R&A Q&A

I used to read this very interesting blog—it was a dating experiment between two graphic designers. At the end of each day they’d answer the same set of questions without looking at what the other person posted. Then their answers would be posted side-by-side. I’ve always thought it was a cool format, so my fiancé R and I tried it out for ourselves.

What were your thoughts about marriage before this relationship?

R: I had been considering marriage for a few months prior to the beginning of this relationship. Because I’m an only child, I’ve always sought for ways to do things with people. Eventually I realized I didn’t just want to do things with people; I wanted to do things with one person. In the months leading up to this relationship, there was a gnawing sense of incompleteness growing within me waiting to be fulfilled.

A: Anyone who knows me knows I didn’t buy into the marriage hype much growing up. The furthest extent to which I dreamed about domestic felicity was dreaming of a last name that belonged closer to A than to Z (our current transaction moves me up a mere two letters in the dogpile, but I’ll take what I can get). I enjoyed the occasional romantic comedy as much as the next person, but as far as real life went, marriage looked nothing but hard. I looked in movies, in books, and in my friends’ families, but it was hard for me to find an example of marriage that wasn’t incredibly hard work, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes exhausting, and if everything went right, could even be boring. Call me jaded, but if I was perfectly happy in my one-person monarchy, why would I step down from my cushy throne and enter a life-long boxing match? Me v. you, round 167: how much should we spend on groceries? (*gong clangs*) Everyone’s childhoods leave them some trauma. This was mine. Deep down, I’m afraid of my partner waking up one day and realizing I wasn’t worth fighting for anymore. That I wasn’t as lovely as I used to seem, that my foibles had finally caught up with my virtues and devoured them in the night. Or that anxieties and recurring arguments would drive us apart, or that we’d discover a fatal incompatibility too late and live forever in joyless stalemate. Or one of us would develop incapacitating illness and the other would burn out as a caretaker. Or we’d shrivel up in poverty and become pinchy nagging shrews. Or, or, or, or. So when I hear “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part,” I think: marriage is hard.

Where did you meet?

A: We both went to the Full-Time Training in Anaheim and were in the same year, but we didn’t overlap in any of our services, and thus had little reason to talk with each other.

R: We actually met during a two year Bible school program in Anaheim, CA. We entered the program in the same semester. I really did not have too much contact with her during those two years, other than the occasional conversation, and brief study group gatherings during our last semester there. Eventually, about a year following our graduation, we bumped into each other again at a mutual friend’s wedding. After that ceremony, we started talking. There was a student whom she had previously tutored at the time enrolled at UC Berkeley, where I was working. She wanted to connect him with a Christian community, and so contacted me to see if I could reach out to him. That was where our conversation started. We texted each other back and forth for about an hour while I was on a bus. I was surprised at how well we got along in conversation. After that, we stayed in touch.

What were your first impressions of R/A?

A: During the training, it was my job (with another sister) at the end of the first semester to round up and schedule volunteers to sing on the shuttle buses from the campus to the dorms. Everyone was busy, and few people volunteered right away. So we had the unenviable task of drawing up lists of classmates with musical ability and calling or texting them. Rejections were pouring in, and I was pretty discouraged by it all. To fill in the gaps, I took multiple shifts almost every day, since I was taking the shuttle buses to and from the dorms anyway. After me, the next most shifts were assigned to R. Later I found out that he wasn’t even living in the dorms; he went out of his way to take shuttle buses that he didn’t need, just to serve.

My second impression of him was at the beginning of our last semester together. He had said something erroneous in the previous class, and after getting corrected by the trainer in private, stood up to apologize to the entire training (300+ people) and correct his mistake. I had also made a huge mistake in a prayer that same week, which was corrected by the speaker in class, and had wanted to apologize and set the record straight, as well. But I didn’t have the guts to do it. I was really impressed that someone did.

R: Because our interactions were limited in the Bible school, my first impressions are a bit vague. But I do recall one very specific instance where she stood up to speak in class, as part of a class discussion. I was impressed with what she had said (it was something related to confirmation bias and reading the Bible). From the short conversations we did have, I knew that she enjoyed reading and was very well read. My real first impressions were formed on that bus ride, when we were texting each other. I discovered we had very similar senses of humor and very similar niche interests (especially grammar). At one point in our conversation, she told me to wait for a minute, because she was talking to other people at the moment. It was a small gesture, but I thought it was very considerate of her to let me know.

What was your first date?

R: It depends on what “first date” means. I’ll just describe the whole day. At that time, I lived in California, and she was in New York, so I flew out to visit her. She picked me up from the airport, and we had breakfast together. Does that count as the first date? Because if it does, I did not give her a proper first date: I barely slept on a red-eye flight, and could not think straight. We did, however, discover that we have the exact same phone models, which prompted her to cringe in disgust (now a running theme). I had told her on the phone before coming that I remember visiting New York in high school and eating this blueberry bagel with blueberry spread that haunted me for years. I was really looking forward to eating a bagel. So she brought me to a bagel shop for breakfast (not the bagel shop I had gone to in high school — we visited that place later). After that, we went to her house, and I crashed for the next few hours (I’m terrible). In the afternoon, we went to go buy groceries, and cooked dinner for the two of us and her parents that night. I remember we cooked a bitter melon and some kind of gourd, but the rest I don’t have any impressions. After dinner, we watched a movie. I had told her that my favorite movie was Before Sunset, which was the second in a trilogy. So before I came, she watched the first movie. That night we watched both Before Sunset, and Before Midnight (the third).

