I am 29 years old, active duty Air Force.  10 years ago, at my first duty station, I met the man that up until three weeks ago, I thought I was going to marry.  Let me clarify; we have not been dating for 10 years.  We actually did date back then, but we were just young kids, both a little silly, as most 19 year olds are.  We ended up being very close friends instead, which is how we've passed most of the last 10 years.  He got married 5 years ago, and I had a few boyfriends here and there.  The strongest part of our relationship was the fact that through his very difficult marriage and the ups and downs of both of our lives, we've always been there for each other.

A few years ago, when he had just returned from a deployment, we ran into each other again.  At this point, we hadn't seen each other for about 7 months because of the deployment.  He suddenly seemed to have more interest than before in me.  He wanted to see me, wanted to spend private time together.  We talked about this for a while, but I finally said no, because he was still married and I didn't want to be involved in a situation with a  married man.  He handled that gracefully, and we just continued to be friends, just with a few extra feelings bubbling under the surface.

Sorry for all the background information, but it brings me now to the point...

Last August, I moved on military orders.  Then in January, I found out he was also being assigned to my new duty station.  When he got here, while we were catching up, we realized that the feelings were still there, after all these years.  He also informed me that he was in the process of a divorce.  We talked about starting something between us, and sort of did for a while, but again, the fact that he was still married bothered me.  We didn't date long, but we continued to spend lots of time together.  He was always there... whenever anything hurt or upset me, he was my shoulder to cry on or just my friend to talk things over with.  And in the meanwhile, he continued to push for a relationship with me.  I wanted it, but it took a while for me to finally say yes.  In the end of May, it finally happened.  I gave in.  After wondering how these feelings had persisted for 10 years, and thinking to myself, 'he's getting divorced, we're stationed together again... maybe we're supposed to be together' I decided to give a relationship with him a go.  It was amazing between us.  We talked about everything, kept no secrets from each other, lived together.  We did fun things like going dancing, and he'd do sweet things like sing love songs to me.  We also did normal everyday things too, like grocery shopping and cooking dinner and washing dishes together.  We were a team, and everyone comented on how happy we were together.  I'm pretty sure he's the one.  We were planning to get married, and we even talked about having kids.