I used to tell people that Valentine’s Day was the same as Yom Kippur to me. I didn’t think much of it, because it didn’t pertain to me. Even as of last year, I’d made peace with the quasi-holiday. I resigned to the fact that I was simply unlucky in love but rich in other areas of life. So the best recourse was to enjoy my life.

Funny how life can change…

For the first time in more than a decade, I have a Valentine. I am still amazed and somewhat dumbfounded every day that this valiant stranger rode into my life on a motorcycle and swept me off my feet. It’s all the mushy stuff of romantic comedies that I used to swear didn’t happen in real life. God has interesting timing and an ironic sense of humor.

What I love most is how we met. There’s not enough space here to tell the story properly and for you to see all the plot twists and near-misses that led to the perfect moment for both of us. We’d been on the same campus, worked for the same company, knew many of the same people and even sat in the same room together on numerous occasions for years without ever knowing each other. It took one wrong turn for us to collide… that ended up not being so wrong after all because it brought us together.

This all led me to think about love stories and how they start. To me as a single woman, the trickiest part of this whole romance thing is how it begins. How do people meet? What keeps them in each others’ atmospheres after meeting?

I think we’ll explore this for a bit as the days gets closer to Valentine’s Day. Let’s start with your story. How did you meet your Valentine? Tell me your love story. I’ll be posting the best responses in a special Beliefnet feature.