A: Depends on what a date is! We didn’t really get a normal start-of-relationship dating paradigm because at the time, he was in California and I was in Madagascar. The first time we talked in person was because of some faulty decision-making. We had been texting for a few months just as friends, very casually. For a few days in a row, R had been staying up pretty late while texting. He had insomnia, he said. But this night he had to sleep early, because he was planning to wake up early to drive from the Bay Area to Anaheim for the graduation of our friends in the year below us. But he just couldn’t sleep. So he texted me around what must have been 11 PM his time (it was morning for me) and announced that, screw it, he couldn’t sleep so he was just going to start the 6 hour drive now, with nothing but some chicken nuggets between him and violent death by snoozing at the wheel. I found the texts I sent:

A: Oh gosh! OK I’m praying for you. If you get tired, call someone!

Oh wait… no one will be awake.

Uh you can call me! This time zone is convenient

But just don’t die haha

Then I went back to my research (looking at poop through a microscope, no joke, my work was *hella* glamorous). A few hours later he asked to call, and we talked until he got safely to his parents’ house. I never was a big fan of phone calls except with very close friends, so I was worried it was going to be super awkward. We had never talked much in real life. But I figured, it’s better than him dying, so I might as well suffer a few hours of awkwardness. Once we called, though, it was so normal and easy. I barely even remember what we talked about.

When did you realize you had feelings for R/A?

A: That research summer in Madagascar, I was unsure about whether I was doing the right thing. I had done so much work to be there in the rainforest villages only to discover the shaky ethics of foreign work in a low-income country. Meanwhile, all my Bible school classmates were gathering together for a reunion in southern California at a semiannual conference, and I was missing it for the first time in years. I didn’t have a Christian community in the field or at the research center (not yet, at least), and seeking God alone felt incredibly lonely. Soon after arriving at the research station, I went on a week and a half trip to two villages, utterly cut off from any outside communication. What I missed most were my fellow Christians, their experiences, or just praying together with someone. When I came back from that trip, I reconnected my phone to the internet and it spent a solid couple minutes or so buzzing from received messages. A lot of them were from R. He had taken notes of the things that touched him that he heard in recent meetings, or that he appreciated from reading the Bible, and had been sending them to me through the week and a half that I was gone. It was a tower of text, but I felt so warm reading it. It was exactly what I needed. That’s when I realized, this guy’s not just a friend.

R: We started talking in March, after the mutual friend’s wedding. I realized I had feelings in late April, when she told me she was going on a research trip to Madagascar. She had described to me the details of her trip, and she assumed she wouldn’t have access to internet for about 2 months. I remember feeling a pang of sadness at the prospect of not talking to her for eight weeks. That’s when I knew I had feelings for her. We were talking every day, throughout the day, at this point, so it felt almost normal to me to talk to her every day. Two months of not being able to do that felt like a lot (yes it’s cheesy, but I’m cheesy, so who cares). Little did we know, she had access to internet pretty much the whole trip, so yay!

When did you realize you loved R/A?

R: She came to visit me in December 2018. I had a week off of work, and she was on break for med school. I took her around Berkeley (where I was living and working) and San Francisco. We had been talking every day on the phone, but being with her in person was something else. Have you ever spent a whole day on a large set of puzzle pieces, and then put the last piece in right before going to sleep? Everything just feels right in the world. That’s how I felt at the end of each day that week. On one of the evenings during that week, I originally had something planned with other people. When it came time for me to leave, I was dragging my feet. I didn’t want to flake on the arrangement, but I also didn’t want to leave. Eventually, I cancelled that arrangement, and spent the rest of the evening with her. That’s when I knew.

A: Love is a weird word. Everyone has a different definition. There was no definable point at which I slipped from the threshold of mere affection to love. But I do know when missing him went from a fun sort of wistfulness to gut-wrenching pain. He was busier than busy at a software engineering bootcamp last summer. It was hard to tell when he’d get the time to call. Whenever I thought about him, I prayed for him. When he was struggling to get his work done, I wished more than anything that I could be there to take care of his sundry essentials, like laundry or meals or cleaning. Anything that would make it easier for him. At first it was so that I could get more time with him. Eventually it became just for him, that his work would get just a little bit easier, whether or not we got to talk at all. Is that love?

When did you realize that R/A was the person for you?

