I first met Melissa in 1999 through a group of mutual friends, during the height of the "Rave" phenomenon. Over the next few years, we ran into each other on the dance floor on many a Saturday night. Also, one of Melissa's closest friends happened to be my roommate, and Melissa and I developed a casual friendship, although I secretly hoped that it would turn into something more.

Then in 2004, I finally got up the nerve to ask her out on a date, and even though she accepted, she was currently involved in a relationship, so it wasn't really a date, more like two friends eating dinner at Gatsby's and shooting a game or two of pool. Of course, I didn't realize that she was in a relationship until about halfway through the date when I made my feelings known to her. She told me that although she wasn't happy in her current relationship, she was intent on trying to make it work, so for the time being we would have to remain friends.

Later that year, I decided to leave Halifax and try my luck out West. I ended up in Vancouver, and spent the next three years there enjoying the carefree life of a single thirty-something man. It was a fun time, but I always felt that something was missing, I just couldn't put my finger on it. Then one night in February 2007, my friend Mitch called me from Melissa's cell phone. I honestly hadn't even thought about her much since I left Halifax, but as soon as he put her on the phone and I heard her voice, I knew in that instant that she was what I had been missing, and I spent the next hour nearly begging her to pick up and move to Vancouver to be with me.

To my surprise, Melissa told me that she would consider it, and as fate would have it, about a week later she told me that she was going to go for it. I remember how happy and excited I felt when she told me. I hadn't spoken to her in two and a half years, and after one conversation she decided to quit her job, leave her family and all her friends, and move herself literally from one end of the country to the other to take a chance on starting a relationship with me.

She arrived in Vancouver on April 26, 2007, a day I will remember for the rest of my life. We spent the following month getting to know each other again, this time as lovers instead of friends, and we quickly found that we have an almost infinite number of things on common. We found ourselves falling in Love with each other very quickly, and we started saving money and planning a dream vacation to Hawaii. Unbeknownst to us, about 3 weeks after she arrived in Vancouver, she became pregnant with our son, Carter. Shortly after she found out she was pregnant, she became incredibly homesick, and we soon decided that our best course of action was for both of us to return to Nova Scotia to be closer to our families.

We returned home, and I quickly developed culture shock, being back in such a small economy after being used to such a booming one. It took me several weeks to find a job, and that drained much of our savings. The job I ended up taking pays me several thousand dollars less per year than I have been used to for the past few years, and we ended up having to move into Melissa's mother's house.

Shortly after we moved in with her mother, I was sitting at the computer one night working on one of my websites when Melissa called me into our bedroom, saying she wanted to ask me something. I thought she was going to ask me what I wanted for supper, but instead she made me the happiest man in the world by asking me to marry her!