by Terry Donelson

Created on: May 13, 2009

My best and most memorable first date was in the summer of 1983 and was with the woman I am still married to today.

Rhonda and I worked together for just under a year. I was, in fact, her supervisor and to this day tell people that this was the last time I ever got to be the boss. We were both married to other people at the time so the thought of us ever getting together didn't even occur to us. I found her attractive, but our relationship consisted of joking around, mostly superficial, light-hearted conversation, and a certain amount of harmless flirtation.

I had been unhappy in my marriage for quite some time and, while Rhonda had nothing to do with it, had finally separated from my wife a few months after she and I began working together. Even then, however, I kept my distance because she, as far as I knew, was happily married and planned on staying married.

It wasn't until she didn't show up for work one day and didn't call in that I learned from female co-workers Rhonda had confided in just how unhappy she was in her current marriage. It was the consensus among them that she had probably left her husband and returned to her home town. As it turned out, this proved to be the case.

It was then that I started writing her letters. This was 1983; in the days prior to e-mail, instant messaging, texting, etc. Much to my surprise, she wrote back. Several letters eventually led to phone calls. And after a few weeks, phone calls turned into us finally arranging to meet midway between where each of us was living. As we were both familiar with the city where we decided to meet, we agreed upon a well known landmark and set a date and time.

It was around noon when I arrived. The roughly two hour drive had seen my emotions run the gauntlet between being very excited to see her again to scared to death at not knowing what to expect. Here we were, for heaven's sake, two people freshly out of bad relationships. We were obviously attracted to each other, but just how crazy was it to even think about getting involved again so soon? It occurred to me that the sane thing to do at this point would be to turn the car around, go home and call her with some sort of excuse why I couldn't make it.

She was already there when I got there. She spotted my car and was walking toward me as I was pulling into a parking space. I got out and started toward her and it was at that moment that I knew I was done for. Any hope of my heart ever belonging to me again was gone

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