t always happens when you stop looking." That’s what all those romantic comedies would lead us to believe. What the line should read is "It always happens when you don’t want it." By July of 2000, I thought I was finally getting some things figured out. I had learned a lot about myself and about the ways of the world, life and love. I was embracing freedom and letting go of old ghosts. I hadn’t simply resigned myself to being single. I was sublimely enjoying my life. I had made the decision to move out of L.A. at the end of the year. I was 90% sure that I would be moving somewhere in the Carolina’s. I’d live there for a year or two, then move onto my next unknown destination. I’d keep moving from place to place like a white-collared drifter until I had found a place that cried out "Home!" I was living life for myself, on my own terms, by my own rules. One week later, I met Lauren, and all the rules changed.

Less than 2 hours after meeting for the first time, Lauren threw me. No really, she was practicing a Tae Kwon Do move and threw me over her shoulder onto the ground. Only she didn’t let go in time and ended up falling on top of me. We were both in Worcester, Massachusetts for the wedding of a mutual friend. Neither of us were originally supposed to make it, but last minute plans changed our RSVP’s to yesses. We danced, we laughed, we flirted. After the wedding, standing in the hallway of her brother’s dorm, I looked into her eyes and kissed her. We stayed up the entire night, talking and kissing. It didn’t take me long to realize, "I am totally falling for this girl." The next day after we had exchanged contact info and gone our separate ways, I would write in my journal, "I have met the girl I’m going to marry."

Lauren lived in New Jersey. I was still in California. We fell in love over e-mail. More logical people would have given up early on, saying it was a "distance thing." I have always been the kind of guy who flew by faith more so than logic. I follow my heart, endure the consequences and reap the benefits. Yet, logic has always had a nasty way of rearing its ugly head during key decision-making moments in my life. Luckily for Lauren and I, Fate, Karma, God’s Will; somebody was helping us out. About 8 hours before I kissed Lauren for the first time, I had had a 20-minute conversation with an old college friend who sold me on the idea of making my move, not to the Carolinas, but to the Tri-state area and working in New York. Had I not had this conversation, I think I might have ended up talking myself out of moving to New Jersey. After all, I had this whole new philosophy of living for myself. How could I then move somewhere for a girl? I was able to appease my logic, telling it that I was, in fact moving to New York for my career. The girl was just an added benefit.

Lauren and I said, "I love you" for the first time at the end of September when she came to visit me in L.A. At the end of October, I moved to New Jersey a full two months ahead of my original schedule. I finally understood married couples who said that they "just knew" from those first moments that they would always be together. I had only been half-exaggerating when I wrote, "I’ve met the girl I’m going to marry," not 48 hours after having met Lauren. Logic told me that I was crazy, impulsive, but something more intangible told me not to dismiss the feeling.

Sure I had thought that I would marry every single other girlfriend I had ever had. In the past, whenever I had thought about marriage, it was an abstract thought, never really going beyond "marriage" as an idea. But with Lauren, I was actually picturing our wedding and the story I would tell of how we met, of how the first song we ever danced to was Anne Murray’s wedding song, Could I Have this Dance – "I’ll always remember the song they were playing, the first time we danced, and I knew..." I was picturing what our house would look like. What our kids would look like. How Christmases would be. If I was thinking about marrying Lauren after only 36 hours, I was positive about marrying Lauren after only 4 months.

For the first few weeks in New Jersey, things were perfect. But slowly, logic allowed doubt to creep in. "How can you be sure you want to marry her? You were with Veronica for over 2 years thinking you wanted to marry her and it didn’t work out. You were just getting ready to start your single life. You haven’t finished sowing your wild oats yet." These thoughts were all being augmented by the fact that my original "logic" for moving to New Jersey – my career – wasn’t going as planned. I was working in a sporting goods store and taking shit from uneducated morons as resume after resume went out unanswered. With my guard already down, I started slipping into my old habits – playing by the old rules.

In every relationship, both parties come with baggage from their pasts. I had been hurt by Veronica and Diane, but I knew that Lauren was not like either one of them. She was everything I had ever needed in a girlfriend – in another human being for that matter. She was willing to give as much of herself to me as I was to her. She wanted nothing more than to make me happy. And yet I was constantly wondering when the other shoe was going to drop. When was she going to start trying to change me to suit her needs? When was she going to start telling me that I wasn’t good enough?

