Our Story

Moving Forward

After the first date, we had a second and a third. We went through almost a month of dates and talking every day before we made our relationship official. My family was happy that I'd found someone new, but they also cautioned against moving too fast since I was going from a four year relationship straight into a new one after only three months of waiting. I understood their concern. I had my own concerns as well.

I liked Adam a lot. I had never been with someone who understood me so well and treated me the way he did. Being with him made me actually look forward to one day being married and potentially having children, which were things that had always worried both of us in past relationships. We were so happy together. I didn't want it to ever come to an end.

Like all relationships, we ran into a couple rough patches early on. Points where I worried we might not last. It was in those moments that I truly realized just what Adam meant to me. In such a short time, he had become my everything. That sounds cliché and probably like I was moving entirely too fast. But it was true. When I had a rough day at school or work, Adam was the one thing I knew would always make my day better. When I was stressed with family matters or trying to make ends meet, Adam was there to listen and comfort me. He never insisted on having things his way, like my ex always had. He opened up discussions for us as a couple to get to know each other and what we both wanted. He showed me that my opinion was important and that I mattered as a person; I wasn't just there to please my partner and worry about their wants and desires.

Adam and I just seemed to fit together. He was more introverted and preferred to stay home, and I was slightly more of an extrovert who enjoyed being creative and going to do things. And you know what? We didn't care. At first, I tried to avoid the topics of religion and politics. After growing up in a family that was very religious, I had formed my own relationship with God, and he was an important part of my life. But I found that some of my religious views and political beliefs didn't fully match what most Christians felt. So when some of these topics finally came up in conversation with Adam, I was amazed to find that he voiced opinions that mirrored mine completely. After he finished voicing his opinion on abortion for the first time, the only thing I could think to say was, "Oddly enough... I completely agree with you." We both thought that was funny, so we started talking about a few other political topics that were generally a "gray area." And, again, we ended up in complete agreement. It was like we were made for each other.

By the middle of the summer, we were spending every night in each other's company and it still wasn't enough. We hated being apart, and it was harder for both of us to sleep without the other by our side. It had only been five months of dating, but we began talking about potentially moving in together after I graduated college at the end of the upcoming Fall semester. He had lived with a significant other before, but I never had. I knew "living together" was something that my mom's family was strictly against, even though two of my aunts and one of my uncles had done it on multiple occasions.

Coming from a very Baptist family, I had been raised that sex and sleeping together before marriage was completely wrong. For the longest time, I had believed it. I was the good little virgin church girl all the way until halfway through my freshman year of college when I was 18. It had been with my ex that I dated for four years. He and I had never told our families about it, so my mother still thought I was a good little virgin church girl. And I hated to disappoint her.