In 1992, I was 25 years old. I was in a stage of life when I was doing a lot of casual dating, but was really uninspired by the men I was meeting. If the Internet had been around then in the way it is now, I would have written a blog about all of my dating experiences (I thought about writing a newsletter at that time), but that is a whole other writing project! I figured it would take many years until I met someone I’d want to settle down with.
One summer night in 1992, I had an interesting dream. It was a dream with almost no images, almost as if I was lost in a giant grayish-white cloud. I had the sensation of walking around, though I wasn’t aware of even having a body in this dream. I was also aware of holding half of a map up over my head, moving around and searching for something. It wasn’t scary or anxiety-provoking. I was merely moving about, nearly sightless, with half of a large map.
Suddenly, in this barren “landscape”, I became aware of the presence of someone else. I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were there. And I knew that the person had the other half of the map. We didn’t connect the maps, but I heard a male voice say, “I will find you in 1996.” And the dream ended. I woke up excited, thinking that maybe I had just had some sort of odd precognitive dream about meeting someone. And then, life went on and I seemingly forgot about the dream.
On a November evening in 1993, I went to a beer festival in Scottsdale with some friends. At one point, a guy approached me, offering to get me a beer. We talked for a minute, then left and came back with that beer. His friends sauntered over and my friends and I hung out with them the rest of the evening, heading out to a bar after the festival closed. It was a fun time, and I gave the guy my number when he asked for it at the end of the evening. I was driving my friends home when I had a sudden flash of insight. This was the guy from the map dream! I tried to talk myself out of it. For one thing, the timing was almost three years off. And how could I know this about a person when I’d only known them for a few hours? Frankly, it scared me. I didn’t feel ready to find “the one.” But I found I couldn’t deny the way it hit me bodily – I just knew, without rational explanation. And it turns out there was something to it, because we’ve been married for nearly 23 years, together for about 26.