Will They or Won't They?

A Valentine Story for Those Not Particularly Fond of Valentine's Day

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Now that I’ve done my weekly housekeeping, I want you to know this week’s Question Box, is going to be a little bit different … and more focused.

As anyone above the age of two knows, it was Valentine’ Day this week … and Ash Wednesday … on the very same day. Somehow, that struck me as appropriate. It also prompted me to finally get around to addressing one of the most frequent questions I get asked when I do my open question boxes on Instagram:

Question Box

How did you and Chris meet and fall in love?

I promise, single friends, in sharing my answer to this question I’m not trying to stick the knife in further and twist it after what, I know, can be a very hard week. This is actually a story to encourage you, not discourage you. It’s also a story to encourage anyone who does not have the kind of fairy tale love story that populated my Instagram feed on Wednesday. Gosh, it was a lot this year.

Anyhow, Chris and I very much do NOT have a fairy tale love story. We have a long-running “Will they or won’t they,” Ross and Rachel, Seeley and Bones, Fox and Dana, Luke and Lorelai, Sam and Diane love story. Which is really entertaining when you’re binging all 10 seasons over a couple of months, but not so fun when you’re living it moment by moment, day by day for ten long years.

That’s right: ten years. It took us nine full years to go from first meeting to officially dating. Then, it took another year to go from dating to engagement. And five months more to go from engagement to marriage. Very little about those ten years was easy. It was mostly complicated and hard and confusing. But it was also, in hindsight, graced.

If you have been around for a while, you may remember when I last shared this story, four years ago. On February 13, 2020, I went all Humans of New York on Instagram, and serialized the tale of how Chris and I met and started dating. It was a story in eight parts—nine if you count the introduction.

The story was not an easy one to tell the first time around. Chris particularly doesn’t like revisiting it. But I get so many questions about this, that we both agreed I should share it again here. This is partly for my own convenience—so I can just refer people to this newsletter instead of making them hunt through four years of Instagram captions for it. But it’s also for those of you who didn’t read it on Instagram all those years ago and need a concrete reminder, in this particular week, of God’s patience and providence.

So, today, I am going to share our story again, almost exactly as it appeared on Instagram four years ago (but with some edits for clarity and context). I’m also going to share a podcast Chris recently did, where he tells more about how he experienced those years and the years leading up to them.

Like everything I share here, I hope this is helpful for you. Chris and I don’t particularly like telling our story. Neither of us come off all that great in the retelling of it. But somehow, God has brought something so beautiful out of the convoluted mess that was our relationship for those nine years. And if He can do that for us, I know He can do that for you, too, whatever situation you currently find yourself stumbling through.

So, here it is: The Story.

I didn’t want to go on Catholic Match. Online dating sites were new back then, and I didn’t trust them. I also was sure I’d never find an intelligent, Jane Austen-loving, poet of a man on the Internet. But, I’d just married off yet another roommate (living with me was like a fast-track move for finding your spouse), and was feeling desperate, so I signed up in the summer of 2005. I’d been online for two months when Chris wrote. My first thought was, “He seems like he’d be a nice friend, but nothing more.”

As the weeks went by that thought changed.

For four weeks, we exchanged lengthy emails every day, touching on everything from Thomas Aquinas to baseball. We shared our stories and our hearts, and somehow, soon, Chris felt like home to me. We’d never met. I didn’t get sick to my stomach with love when I thought about him. But I wasn’t looking to get sick to my stomach. I was looking for home. And I was pretty sure I’d found him.

A month to the day after I got Chris’ first letter, he drove from South Carolina, where he lived, back to Pittsburgh, where his parents lived, and we had our first date. We spent the day exploring the city, and after nine hours with him, I knew he was the one. He…wasn’t sure.

He liked me. He enjoyed our time together. But fireworks weren’t going off. And Chris expected fireworks. And dancing forest animals. And singing fairy godmothers. He expected everything you see in fairy tales and Hollywood movies. He had it in his head that he was supposed to know, instantaneously, without question, that I was the one for him. He believed in love at first sight. And he didn’t feel that for me.

But, again, he liked me. I was (he thought) interesting, fun, faithful, and attractive enough. So, after that first date, there were more lengthy emails, more phone calls, and another date at Christmas. But no clarity from him about what we were doing.

After almost five months, I was hitting my limit. So, in February of 2006, I swallowed my pride and told Chris I couldn’t go on writing without some understanding.

