Our engagement anniversary is this month and I wanted to start sharing our story. Dating and falling in love with Devin was so easy and so full of such sweet memories. I’m really grateful for the person I married and the person I’ve become being married to him 🙂 .
part 1: how we met
part 2: is here
part 3: our engagement story
FEBRUARY 2010
Devin called a week later to ask me on another date. He had expressed to his friend and later my roommate Lizzy, that he didn’t think I was interested after our first date and she told him to just ask me and not overthink it.
Well, I wasn’t interested in him, in dating, or really anything else beyond school. He called and I was overwhelmed with school and needed to do laundry. I asked to rain check our date to the next weekend. He set up the date with me, but when I got off the phone to mark everything on my calendar… I realized that our second date was going to be on Valentine’s day weekend. I was absolutely mortified.
Devin called mid-week to tell me the details about our date and what time he would pick me up, I was still so embarrassed about it being Valentine’s day weekend that I didn’t answer. I forced myself to call him back that evening and it was set. He told me to bring my DSLR that I had just gotten from Christmas which really seemed to redeem how awkward I felt about the Valentine’s day weekend rain check.
These are photos from our second date. Devin was going to take me to the Bean museum to take photos on campus. However, it was closed for an event. I felt really bad because he didn’t have a backup idea so I suggested us making Smors on the bell tower lights on campus. We were already stuffed, but it was fast thinking on my part.
Devin was a good sport and showed me a lot of different things out from my camera.
I had just seen Nosferatu for a Humanities assignment. .. can you tell? 🙂
I remember less about him picking me up this time, but I remember what he was wearing and I remember that Death Cab for Cutie was playing in his car. We drove to downtown Provo to eat at a restaurant there (which was packed because of Valentine’s day weekend…oh brother). When he was letting me out of the car, I asked him how long his family had been in the LDS church because I had made assumptions about him being from Mesa, Arizona. I was extremely surprised when he told me that he was the only member in his family and he joined the church when he was 16.
When we sat down for dinner, he asked about my siblings; this is such a basic date conversation, but the topic is often a PTSD trigger for me and I told him it was a hard topic because we are all estranged from each other. Usually after I mention this topic or adoption, people begin asking a lot of questions. I had crafted a number of responses to this over the years I was in college to be as quick as possible on these topics, but as I was waiting for the discomfort of having just told him this to set in: I was completely disarmed when he told me that his family also had adoption and then he talked about his sibling and aunts. He didn’t do it in a way that made me feel pity which I had experienced before, rather, it felt natural talking to him about everything.
I learned within the first ten minutes in our second date that Devin was a very kind and accepting person who placed little judgement on people; I remember thinking that regardless of our dating outcome that I thought Devin was a very special and genuine person. I responded by being completely void of defenses and instead completely myself. I’ll state the obvious: it is very easy to fall in love under these conditions.
We went to the Hare Krishna Holi Festival in Spanish Fork. I had purple boogers for a week.
On our drive to Mesa, Arizona!
I taught Devin how to ski and he was a champ!
I have a million pictures that look like this.
After that second date, Devin and I were inseparable. We did everything together for the next month. I was asked on another date during this time and I talked to my Dad because I didn’t know what to do. He asked me what I would think if Devin went on a date with another girl and I just kind of shrugged and said “well, he is a really nice guy and he’ll treat them really well. I think everyone should have the opportunity to have gone on a date with someone like that. I mean, if I wasn’t going on dates with him all of the time, I think I’d still want to be around him anyway. I really like being around him.” This response wasn’t like anything else I had experienced with dating and I just felt really secure around Devin. Of course, this wasn’t the reaction my Dad thought I would go for, but it still really pleased him. Frankly, the more I thought about it the more I realized that’s the kind of guy I wanted around permanently too.
I declined the other date and when I told Devin, he asked if he could start telling people I was his girlfriend. I stated that I wasn’t ready to be in a relationship yet and I began crying; I talked about all of the things I was working on in my life, anxiety I had from past experiences I had had in relationships, and then five minutes later when I was finished with my monologue he asked me if I would be his girlfriend again. This time I said yes.
IKEA dates 🙂
Devin’s Aunt Carolyn is the first of Devin’s family I met. She was in Salt Lake City for business. She is awesome!
MARCH 2010
Dating Devin was so easy. Our relationship was void of any drama. I always found Devin extremely patient and kind and I liked that he kept me in check too. Intellectually, I loved that we could always carry these great conversations and we would both cross reference things we had read. I loved his friends and they loved me. We made a list of things we wanted to do together and we were always out doing something. We baked pies, I surprised him with an Easter basket, we went skiing, and a million other things we could find. Sheepishly one day, he told me that he had read my whole blog at the time from start to finish because he wanted to get to know me better.
He told me a month after I said I would be his girlfriend that he was going to marry me and he was just waiting around for me to decide I was ready too; I told him he was crazy and a million reasons why we should really invest time into dating. I knew how my heart felt, but I wanted the time to make sure that my head was there too. I was still convinced at this point that Devin was also too good to be true even though I always came home laughing so hard, I was infectiously happy, and I felt good when I prayed.
JUNE & JULY 2010
During the summer, I was too busy with practicum, classes, and teaching to do copies for myself one night; he showed up at 6 AM the next morning with the copies that I needed for my class. There were so many things that he had done for me, but it was so helpful and selfless that I couldn’t imagine wanting to marry anyone else. These acts of service were countless while we were dating and still are being married.
I remember us sitting on the bench outside of my apartment one night and he said that he was excited to see what our life would like. I could really picture it too. When he asked if I wanted to go ring shopping, I said yes.
