If you follow me on Instagram, you've seen him.
A sort of soft rollout if you will. (;
(Always a marketing director...)
Everyone, meet Ron. My boyfriend.
I've received a lot of questions (and rightfully so), but it's really hard to answer them all individually! Nice to know y'all are interested in my life, though. (: So this is totally informal, but the best way I could think of to catch y'all up to speed. Well, as much as I can via the internet. So here we go...
*DISCLAIMER: this has the very likely potential to get sappy. If you don't like it, then don't read it. (: But if you want to know our story, then read on and enjoy, my friend!!
HOW WE MET
This is a fun one. (: On a whim one day in April (I believe) I decided to join an online dating site. Don't ask me why. I don't really know why. I just did. I knew I was moving to Florida at the end of May so I set my location as "Tampa, Florida." Now, I really don't know how the whole online dating thing works, how many messages the average girl gets each day, I don't really care and it's not really relevant. What is important is that I think I may have responded politely to like 2 or 3 messages that I received out of all of them. And then, on May 4th, I received this message:
You are incredible! I'm going to craft a really great message for you tomorrow. But I had to tell you this right now! Enjoy your weekend, the weather is flawless today!And I decided to respond.
Oh you are, are you...? Haha I think I should be the judge of that... and I set the bar high. Thanks for the laugh!What followed in the next 27 days until we met was over 100 novel-length emails and eventually a lot more text messages.
FIRST DATE
On Saturday, May 31st he took me to Boca, which if you click that link and know me at all, you know that has "Kate" written all over it!! Meeting someone for the first time that you feel like you already know so well is a strange, exciting thing. Conversation came so easy and we talked for hours.
THE NEXT SEVEN WEEKS
The next morning I flew to Texas, and two days later I sent him an email basically saying I had a lot of fun and hope there would be a second, even third of fourth date, but that I wasn't ready for commitment. I got back and we continued talking and hanging out. On Saturday, June 21st we explored Tampa and again, if you follow me on Instagram you got to experience a little bit of that day:
I realized I liked this guy a lot more than I originally anticipated.
And I got scared.
The next two weeks were a blur. I knew I liked him, but I didn't feel like I was ready for this relationship to progress at the rate it was, I felt like I wasn't good enough yet, I worried that I had just moved to Florida and wondered if I needed time to settle in on my own, and all my trust issues floated back up to the surface. I thought that I just needed some space... some time to help me clear my head and figure out what I wanted. After many emotional conversations we agreed to a 100 day blackout, completely removing ourselves from each others lives. We'd work on our individual relationships with Christ, figure out where "this thing" was headed, etc. Once those 100 days were over we'd meet back up. Go on another first date. Start over, if you will. So we watched the Fourth of July fireworks on Bayshore Avenue knowing the next three months were going to be really difficult. All along Ron was encouraging this because it's what I thought I needed. He wanted what was best for me and if that meant saying goodbye for three months he was willing to wait.
I made it 16 days. And technically not even that because I emailed him twice during those two weeks. The first time to get an answer to a specific conversation we should've had earlier and the second time I (falsely) blamed him for something (that turned out to not be true) proving why I had trust issues. (I was so very wrong and had to apologize to him... after I took my big foot out of my mouth... get it together, Kate, sheesh.)
So, long story short I realized a few things in those 16 days:
- I did not want to go another 84 days without this guy in my life
- I have trust issues. Well, I didn't realize that, I knew that. And Ron knew that. He said from the beginning that he would earn my trust and that he did.
- He makes me want to be a better person.
- I had blamed him for our not being on the same page. He gently, but honestly reminded me that we had always been on the exact same page, I just got scared to be that far into the book.
- I'm so much better with him than without him.
So on Saturday, July 19 we agreed to do this thing together. And to call it what it was. And I've never been happier.
He cooks for me.
He gives me foot massages while I play games on his iPad.
He brings me roses & my favorite gelato.
He carries a freezer up three flights of stairs to my apartment.
He surprises me with Starbucks before church.
He's the most selfless man I know.
I don't deserve him, but I'm so thankful for him. We are in for such a great ride.