He responded…ambiguously. He liked me. He enjoyed talking to me. He wanted to go on writing and seeing me when he came back to Pittsburgh on holidays. But he wasn’t prepared for more just yet.

I said, “Okay.” Other women, sensibly, would have walked. But every time I took it to prayer, I heard God counseling patience. So, I said yes to Chris and to God, and I was patient. Or I tried to be.

More months passed. We went on another date at Easter. Then, the school year ended, and Chris came home to Pittsburgh, to spend the summer with his parents. In the spring, we had talked about what we would do together that summer. But once summer came, the phone never rang. He was in town for 4 weeks before I saw him. I was angry, confused, hurt, and done.

I told God what he could do with patience, then, on July 29, 2006, I saw Chris and told him we needed to stop talking. He had an explanation—he was struggling with his health and couldn’t think about dating—but it sounded like an excuse. I said goodbye.

Immediately and profoundly, I regretted my decision. I felt…disobedient. That night, I asked God when I could talk to Chris again. As clear as I’ve heard anything in my life, I heard “Five months.”

That fall, I renovated my kitchen, traveled to Austria, and went out with other men. But none of them were Chris. He was always on my mind, making every other guy seem “less than.” But, God said we couldn’t talk until December 29, so I obeyed.

Finally, on December 29, I woke up, feeling like I had permission to reach out. I had one of Chris books, but I needed to know where to return it. I opened my computer, planning to email him and ask.

At the top of my Inbox, was an email from Chris.

I opened the email. Chris was in town. He wanted to come over. I wrote back. We picked a time. I put on my cutest outfit and waited.

He arrived. We chatted. But he never broached the topic of us. I was ticked. He got up to go, still having said nothing about the elephant in the room. So, I did. I asked him to explain what he was doing at my house and why he’d bothered to write at all. Had anything changed?

He had nothing for me. Just some mumbling line about wanting to talk occasionally and having women friends. I think I told him he had issues, then stood there, angrily, watching him struggle with my tricky, century-old doorknob, as he attempted to leave.

It was awkward.

He left. I went to Adoration. God told me to stop acting like a twit. If I wanted to be with Chris, it wasn’t going to look like what I wanted it to look. At least not at first. I could take it or leave it.

I took it. Chris and I began writing again, but just occasionally. I dated some. I also went back to Austria. I married off yet another roommate, said goodbye to my two very best friends when their husbands’ jobs took them away from Steubenville, then I left my job at Franciscan to begin writing freelance full time.

Through it all, my heart hurt every day. I was sure Chris was the one. But he wasn’t moving forward. He wasn’t doing anything, not even calling. Because of that, on July 20, 2007, I left noon Mass on campus in tears. My best friends were gone. I was alone. And all I wanted was to be with Chris. As I drove home, I told God in no uncertain terms, that something had to change.

“I believe your will is in the situation, Lord,” I said aloud. “Chris isn’t making any attempt to call, let alone date me. He lives 500 miles away. This isn’t going anywhere. So, change the situation or change my heart. I can’t do this any longer.”

Six hours later, the phone rang. It was Chris. He wanted me to know he’d accepted a position with the Diocese of Pittsburgh and was leaving South Carolina. He’d be home in a month.

Fall 2007 to Fall 2009. Two years of repetitive, ambiguous drama. When Chris came home to Pittsburgh, I assumed we’d start dating. I assumed wrong.

Instead, we settled into friendship. A very datey friendship. But friendship. We went to concerts, shows, and movies. We explored Pittsburgh. We traveled to New York, Philadelphia, and Italy for conferences. We spent hours and hours, weeks and weeks talking. But nothing more. Not even handholding.

My friends, by and large, wanted to kill Chris. I sometimes wanted to kill him, too. But God wouldn’t let me. Every time I’d reach the end of my rope, I’d deliver an ultimatum to the Lord God Almighty. Which is a really stupid thing to do. But, fortunately, God didn’t smite me. Instead, every time I told Him I was done, that I was going to give Chris a piece of my mind and walk away, He said one thing to me: “In quietness and in trust shall be your strength,” (Isaiah 30:15).

That danged verse haunted me. It appeared like clockwork whenever I was tempted to throw in the towel on Chris. It was read out loud at Mass, included in the Magnificat during Morning and Evening Prayer, handed to me on scraps of paper by strangers, emblazoned at the tops of devotional writings copied out for me by friends, and once, sent to me in the mail. That was when I told God that unless He sent me a letter telling me what to do, I was going to tell Chris to take a hike.

