Celebrating Five Years: Our Love Story

I first knew I loved Ben when I was looking over a huge lake in Hamburg, Germany. Ben wasn’t with me, and I couldn’t stop thinking how he would have loved being there. I knew that someday I would take him back to this place or a place similar to it.

I had known Ben for about seven years at this point. We were good friends, and we had always considered ourselves to be “just friends.” We had both dated other people and weren’t interested in each other until he got back from his mission. We tried dating then, but for me the timing was too soon after another breakup and it was really weird for me to date someone whom I had considered to be only a friend.

We met in Brussels, Belgium. We took some classes together and went to the same church. I never talked to him. But I remember sitting behind him in class one day and looking at him, when out of nowhere the thought came to me that I would consider marrying him someday. I wondered how that would happen.

That summer, Ben and I worked in the same office building, and we would get together for lunch, play games, build puzzles, or whatever else we had the time to do. Again, the thought came to me that Ben would make a good husband and I would think about marrying him someday in the far future. I liked Ben a lot at this point. He was smart, funny, loved music, literature, and art, and was a joy to talk to. For my birthday, he gave me a copy of Les Miserables, and a copy of the lyrics to the musical. From then on, we were fast friends.

Ben never asked me out on an actual date when we met up at Brigham Young University. I always thought of myself as the backup plan. He had season tickets for two to the Fine Arts Theater at the school. If he couldn’t find a date or if the date fell through, he would call me, and I would willingly go. That’s just about how all of our hangouts occurred. We never seriously dated – in fact, we talked to each other about other people were interested in or dating.

When Ben went on his mission to Italy, I wrote him just about every month or every other month to provide support and friendship. When he got back, we started dating, but I didn't feel right about dating at that time. I broke up with Ben on Valentine’s Day to his complete surprise. He didn’t want to talk to me for about a year after that, which I completely understood.

By the time Ben and I started becoming friends again, I had received my temple endowments. This experience and my regular temple attendance gave me a completely different perspective on dating, marriage, and life in general. I realized that before, I wasn’t dating to marry; I was dating only for fun. Furthermore, I rarely ever went on real dates; I was really just “hanging out” with various people. I knew I wanted to get married at some point, but that was way down the road. After attending the temple several times, I made a commitment from then on to date not only for fun, but also to date with the intention of finding someone to marry. I actually prayed to find love and companionship.

Ben asked me to go to Colorado with him to pick up his car. On the way back while we were driving, I realized again what a good person he was and how I loved being around him. The feelings I had for him in Hamburg came back to me. I thought how wonderful it would be to actually date Ben. Sometime after our trip to Colorado, Ben asked me on a bon-a-fide date, and I was so excited about it. From then on we dated exclusively. By September, after only a few months of dating, we knew we wanted to be married. We were sealed in a beautiful ceremony in the Timpanogos Temple. We had known each other for 10 years by that point.



Five years later, we are still best friends and have had wonderful adventures together. I am so thankful I married my best friend and companion. I’m thankful for his wit, charm, love of music and books, brains, cool temper, and his indulgence and fascination of my passions in life. Thank you for all of the good times, Love. I’m looking forward for everything this life and the next have to offer us.


Photography by Siang Loo from Lightphoria at http://lightphoria.com/
Check out his facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/lightphoria