Hobbit Love: Online Dating, Marriage after Divorce, Dating with Children by Richard

Let’s hear a story from a husband’s perspective! Read this sweet story of Richard’s second chance of finding love – and finding his “Hobbit, Lord of the Rings-loving” wife.

We are happy to share this story about online dating, marriage after divorce, and dating with children through a man’s eyes.

Dating with Children

The year was 2012, I was living in Eagle Mountain, Utah as a 30 year old single father. Being a single dad to my daughter and working full time made dating a challenge.

Friends and family members would do their best to set me up, though this never turned out to lead to anything more than a slightly awkward date.

Meanwhile, my wife had been living in Provo. Her dating prospects were very close to mine. My wife and I had no mutual friends in common on Facebook, we were several cities apart, and were at different stages of our lives. How were these two souls destined to meet?

Online Dating

As fate would have it, my wife had meddlesome friends and family who set up an online dating profile for her. Luckily my wife humored those who set up the profile.

But after two years of online dating, she was done, and was planning on deleting her profile.

I was already on the web, and luckily saw my wife’s profile before she deleted it. Being a veteran to the site, and online dating in general, I knew exactly what to look for, and what to avoid.

Someone’s online presence says a lot about them as a person, and how you view their profile can say a lot about you as a person as well… i.e. if you look at their profile a lot without messaging them, you can come off as a stalker or creeper.

That being said, when I looked at my wife’s profile, I made sure to LOOK at it, read it, and above all, pay attention.

The more info I had the easier it would be to strike up a conversation, and I have to admit, my wife did not disappoint.

Her profile name was “Shehobbit” and there was my in. I messaged her a short, but simple message to get the ball rolling, “So are you a Lord of the Rings fan or are you just really short?” to which she replied “Both”.

Never had a man heard a more satisfying word in all his life than me. “Both” she had said. “Both” sigh…

Being 5’4” myself, I had slim pickings of finding women who were shorter than me and was always irritated at the really tall guys for dating shorter girls… Oh well, at least they were doing their part to even out the human race.

I FOUND HER! An attractive, short nerd. Life was sweet, and so was she. We started out our correspondence for the time by messaging, which progressed into phone conversations.

And our first conversation was as epic as our first message:

Me: So, I have Narsil
            Wife: What?
            Me: It’s the sword from Lord of the Rings…
            Wife: No, I know Narsil… “The blade that cut the Ring”
            Me: “It’s still sharp…”

This introductory conversation was recounted to my wife’s sisters and friend, to which they all replied, “You’re going to marry this guy.”

I have to pause here, to point out that when meeting someone online, it’s always a little scary… their voice may not match what you had imagined, or their current hair color, body type, or face in general, may not mirror some of the photos they chose to post online, so when meeting, or in my case speaking with my wife, there was some apprehension.

I was elated to find she had a pleasant voice. Through our conversations I learned a lot, like she is the most honest person I have ever met. When she says something, it’s dead on.

She is one of 14 in her family, 5 brothers, and 8 sisters. Her family, like my own, has vast amounts of artistic talent overflowing with everything they do etc.…

Plus all those other cool and interesting things you learn about each other. Like how she was moving in with her sister in Eagle Mountain, down the street from where I lived.

Finally came the day for us to meet in person. I was a little nervous, but this wasn’t my first rodeo, and I was pretty awesome, so I was feeling fine.

The details I don’t remember too much of, but what I do remember is that I wanted to get myself as far from the friend zone as I could, so what did I do to achieve this? I kissed her. 

It was the worst kiss either of us had ever experienced. She was not expecting me to, and remained close-lipped and she pushed me away, and told me “I don’t do that, I don’t move that fast”.

Dating After Divorce

Now at this point I was either stupid, or incredibly confident, or a bit of both. Because it didn’t discourage me.

I dropped off my wife later that night, and she thought it was the last she would ever hear from me. To her surprise, I called her the next day, and a few more times every day following.

We eventually hung out again, where I learned my lesson, and gave her a big hug. It was about a week after, that I put the moves on again, this time they were not so easily pushed away.

Our first real date was going to see a midnight showing of “The Avengers”.

During our courtship, I was dragging my feet, not really committing to anything, and when she asked to define the relationship, my reply was… “I’m just happy where things are” and left it at that.

My wife never wanting to be “That Girl” that was on the hook; felt like she was sitting around being a stupid girl. Luckily, she had a sister who gave her the advice “Divorced people will be more reluctant with whom they let in because they’ve been hurt.”

This advice gave me the time I needed to heal, and slowly let myself feel again.

Another stroke of luck occurred when my wife and her sister she was living with got in a huge fight, where my wife was going to move back to Provo. Being a single dad made it nearly impossible to keep dating with that sort of distance, and I told my wife “I don’t want to break up.”

So, what did I do? I said, “No you can’t move, I hate Audrey, you’re not supposed to move away, you’re supposed to stay here, and we’re supposed to see each other every day and fall in love.”

Marriage After Divorce

This was like music to my wife’s ears. She no longer felt like that stupid girl, and her and her sister made up. Shortly after this, I took my wife to my family dinner on Mother’s Day and ended up getting crap from my siblings for bringing a girl home that I wasn’t “dating” to meet the family on Mother’s Day.

It was later that night that we defined the relationship, and I told my wife “I don’t want to be rushed into anything” to which she replied, “I don’t want to rush you into anything, but I need to know this is going somewhere”.

The next day I changed my Facebook status to “In a relationship,” Which is code for our generation “Things are getting pretty serious.”

Two months to the day afterwards I proposed, and four months after that we were married, we had a Regency themed wedding.

Happily Ever After?

Fast forward 8 years, where we are living in the small town of Payson. During that time we bought our fixer upper dream home, and have been slowly renovating it.

We lost two of my wife’s brothers, been sealed in the Payson Temple, had two additional children (boys), one of which is special needs. And though we have our hard days, we are grateful to each other, for the lessons we learn from each other.

Remembering that we love and want what’s best for each other. And know that it continually takes hard work to build a strong marriage, and strong family unit.

My advice is to always communicate, always be honest, always strive to be understanding, and have compassion for each other.

Thank you for sharing your story, Richard. Don’t let the idea of online dating, dating with children, or marriage after divorce turn you off to finding love again.