A few days later, a letter arrived, with “In quietness and trust shall be your strength,” written large across the back of the envelope.

I stayed quiet.

The one person who thought I wasn’t crazy was my spiritual director, Father Ray Ryland. He knew every thought I had about Chris—how I was praying and processing and what I was hearing—and encouraged me to hang in there.

So, I did. But Chris didn’t. In September 2009, he told me he was worried about how much time we were spending together. He thought we should back off the friendship. I agreed.

A week later, I went to the doctor about some pain I’d been having. When the tests came back, he sent me to a specialist. Something was wrong. Very wrong. They suspected cancer.

In October 2009, I had two massive, fast-growing tumors on my uterus. Doctors thought they were cancerous and told me I’d likely need a hysterectomy.

I wanted to call Chris. But he deserved more than a barren, broken woman. So, I never picked up the phone.

Nineteen days passed between diagnosis and surgery. During that time, I was prayed over a half dozen times and anointed by Father Mike Scanlan and Father Ryland. When the doctors finally operated, they found the tumors were benign. I also got to keep my uterus. The doctors promised I’d have no problem conceiving. (Promises, promises).

Fall turned to winter again, and in January, Chris emailed. He wanted to see me. He missed me. Could we be friends again?

Feeling the shortness of life, I said yes, and we went back to our status quo. More shows and concerts. Another trip to Italy. A family wedding. And then an awkward conversation in May 2011, which ended with me saying I needed space. I flew off to England on a whim three days later.

Chris didn’t handle it well. While I was gone, he kept emailing me and commenting on Facebook posts. I thought he was insane. How could he not see we should be dating?

But he couldn’t. He was sick and getting sicker and even though he told me that, I didn’t believe him. I didn’t understand how an undiagnosed autoimmune disorder, which he was (badly) self-treating, affected his ability to make decisions. I also couldn’t see how that same illness prevented him from healing from an old (pre-me) broken engagement.

I was sick and tired and done. When I got back from England, we went to one more concert, then I told him I didn’t want to see him anymore.

That break lasted a year. I dated other guys. I went to Europe twice. My Single Girl book, which I’d written a year earlier, came out. I started writing “These Beautiful Bones.” And I cried every day. I felt utterly desolated, without hope, without grace, without joy.

But damn it, I’d waited long enough. God could take His “in quiet and trust” letters and send them to someone else.

Then, on August 3, 2012, Chris called. It was his birthday. And he was on his way to the hospital, in kidney failure.

I was living a soap opera. A bad soap opera.

As soon as I got off the phone, I raced to the hospital. Nobody knew why Chris’ kidneys were failing. So, I set up camp in his room while teams of doctors tried to find the answer.

I stayed for a week. We held hands. We talked. We prayed….And we fought. Because I wasn’t the only woman at the hospital.

There was another female friend there the first few days. They’d gone on a few dates in 2010, then became friends again after our 2011 break. I’d known nothing about her. But she knew all about me.

I was living a Mexican soap opera.

Eventually, she left. I stayed.

After a week, Chris’ doctors diagnosed him with pulmonary sarcoidosis. After he was released, I headed off to Europe for two weeks (yes, again), and got home expecting we would finally start dating.

But we didn’t. At first, Chris needed time to get well. And then, as more time passed and we still weren’t dating, I decided I didn’t care anymore. I mean, I cared. I loved him. I wanted to be with him. But I’d stopped expecting things to change. Chris was Chris. I didn’t understand why he couldn’t commit. But it didn’t matter. As long as he was alive and we were friends, I could deal. There was peace again. There was joy again. No matter how frustrated I felt with our situation at night, in the morning, I woke up with the grace to do it all over again.

Because of that, I decided that I’d misunderstood God. Maybe, He was calling me to Chris, but just as friends. It wasn’t what I wanted, but being Chris’ friend seemed better than being any other man’s wife. So, I stopped dating other guys, stopped asking God to change my heart, and just loved Chris as the situation allowed me to love him.

Oddly enough, those closest to me supported that. When I would occasionally panic and talk about running, my new spiritual director and best friends all counseled me to stay in the friendship. Partly because they knew running was pointless: Chris and I would somehow find our way back to each other again. We always did. But also, I think, because they knew Chris would come around.

