Can picking someone up or getting picked up ever turn into a serious relationship?

What do you mean by picking someone up? Do you mean as in a one night stand? I know a couple that had only planned to have a one night stand, but they realized they liked each other more than that. Now they are married and have a daughter. Anything is possible. It might not be likely or happen often, but it is possible.

Sure.
A couple I’m close with were set up at a bar by a buddy who thought his friend needed to get laid. He picked out a girl who looked up for a good time, and now they’ve been together for over 20 years.

Sure…never know what the day or night will bring! only the shadow knows!

I have a good friend who taught me the acronym F.A.R.M., meaning:
a Fuck: a one night stand
an Affair: like friends with benefits
a Relationship: close friends with benefits
a Marriage: the closest relationship

When looking for one of those things, you go about it in different ways. A fuck simply requires you to pick someone up in a bar or in a social chatroom on the Internet. An affair means you’re looking for something that’s going to last for a few weeks to months. A relationship is something you start with a person that you expect to last for many months or even years, but you don’t expect to make a lifelong commitment to. And finally, a marriage is that lifelong commitment.

You should expend different amounts of energy on each level you’re working on. A simple fuck takes the least amount while a marriage requires the most.

Having said that, I believe that anything is possible. I believe it’s possible for a one night stand to lead to something lasting.

It can, but it is not likely to. It does not have any basis in shared values or traits in common.

A roommate went out to a bar with a friend one night, and a guy wandered in. They all started chatting, and the friend finally left when she saw that they only had eyes for each other.

When they parted, they really knew very little about each other. The roommate kept thinking about him, but since there was little info. exchanged, it looked like a doomed start. She finally hired a private detective, and armed him only with his first name, the color and make of his truck, and that he was working on a construction site in the Chicago area. The detective tracked him down.

They have now been married almost 20 years, and the check she used to pay the detective is in their wedding album.

Sure, why not?

@Pied_Pfeffer That’s a great story. It’s a huge world. Who cares how two people connect.

@water_123 Welcome to fluther.

In our young days, my best friend went out alone to a bar one night, got picked up, and spent the night with a guy. I guess they must have exchanged phone numbers because she was able to find him when she turned up pregnant. They got married. The baby came a few months later. They managed to last about 5 years. I don’t think they ever loved each other. Two divorced young people, one five-year-old with a split family, resentment and hostility on both sides.

So yeah, it can work.

Yes. Two of my good friends met and subsequently married after snogging in a bar as strangers. I think they’d only been acquainted for 10 minutes when the snogging commenced.

Snogging turned into what was supposed to be a ONS, since the dude was a musician and from London. She’d never had a ONS before, and was afraid of feeling ashamed afterwards, but went with it because she was really attracted to him and told herself she’d be OK with whatever happened afterward.

Once he went home, though, he kept calling and emailing and so on. Within a year, they’d gotten together in NYC, he got the fiance visa and they got married. It’s been a year and a half now. They seem content to me.

Once upon a time two friends and I drove into another city to check out a danceclub there. I saw a guy smiling at me, walked up a stairway and waited to see if he’d come talk to me which he did, just stood beside me and told me his name. After that moment, I took his hand, we walked downstairs to meet my friends and we were together for 4yrs after that, very much in love.

@Jeruba That is a more literal interpretation of “serious relationship” than I would have expected anyone to use for this question. I love it.

It’s one of the many ways to dive into an excursion of your choosing. I love @hawaii_jake‘s FARM explanation! I have several friends who have married “the person at the bar”. I have had meaningful relationships that started that way as well, if I am guessing correctly at your definition of “picking up”....

My husband literally “picked me up” when I was hitchhiking. We’ve been married for 36 years.

I’m not sure what you mean by “picked up”?

One of my friends went to a bar (they had dancing, too) and met someone there. Both of them did not want to go that night….by the way. It was serendipity. They danced, they hit it off. One thing led to another…....and another….....they married, had three kids and they are still married 30 years later.

I met my husband at a dance club, we have been together almost 20 years. I didn’t go home with him that night, but I gave him my phone number and we started dating.