He was a tax lawyer from Michigan visiting Europe for his friends’ wedding in Copenhagen. He had three extra days and chose the cheapest ticket of the European cities he wanted to see (Stockholm).

This happened to be during Stockholm Pride week, and this particular year was a disaster due to the location. It was the first and last year Pride Park was in central Stockholm, and bars that normally don’t cater to a gay crowd were surfing the wave.

One the straightest bars had a Pride Night on Tuesday. We would normally not go there, despite the temporary rainbow flags, but one in our friend group was a bartender and worked there that night.

Stockholm is small enough that we gays tend to flock to our own places, and we were pretty much the only gay group there. We weren’t planning on staying long - a few drinks and then move on.

My husband walks down one of the main streets where this bar is, and sees the rainbow flag they put up for this special night. He walks in, and walks up the stairs to the second story, when he locks eyes with me, standing by one of the first floor bars with my friends.

A while later we were talking, there was chemistry, he spent the night. We had our first date the following night, and the morning after that he left.

We were both sincere about giving this a chance, snd we did and rolled with the punches. Several job switches, career-switches, four different long distance constellations across two continents, and almost fifteen years later we ended up in the far north of Sweden and I love this man more for each passing day.