I've always been upfront about my relationship because trying to write about our finances without revealing that facet would be hard. When I started this blog I made that decision and figured if I got a lot of negative attention or harassment, I could just delete it -- nothing ventured, nothing gained. Well, nearly ten years later, I can barely remember any negativity about my family structure, so here I still am! 
And then LAL asked if I'd ever said how we'd met, and I didn't think I ever had! So here's the long story short (OK, not that short) of how we got together:
The beginning sounds worse than it is. I first met AS when I was a teacher and she was a student. In 1996 I was fresh out of college and working in Georgia when I got in a bad car accident (broken pelvis, damaged spleen and stomach). My parents flew me home to Virginia when I was released from the hospital and I spent several months in a wheelchair, recuperating.
One day (after I was walking again but going nowhere with my life) my old high school English teacher called to say she was going on maternity leave in the spring and wondered if I would sub in for her. I signed up to be a substitute teacher and took some short gigs at other schools until she went on leave.
AS was a senior and worked on the literary magazine, as I had done when I was at the same high school. She wasn't in any of my classes, but she was often working on the magazine while I taught, and we'd chat between classes and during my free period, and after school.
After school ended and she graduated (1997), I was still living at my parents' house trying to figure out what to do with my life (I'd hated teaching and was terrible at it, and I didn't much like Virginia either). AS and I continued to hang out over the summer, and friendship soon (and surprisingly) turned to love.
After we'd been dating for only a week, she announced she was moving to Northfield, Minnesota for college in a month, and I said I'd move out there too if we were still dating by then. (It felt awfully sudden, but also like the right thing to do, and virtually no risk for me since I could always come home again.) We were, so I did! (Well, I moved to Minneapolis, where a friend of a friend had a house with a room to rent.)
I had hardly ever been a one-person type and AS was OK with that, so we dated other people but were extremely committed to one another. We stayed together during weekends, holidays and summers and when she transferred to a college close to me in 1999, we moved in together. Several apartments later, we bought a condo together in 2003.
In the meantime, we'd befriended a couple of British guys who were visiting one of our MN friends, who had spent some time in the UK during and after college. AS and I went to visit these guys in 2002 (I think), and they introduced us THEIR friend, who happened to be NT. We liked him instantly.
After our trip we corresponded occasionally with him and the other Brits, and in 2005 they announced they were all coming to visit. They stayed with us and NT met a MN girl and started dating her (oh the pangs!). So he made plans to come back and see his new girlfriend in a few months. However, she broke up with him a couple weeks before his trip! He couldn't cancel the flight so asked AS and I if he could crash in our spare room again. We said yes and this time, spending some time just the three of us versus a large group, things suddenly clicked and we all realized the romantic feelings were mutual.
We kept in steady communication this time and soon realized it was serious (Dec. 1, 2005). Over the next year, we managed 2 trips out to see him and he came out to see us twice. (All the travel, mailed gifts and long-distance phone charges certainly contributed to the debt we all had when we combined our finances!)
By April 2006 we knew we had to do something to get together permanently. The most expedient way was for him to marry one of us, come here and hopefully we could all then find a way back to the UK together. We figured AS's career goals made her the most primed for a work visa, so we all agreed I would marry NT.
I worked obsessively on the fiance visa process (I think it improved my organizational skills, attention to detail and persistence, which set me up well to deal with our finances later!) and in October 2006, NT arrived in the U.S. permanently. We married that December and were in completely irresponsible honeymoon mode until early 2007, when I realized we were about to hit rock bottom financially. Soon after that I joined SavingAdvice, so you know the rest of the story from there! 
My love story (trying to be brief but ...)
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The condo was the one we finally sold in April 2015. We bought it for $207K, sold it for $133K (after having it on the market for about 9 months and dropping the price several times), had to pay nearly $30K to get rid of it (that was just what we brought to closing; not counting the $13K we spent to renovate some of the shabbiest aspects of it). 2014 & 2015 were almost constant drama because of wanting to buy our current duplex, which we weren't financially prepared to do, and one of the worst parts was trying to offload that condo.
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Families come in all different sizes, colors, configurations, etc. I am happy to know yours.
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Do you ever make decisions which aren't unanimous? How do you resolve those matters? Do you have a "majority rule" policy?
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Also, I'd say we've come to recognize each other's areas of expertise. If it's something financial, for instance, 90% of the time we'll go with my opinion even if they both disagree. But there have been times where I've deferred to one or both of them in a financial situation. They both have much more of a handle on physical house stuff, and I'm so glad I don't have to deal with it that I generally go with what they say we need.
In terms of interior design, we have certain rooms we all insist on having input on, others that are just for one of us to decide.
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So yeah, I'm glad you finally shared your origin story. It made me smile if nothing else. So yeah, thanks for the smiles today.
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