I began resorting to the games and strategies I had utilized in past relationships. I was selectively loving and then distant. I allowed myself to be in a bad mood to see if she would try and console me. During a fight where I thought she was just slightly wrong, I would refuse to apologize – even though I knew I was also partly to blame. They were silly, stupid, yet necessary games... in my past. I hadn’t learned yet, that none of these tactics were necessary with Lauren. The same way her old tactics were unnecessary with me. I loved her so much that the last thing I wanted to do was hurt her. She loved me so much that she seriously would have done anything for me if she knew I needed it. But old habits die hard, and changing the rules mid-stream is never easy.

I was longing for freedom more than ever. I began to wonder how my life might have been had I actually moved to the Carolinas. In March, it appeared as though I might just reclaim my freedom. After five months, the job hunt was still coming up zeroes. I was living with Lauren’s brother and parents, and the outlook was bleak. I had begun looking for jobs out of state. Like a bolt from thin air, I was offered an amazing job, exactly the kind of thing I had been looking for. It started in two weeks... in Vincennes, Indiana. This was exactly the kind of thing I had been longing for while I was still in L.A.; a great job in a new location. I mean... Indiana! Who moves to Indiana? It was perfect. Even though I knew it would have been the death of our relationship, I told Lauren that I was going to take the job.

She loved me so much. She knew that this was going to be a great opportunity for me. She told me I should take it. And in that moment, it suddenly became real. I was going away. I had never had a problem leaving a comfort zone and jumping into a whole new set of opportunities before. Sure there was always a transition period, but I was always eager to enter the unknown. This was completely unprecedented. I didn’t want to go.

I felt no connection to New Jersey, or New York for that matter. I hated living in the most densely populated state in the nation. I was hundreds, even thousands of miles from so many things that I held dear. There were dozens of reasons for me to leave, and exactly one reason for me to stay. I came home (to Lauren’s parents’ house) and picked up the phone to call the guy in Indiana. Then I suddenly broke down crying. It was the first time I had really cried in over two years. I sat on the floor heaving with sobs. "What am I supposed to do? What is the right choice?" I begged and pleaded with God to tell me what to do. The last 8 months had been leading up to this. What do I do? And with logic yelling "Go," the thing that won me over was a gentle whisper of a thought placed in my head. A single word: "Stay." I called the guy in Indiana before I could lose my nerve. I couldn’t drive fast enough to Lauren’s apartment. I walked in and hugged her. She could tell I had been crying. She asked what the matter was. I told her I had just turned down the job. "Why?" she asked. She was genuinely shocked.

My logical friends would later voice their disapproval of my choice saying, "You don’t want to look back on this decision and wonder ‘what if.’" How true. I may one day look back and regret having turned down such a great job. But how much more would I look back and regret having walked away from The One. Sappy people (not unlike myself) would say, "If it’s meant to be, distance won’t matter. Love will find a way." Fate. Yet, I believe that Fate, or whatever It is will only take you so far. It will only allow things to happen that you cannot create for yourself. Once that’s done however, the rest is up to you to work out. I told Lauren that I turned down the job for her, because I couldn’t imagine life without her. Moving to Indiana was supposed to be the next destination in my journey from state to state until I found a place that cried out "Home!" Clear as day, I understood now that it didn’t matter where I was. Lauren was my home. We cried and held each other for hours.

With that defining moment, it was like all the things that hadn’t been working suddenly fell into place. We finally realized that we really and truly loved each other. We were not about to hurt each other. We didn’t need to play games or protect ourselves. Every single rule that had applied in every other situation and in every other relationship in every other time in our lives was no longer valid. Everything came down to just Lauren and me. I loved her. She loved me.

The right person makes you forget about things like sacrifice and loss of freedom. It’s not that you accept these as part of being in a relationship. It’s more that these words have no meaning anymore. Nothing that you do for her seems like a sacrifice, and you find more freedom with her than you could have ever imagined alone. I proposed to Lauren on a mountaintop back home – my original home – in Maine on August 4. She said, "Yes," without hesitation.

I have come a long way since my first attempts to find "the one." Leslie Clifford tore up my marriage proposal in kindergarten, but I was not to be dissuaded. My first steps were shaky. With Veronica and Diane, I learned what love really was. I also learned the hard lesson of letting go when love just wasn’t enough. Single again, I learned to embrace the freedom of life and all that it has to offer. And now with Lauren, I have learned that nothing can prepare you for that day, that moment when you finally meet The One. All the rules, all the lessons, all the logic that you’ve learned in the past no longer apply. With the one who truly matters, it only comes down to one thing; the love you have for one another. A simple concept, yet surprisingly hard to accept. I was fortunate. I was able to figure it out before it was too late. I have found my home in Lauren. I have no doubt that we are "meant to be." I have no doubt that Lauren is The One.