Boy Meets Girl a Love Story That Never Gets Old
A chance encounter can happen to anyone, yet this couple lived to tell their love story.
I never get tired of reading love stories. My favorite movies have always been boy meets girl because love has its own magic.
Today, when I read this beautiful love story, I said to myself, love happens.
To this couple, not only love happened, they continue to live two lives in a single journey.
How do you think true love happens?
You hear stories in the news. You see them in movies. We all have our own ideas about what true love really means.
But most of us have no idea how it feels to be at the center of a story like that. I’m going to tell you a story of true love. It’s a love story, so many people are familiar with and can identify with.
Boy meets girl.
Boy falls in love with the girl.
A girl falls in love with a boy, and life could not possibly get any better than it is at this very moment.
A real-life love story: When Boy Meets Girl.
A young American woman out to see the world, at 24, had it all planned when she was struck not by lightning but by the Love gods.
Nicole Erickson wanted an adventure, to visit as many countries as she can. When you are young, you are spontaneous, a lesson for all of us.
Nicole, a Fulbright scholar, decided to be with 25 other Fulbright Alumni, mostly German and went on a sailing vacation somewhere in the Baltic Sea.
Call it serendipity: It was bound to happen. A boy meets a girl.
Jürgen Guldner, a twenty-nine-year-old engineer, also a Fulbright scholar, remembers how he liked her smile when Nicole took it upon herself to introduce herself with the rest of the group.
A smile is what it takes, and people remember you.
What are the chances both of them carried with them the same book? Sophie’s World — Jostein Gaarder
“Neither of us ever finished the book,” says Guldner, laughing.
One day, Nicole suffered seasickness, something I knew very well when I worked as a cruise photographer.
Everyone needs a hero, and Jürgen Guldner became Nicole’s hero.
“He actually took my night shift one night, that was one of the most romantic things I think he did for me on the boat,” she recalls.
“He didn’t wake me up. He was supposed to wake me up to take it over. But he took my whole shift.”
The kind gesture stuck with her.
“It was one of the things that I remembered as him being a really sweet man,” she says.
Love waits — Love has its perfect time for both the boy and the girl.
What I love about this love story, neither convinced the other to prioritize their growing feelings for each other but let each other go in the meantime.
Nicole continued her planned trip around the world, and Jürgen started working. Their paths will cross over time. Each time they knew that it is just a matter of time before their love blooms even further.
Camping Under the Stars
It was in Australia, where the love story had its ups and downs. Because any love story has to be tested, those who persevere will have their rewards.
Those who quit never get to tell their tale.
A love story deserves a song, and this was their song, Leaving, On a Jet Plane by John Denver.
Bold Decisions — Taking the Next Step
When Nicole, then 25, finished her trip, she calls Jürgen telling him about her plan to work/stay in Germany with a friend. Instead, Jürgen takes her.
Living together is the ultimate test for both Jürgen and Nicole, the quiet and neat German. She, the backpacker who is, in her own words, dirty.
The fights were real, and so is their love, that a year after living together, they got married.
We got married — The boy who meets a girl is now the groom, and the girl is now the bride.
The wedding — attended by friends and family from Germany, the United States and across the world — took place a year later, in August 2003, at Schloss Hohenstein, a fairy-tale castle near Coburg in central Germany.
Fairy tales do happen, and so does a fairy tale wedding. Nicole got hers as she got married inside a castle. We are all princesses deep inside.
Printed on both wedding rings are the words: “Two lives, one journey.”
And they lived happily ever after?
A love story never ends, even in the afterlife. As I witnessed my MOM in her dying moments, I know this to be true, expressed her love for my DAD.
And even now, I know MOM looks after my DAD through me, she provides. My heart is full of gratitude to continue to witness her love not only for my DAD but for everyone in the family like she never left us behind.
Today Nicole and Jürgen live in Germany after a few years in America. Now blessed with two children, they continue to be busy exploring the world that they haven’t been back to where it all started, the Baltic Sea.
“Retrospectively, it is quite a miracle we stayed together; it wouldn’t have been possible without email and the visits.”
Both of them still live by their shared mantra that life’s a journey — and one they’re committed to taking together.
“You need to be open to small and big things that may change your path along the way,” says Erickson.
“I think we still both embrace this and have tried to pass it on to our children. Most importantly we still are doing it together and helping each other through.”
Boy meets girl
Until it isn’t, life becomes quite the rollercoaster. Love is just the tipping point that no one actually saw coming.
Boy falls in love with a girl.
You know, most of us consider love at first sight to be a myth. And what about movies where the main character falls in love in the first five minutes?
A girl falls in love with a boy.
A romantic relationship is a gift, one of life’s beautiful surprises.
A long, happy life together
There is no happy ending. True love doesn’t have one. Marriage is different because it is not meant to be easy. Just look at Bill Gates’s looming divorce after 28 years of being married to Melinda Gates.
The key to a long, happy marriage is the ability to fight well and makeup well.
For me, true love does happen by chance and by choice.