And he did. But I was too blinded by my own fear to see it.

All through 2013, Chris and I grew closer. We saw each other every weekend, despite living 45 minutes apart. Chris started taking me with him when he visited friends in Greenville, SC. And I became his steady date for weddings and diocesan events.

But we still weren’t dating.

By 2014, Chris was calling and texting me more than my roommate’s fiancée called and texted her. He took me to Quebec to see my sick uncle and began acting territorial when other men flirted with me.

But we still weren’t dating.

Then, in October, Chris started asking questions. Weird questions. Did I think our friendship deterred other men from pursuing me? Did I not go out with other men because of him? Did I still want to get married?

I dodged them all. Honest answers would lead to honest discussions, and honest discussions always led to us not seeing each other. And I wasn’t doing that ever again.

So, we still weren’t dating.

In November, I went on a national radio show, ostensibly to talk about The American Catholic Almanac, which had just been released. Instead, I spent an hour being humiliated for still being single by the radio host, who is lucky I didn’t have sharp objects on me that night (but who I have since forgiven). The next day, Chris showed up with flowers and wine.

But we still weren’t dating.

In December, we went back to Greenville. While Chris was showering, one of his friends gave me a piece of her mind about us spending so much time together without dating. I held back tears until Chris came down and we left the house. Then, I broke down sobbing. Chris pressed me about what was wrong. I told him what she said.

“Well,” he responded, “maybe we should date.” “I’ve been trying to talk to you about this for months,” he continued. “But you keep avoiding the conversation. “

Guilty as charged.

We spent the rest of the morning walking around Abbeyville, South Carolina, holding hands, and talking about the nine years between our first date and that day. After so many years of friendship, neither of us knew what dating each other would look like or how it would change our relationship. But we were ready to find out.

If you’re looking for lessons in all this, here you go.

1. Trips to Europe do nothing to help you forget the love of your life. But they’re still awesome and you should take as many as you can while single.

2. It doesn’t normally end this way. When guys dawdle, it’s usually because they’re just not that in to you.

3. Sometimes, it does end this way. We live in a world filled with broken people, who can’t be in healthy relationships until they heal—whether in mind, body, or spirit. So, delay isn’t always denial.

4. How do you know when to wait? Sanctifying grace helps. Mass helps. Adoration helps. Good counsel helps. They’re what enabled me to make prudent decisions. If I’d been in a state of serious sin, not growing in prayer, and not seeking good counsel, it would’ve been different. So, don’t make these decisions apart from grace, God, and wise friends.

5. What also helped? The fruits I saw in me. Chris didn’t lead me to sin. He led me closer to Christ. Our friendship was life-giving, even when it was hard. It made me kinder, gentler, more joyful, and more faithful. If your friendship isn’t doing that, reevaluate.

6. Seek God’s will, not yours. Daily, for nine years, my prayer wasn’t, “God, give me Chris.” It was, “God, you know my heart. If this isn’t of you, change it. If it is of you, help me bear it.” Yes, I demanded signs. But fewer as the years went on. None by the end. I learned to trust as I grew in faith. If your faith and trust look no different over time, that’s a red flag.

7. Don’t let your idea of romance get in the way of real romance. Life is not a fairy tale. Love doesn’t always come how we expect it. If I’d insisted on a fairy tale romance, I wouldn’t have my husband—my wise, sexy, funny, virtuous, holy husband, who I love with all my heart.

And if Chris hadn’t let go of his desire for immediate fireworks and explored his deep, persistent need to be with me, he wouldn’t have found a love far more beautiful than his shallow ideas of romance. That letting go was hard for him. Our love didn’t happen as he expected. After he got well, that’s why he hesitated moving forward.

But eventually, he did. And I can’t thank God enough.

One quick postscript.

During all those long years, my friends struggled with Chris, experiencing varying degrees of frustration, anger, and violent tendencies towards Chris over his ambiguous non-courtship of me. His behavior was so mystifying and maddening, that it left many of them wanting to kill him on the regular.

But behind all the mystifying and maddening was a man—an amazing, good man committed to becoming holy, who was genuinely sick and genuinely struggling.

Chris wasn’t always perfect in his decision-making, with me or with other women. But neither was I. Neither are any of us. Which is why relationships are so dang hard. We’re all broken or wounded in some way, and while nursing those wounds we often end up wounding others.

