan. And I took her to my favorite Italian restaurant before the show. So date number two was good. Date number three, I took her to the Japanese lantern lighting festival at a local park, and showed off my knowledge of Japanese history and culture. A few days later, I sent her a poem about that excellent third date, and from then on, we were seriously together. We've been together nearly seven years now.
Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from bad decisions.