It’s been a year, guys (and girls).
One year of being married to a girl named Sabrina. And after a year I can say this: Our life together hasn’t gone according to plan.
And while things haven’t gone the way I expected, they’ve all turned out better than expected.
See…
I never expected to marry somebody I met online.
I mean, would you classify dating apps as “online” these days? Regardless, it wasn’t the way I expected to meet my wife.
I had always been a hopeless romantic (sometimes more hopeless than anything else), and I thought randomly bumping into the love of my life sounded much more romantic than hours of swiping on pictures of women within 50 miles of my location.
And that’s probably because it is more romantic. But what online dating lacked in romance it made up for in opportunities for deep conversations.
When you can’t go on normal dates, all you can really do is talk. And, if you can’t find things to talk about, any thoughts of a potential future die pretty quickly.
And that’s how online dating normally goes.
- Conversation starts
- Conversation dies
- Interest lost
The conversation with Sabrina started and never stopped. And now, here we are celebrating a year of marriage with a 620 day snapstreak.
I never expected to start a relationship after the first date.
Dating, for me, had always meant going on lots of dates before deciding if starting a relationship was the right thing.
I didn’t have many romantic relationships growing up, so deciding that I liked somebody enough to take that step was a scary one for me.
Knowing I wanted to date Sabrina, and only Sabrina, after one date was surprising.
I mean, how does one know if somebody is the right person? If it isn’t the right person, is it a mistake to start a relationship and somehow miss the opportunity to meet the person who is right for you?
That’s how my brain usually worked when I would go on dates. But after one date with Sabrina I knew.
I wanted to be her boyfriend.
I never expected to get engaged to somebody after spending only 17 days together in person.
Yeah, that happened.
We met at a weird time for both of us, which meant there was a lot of moving to different states and never living in the same area as the other person.
We had two dates in California, she drove up to Oregon twice to visit me for a total of 13 days, and, after a semester of her being in Idaho for school, she flew back to Oregon for two days together.
And then I proposed.
It’s not something I’d recommend. Not that it can’t work. It does sometimes, and it did for us.
I wouldn’t recommend it because every relationship is different, and for most I would imagine it takes more time.
But for us it was perfect.
I never expected to marry a girl I hadn’t known for a full year.
It wasn’t that I had a one year requirement. I just thought I’d need more time to know if we were right for each other.
Initially, because we met online, I thought it would take longer for us to arrive at marriage.
We talked about the possibility of marriage, and I thought that we’d probably continue dating until Sabrina graduated from college.
That would have had us dating for about 2 years before marriage was possible.
Fast forward almost 2 years.
Sabrina graduates in a week, and the Coronavirus has made it so that – if we had waited – we would have had to continue waiting indefinitely.
Sure, waiting would have given us more time to get to know one another. But I knew enough already to know she was the woman I wanted to spend forever with.
I never expected to have a baby before our first anniversary.
Our baby wasn’t a mistake or an accident, and she definitely wasn’t unwanted. We’d always planned on having children.
Charlotte just came about 6 months earlier than we planned.
What we find humorous is that when baby was first being formed – before we knew we were pregnant – we had just decided that we’d like to start trying for a baby in January 2020.
God must have heard that and been like, “It’s gonna be a no from me, dog.”
Sabrina had a positive pregnancy test a few weeks later.
As always, the women in my life have a different schedule than I do. And it seems like Charlotte wanted to be born when businesses were closed, and I’d have weeks – or even months – to spend with her at home.
So no, things haven’t really gone the way I expected. But if this is what being surprised is like, I hope year 2 brings even more surprises.
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