God blessed me with the grace, patience, and clarity to see how good of a man Chris really was—his wisdom, intelligence, kindness, gentleness, sensitivity, and faithfulness. And that, more than anything else, is why I waited. He was worth waiting for. He was worth every second of the drama, frustration, confusion, and pain.

My friends know that now. They know Chris now. They’ve had the chance to get to know Chris, not just through my tearful, frustrated stories about him, but through interacting with him and watching their husbands and children interact with him. They see him now as I saw him then. They also have seen him continue to grow in holiness and love and virtue. Marriage has been good for Chris. Fatherhood has been good for Chris. And Chris has been better than good for me. He’s been the best thing that’s ever happened for me.

The confusing, chaotic, dramatic stuff is entertaining. But it’s not the important part. It fades into the background when the real love story of a happy marriage begins.

As I’ve said before, sacramental graces can reach backwards, transforming all the moments that came before, redeeming every grief, healing every wound, changing every sorrow to joy.

That’s how it’s been with us. This, what I shared here—it’s just a good story now. It’s not my reality anymore. My reality is marriage to the best man I know. And it’s the very best reality I can imagine.

One more post-script

Today, Chris and  have the happiest of marriages and the most beautiful of families, but our love story was long and hard and not fun at all. Maybe in the reading of it. But not in the living of it. That doesn’t make it any less beautiful or sanctifying, though. Nor does it make our marriage any less beautiful or sanctifying.

If your love story doesn’t read like a fairy tale, if it’s been complicated or hard or not what you expected, that’s okay. It’s not less wonderful for its complications. And you are not less loved or less valuable because of those same complications.

You also are not less loved or valuable if your love story doesn’t come with a happy ending or doesn’t have one yet. Your value has nothing to do with your relationship status. In Christ, you have a dignity and beauty that surpasses that of even the angels. You are loved by the only perfect man who ever lived. You are loved by God Himself. Period. Full stop. The end.

So please, don’t compare your love story or lack thereof to the simpler more straightforward love stories others have shared online this month (or any other month). Life isn’t a fairy tale for anyone . Life is hard and surprising and full of challenges. Those challenges just come at different times and manifest in different ways.

If we let Him, though, God will use all those complications and challenges to make something beautiful. He did that for Chris and me. He is still doing that for Chris and me. And He is doing that for you too.

This Week’s Miscellany

1. If you want to hear Chris talk about our story (and his story before we met), you can listen to this episode of The Based Catholic from this past fall.

2. Here is my conversation with The Based Catholic on the same and related topics.

3. My old blog is a mess, because right as we started to overhaul it, selling and moving and everything happened. But if you just click on this here link, it will take you to one of the easiest, yet strangely impressive Lenten Friday meals you can make: Cauliflower and Gruyerre Galette.

4. If you are in or near Steubenville, head on over to Franciscan University tonight (Friday, February 16) for the closing night of Women’s Health Week, sponsored by the Guiding Star Project. I’ll be there on a panel, answering questions about motherhood, womanhood, and work. The event starts at 7 pm in the Gentile Gallery.

5. It’s not a free newsletter if I don’t mention a Beautycounter promotion (😬), and this one is a doozy: up to $270 in free gifts and perks. Everyone who spends $150 gets the single best skincare product I have ever used—the Reflect Effect Exfoliating Mask—for free. (It’s a $96 value). Spend $250 and you get the mask, plus the best selling Mighty Plump Ceramide Water Cream, ($76 value), which visibly plumps skin and smooths wrinkles. And for just $10, you get a whole year’s worth of Membership Rewards, like free shipping, product credit, and a free Glow First Priming Serum ($65 value). If I were looking to spend $150, I would consider getting the Flawless in Five Makeup set, adding the Membership to your cart. That will get you the mask and primer. If you want both free gifts, this might be a good time to invest in a skincare regimen. Feel free to message me for help finding the right products and shades for you.

And with that, I need to go shower and get ready for tonight!

In Case You Missed It

1. Visitation Sessions: On Friendship (This is the new podcast Chris and launched this week with our friends Kate and Casey Stapleton. The next episode is coming Monday. Free for all subscribers).

2. Drinking Wine, Eating Meat, and Finding Meaning in the Single Years (Free for all subscribers).

3. The Sources of Our Discontent: On Happiness, Feminism, and Grandmothers (Full Subscribers Only)