I thought this might be a useful thread for people who are struggling with how to meet and get together with a long term partner. (I got the idea from another thread where Dox47 described how he met his wife.)
I met my first long term partner in college. I knew him slightly freshman year from the dorms, then sophomore year we had a class together. (This was at art school. The class was a studio class that met twice a week for 5 hours each day, so we spent lots of time in the same room.) He was very nerdy and interested in unusual things, like collecting found objects from the road. I only thought of him as an eccentric friend. Then he started coming around to visit me all the time. We would take walks together or go dumpster diving. I didn't think of him romantically but he was so persistent and so sweet we ended up together, and we were together for 14 years.
I met my second long term partner at a community center where I volunteered. I was helping set up a garden for the center and he was a carpenter who volunteered to help build it, so I had to work pretty closely with him on the project. A few weeks later I went to a party associated with the center, but I'm not much for parties and left early. As I was walking into the subway, he was coming out, and he asked if I wouldn't go back to the party with him. I said okay. We spent the rest of the evening together, and we were together for 10 years.