Well my 2 cents (ie. story):
I was a late bloomer when it came to being interested in the opposite sex. When I did, I couldn't even interact with girls in a positive context, which means talking to them in a social setting, because I was constantly preoccupied with accidentally saying the wrong thing, or something really stupid, that I ended up saying nothing at all, and was very much the quiet guy who you rarely hear from. I eventually came to terms with that reality, late in high school and decided that in order to lighten up and relax myself somewhat, I had to convince myself that the girl I was trying to talk with, didn't have any romantic interest in me, n'or would they in the future. It's harsh, but it worked, and I started being able to carry on conversations. Unfortunately, my problem still was the fact that much of what I might be able to converse about (my interests, mainly) was completely boring to most people, let alone most girls. Regardless, I started to relax somewhat, but I then realized that I had come to believe what I'd had to convince myself of in order to relax. I came to realize that if a girl did display some signs of interest in me, I wouldn't even take notice. It hit me, when I discovered after the fact, that a young woman I had a mild infatuation/crush on during early years of College, may have reciprocated. She dropped out of the program 2 years in. What I'd found out wasn't conclusive, but it was enough to kinda shock me into that realization. That said, from what I knew of her as a person (or could infer), she and I wouldn't have been a good match. She was more of an out-going, popular type, and I'd rather stay home and watch a movie or use the PC.
After completing College, I kinda moped around for a year until I got my current job (not in my field of training), and less than 2 months into it I was introduced to the woman who I am now married to for just over 3 months, as a new employee. In fact, I recalled later that I'd seen her at a movie theater more than a year before our first introduction (she was in costume at the X-Men premiere, and worked at the theater I'd gone to see it at). It was about 15 months after our introduction, that we started doing social activities outside of work. Less than a month and a half later, we had our first official date (things got a bit stalled because of Xmas vacation). We'd been official dating for little more than a year and a half when I proposed, we got married about a year later.
As far as personality is concerned, what attracted me to her was first that she laughed at my lame jokes (though a bit too much, which made her a bit difficult to read at first), then later I learned that we shared quite a lot in terms of values. The fact that she liked sci-fi, and was very close to me in age just sealed things. During my Xmas vacation, I told my mom that it was a fair bet that we'd be officially Boyfriend-Girlfriend within a month, and I was right. She was a bit more social than me, but patient, which was very comforting.
Now, if you'd asked me during the summer of 2002, what I felt was the likely hood of me finding that special someone, I'd have put it in the same odds as winning a trip on the Space Shuttle. Shows that I can't predict odds. Oh yeah, I just turned 29, to put the chronology in context.
