How and When Did You Know ?

I'm posting this in response to Mec's VDay 2008 post :)

Hubby and I met in high school, we were good friends and had lunch together (with the rest of the barkada) every single day throughout high school. There was never really any spark between us. We weren't really even close with each other, we just happened to be in a group that hung out together.

In retrospect, I believe this might be because my yaya and his best friend's yaya were good friends and brought our lunch baons to school together. As high schoolers, we weren't allowed out of the school during lunch time so me and the other guy's yayas would bring hot lunch to school and hand them to us through the iron fence that surrounded the campus. The rest of the guys would buy their lunch from the cafeteria or one of the many caterers who sold meals in school. We'd all eat our lunch together, hand our empty containers back to the yayas and walk back to where our classrooms were.

I was always just one of the guys. Hubby was going steady with another girl back then, but they didn't really spend a lot of time together.

Ever since we graduated from high school, one of those guys from our group (hubby's best friend) would invite us all to his family's annual Christmas party. This kept the group in touch with each other and we had the opportunity to catch up with each other's lives at least once a year even though we were all going to different universities.

Hubby and his high school gf's relationship didn't make it past high school and I would later on get involved with other people.

When we finished college, we had more freedom (we were already working so we had the money to spend, haha! and we'd all have cars) to go out so the group started to go out a lot. There would be times when we'd have dinner together once a week and go out for dessert afterwards.

I was the only girl in the group so the guys would usually take turns picking me up and dropping me off at our house. This wasn't really a problem because I live 5 minutes from Tomas Morato and that was where we usually ended up anyway. Hubby, coincidentally, lived nearest me so it wasn't surprising that he got to pick me up and drop me off most of the time.

At this point, this is where our (hubby's and mine) accounts would slightly differ.

My take is that hubby was driving me most of the time so we got to spend more and more time together. I didn't even know that he was nanliligaw but come to think of it, I don't think that he even courted me. This didn't happen quickly, mind you, over time and great distances - I was travelling and working on projects abroad and would be out of the country half of the time - love began to grow. I don't even know how it happened or when it happened basta one day, kami na.

I'm not really clear about what his account of our story is. I have this idea that he thinks I've a crush on him. That thought probably made it easier for him because hubby is just like a typical Tsinoy - torpe (mwahaha!).

Around 1999 or 2000, I remember a phone conversation with hubby and me wherein he told me something like "... my officemate saw our chat window, he asked me who you were and he was surprised when I told him that you were my girlfriend." I pounced on that statement and confronted hubby, "Huh ? I'm your girlfriend ? Why ? Did you even ask me ?"

Syempre, he was struck dumb and didn't know what to say. As for me, I was glad for the insight. Ah, he thought of me as his girlfriend pala. *kilig*

That's the story of how we officially became boyfriend & girlfriend.

The next several years that followed isn't nearly as interesting as our start so I'm going to cut my story short for now. I will have to continue my story at a later time as I'm already tired - but not too sleepy to realize that even though I've written up something substantial tonight, I haven't even really answered Mec's question yet, hahaha!