The moment I knew, "After months of emailing all of our thoughts, we met for a walk"

It sounds like a lie to say that I wasn't looking for a partner when I joined a dating and friendship site called Pink Sofa. It was back in the pre-swipe days of 2010, when you wrote a full profile and uploaded the text with a photo of yourself, indicating whether you were looking for friends, dating, or a relationship (or all three). I joined for a Saturday shift at my office job for something to do.

Profile writing was easy. I had had enough of most things in my life and had no more worries to give. I was direct and honest. I just wished there was a checkbox for wanting to replace the dead energy of love as I knew it with new people, ideas, places – all of it. Three weeks later, I found the truest love I have ever known. She lived three blocks and a Melways page from me.

She had never dated anyone who was not a man before, but this didn't seem to impact our delicious waffle correspondence. We were sending several long emails every day. We talked about bodies and death, music and food. We've been thinking down to the smallest detail about everything that's going on in our days, our professional lives, our social moments, and our creative dreams. We were lyrical about everything that grew in our gardens. Nothing was boring when talking with her. That's what the emails looked like: a conversation that started and never ended.

We couldn't believe the luck of it all simpatico . It was the only online matching spell I looked forward to every day. After a few months of exchanging all our thoughts, we agreed to meet for a walk. Between us we had four dogs. I suggested we take a bumpy ride with our pack along the Yarra River in North Melbourne.

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When I saw her on the other side of the soccer field, my mind calmed down. Usually I don't have so much internal monologue as several hundred not quite tuned internal radio stations; a marching band and a troop of monkeys throwing bananas. (Yes, I was diagnosed with ADHD.) With people, head noise usually came in the form of questions. What do they think of me? Will I be able to convince them that I'm good enough to be loved? But just looking at her deafened everything else.

She was small and distant. As I got closer, bringing her into more focus, the calm remained. Just a whisper telling me that whatever happens now, everything will be fine.

For our first wedding anniversary, I printed out the emails we sent before we met. The book was as thick as a thesis.

It's been 11 years since we met. We now have two children, a dog and a cat. But I still feel that peace when I look at her...