A: I don’t believe in “the one.” Not the way the world portrays it, anyway — that out of 7 billion people, only one out there will be the other piece of your soul, completing you, whatnot. No, I believe compatibility takes decision making, growth, and work, and that for most people, there’s a spectrum of potential partners who have what it takes to make a beautiful life together. But I do believe in God’s choice. So I guess that does mean out of 7 billion people, there’s only one right person out there. Not by any merit of his own, but because of God’s choice. So I spent much of the early part of our relationship, not quite a year, testing R. I asked him lots of hard questions, pulled strange shenanigans on dates, and cooked him his least favorite foods (bitter melon, eggplant, etc), just to see what kind of person he really was. That was me trying to find compatibility, in the most human sense. But we also prayed very much together, and when I sought God’s presence, I looked for the sense of life and peace to continue on with this relationship. Unfailingly, the peace was there. I tried asking God again and again, or in different ways. But as months became a year and more, eventually I started to trust that the sense of peace was not going to change, and that God was not trying to trick or confuse me with His gentle, consistent leading. If it were a matter simply of human compatibility, a marriage would have a hard time weathering the storms and upsets of life. But if God is for us, who can be against us?

R: I visited her in February of 2019 for a weekend. It was on a Saturday, and we were just at home most of that day. In the morning we read a little, we had a simple lunch, and in the afternoon we were cooking dinner for her parents. We didn’t do anything particularly special that day, but I had been looking forward to doing these ordinary things with her, even more so than anything specific we had planned for the weekend. If I can enjoy doing mundane things with her, then I’d enjoy doing anything with her. By the end of the trip I knew she was the person for me.

What’s something the other person is better than you at?

R: She understands people a lot better than I do. A variety of reasons factor into that: she’s read more, she’s traveled more, she’s met more kinds of people. She has a lot more experience meeting and interacting with different kinds of people, from all walks of life, in various kinds of conditions. She’s talked to the sick, the healthy, the affluent, the poor, and everything in between. All of these experiences produce a broad understanding of humanity, and insight into people of many cultures. When she interacts with people, she does so with consideration to their background and personal identities, but without any prejudice. This was one of the first things that I came to appreciate about her: she loves people. And because she has such a wealth of experience with which to relate to people, her love for people translates to actual, personal care.

A: I hate to admit it, but R is better than me (only marginally! But definitely) at Scrabble, bananagrams, and conggi, three games whose mastery I had prided myself upon. My ego is irreparably damaged. Just kidding — this ego is ironclad and indestructible.

When describing him to people, I always say R is just like me. But kinder. But gentler, less hotheaded, more forgiving, more patient, more measured, more diligent, more meticulous. And waaay better at cleaning.

What’s your favorite thing to do together?

A: It’s the one thing we’ve always done from the start. We really like getting into aggressive, high-stakes debates over tedious minutiae. Usually of grammar. But it can be of anything. It usually ends with one person pretending to be affronted and fake huffs of indignation.

R: I really enjoy cooking with her. Cooking actually combines a few activities that we like doing. We always have a lot to talk about, and cooking gives us time to catch up with each other. She really likes multitasking, so getting something done while we’re talking is a big plus. We both enjoy cooking for other people (cooking for each other not counted in this haha). Of course, we enjoy eating. I like cleaning, so after we cook, we take the opportunity to clean the kitchen area.

Do you feel like you’ve changed over the course of your relationship?

R: She’s improved my grammar. 😛 I eat less snacks (A’s note: “fewer”) now. I’ve also picked up some of her quirky phrases (but she’s also picked up some of mine). More importantly, however, I’ve learned about communication. Over a lifetime of being single, I had developed some bad communication habits. I was really lazy when it came to communicating by text or call, and that was causing some friction between us. When things got busy, and my list of responsibilities piled high, communication often worsened that it already had been. For the first few months we were talking, I was relatively free. About six months into our relationship, which started long-distance, I became extremely busy. As a result, she often had to reach out to me for conversation. This was not sustainable. Over the course of our relationship, I’m learning to be more proactive in communicating. This is is not limited to my relationship with her. I started talking to my parents more frequently, and even some of my high school and college friends. She encouraged me to reach out to people I haven’t talked to in a while, just to reconnect with them. I still have a long ways (A’s note: he apparently chose this phrasing on purpose) to go, but I would say this has been the biggest change so far.

A: In many ways. We had this ongoing joke early on in our relationship that we were picking up each other’s mannerisms. “You’re growing on me,” he’d say. “Like a fungus,” I’d reply. Then he asked me the most romantic question: “Have you heard of the cordyceps fungus?” Of course I had. I had been waiting for someone to compare me to this parasitic fungus that takes over insect larvae for my whole life.

Gross caterpillar corpse-shrooms aside, I came into the relationship as someone deeply mistrustful of marriage and love. I thought that in order to get married, we couldn’t leave a single stone unturned in our hunt for deal-breakers and incompatibilities. We’d have to find out every question that ever broke up a couple and figure out our own answers together: chronic illness? Caring for parents? Infertility? Service of God? Child-raising philosophy? Zombie apocalypse survival strategy? Shared finances? And we did our best search! But through many conversations, I learned that life is unpredictable, and we can never come up with all the questions, nor predict all the answers for complicated future hypotheticals. But we can grow our trust in each other with each new real situation. Eventually I learned to trust that the peace we felt from God was our guide, and that God would grace us to cross each bridge together, but only when we get to them.