Noun; Ben and Emily as a unit; Latin root "bene" meaning good

We don't have a dramatic love-at-first-sight story. Our journey together started on a foundation of goofy, genuine friendship that grew into an undeniable love and unwavering partnership. We wrote this story together as we'll continue to do so for the rest of our lives.

(In true Emily fashion it is long and contains more details than you probably need.)

Enjoy!

We met on August 23, 2015 (nearly 10 years ago!) when moving in to our freshman dorm at WPI on the third floor of Daniel's hall, also known as D3. That first night Emily and her roommate, Ashley, just wanted to relax, but didn't want to be antisocial so they moved their TV out into the hallway and watched The Office (duh). Ben's roommate Leo said to him "dude, there's girls watching TV down the hall, we should go say hi." Thus we had our first of many nights watching The Office together.

Emily had been project partners with some of the other guys that lived on D3 that Ben was friends with. Over the course of the school year this evolved in to a semi-dysfunctional, inseparable friend group. Emily went on to spend more time socializing than studying first semester, while Ben did the opposite. Realizing she needed to kick it into gear for second semester Emily asked if she could tag along with Ben to the library. Meeting up to do homework and joke around, vent or just sit in comfortable silence (when we really needed to focus) quickly became a favorite part of our day.

Our friendship really became close during C-Term when we took an art class together. Emily couldn't help but notice that Ben always sat next to her in lecture, and Ben couldn't help but notice that Emily would frequently visit his dorm room to get his feedback on her drawing assignments. We were given an assignment where we had to partner up, create art using nature and submit a photo. We paired up and for whatever reason decided to wait until a freezing snow day to complete the project. Underdressed and a bit uninspired we produced the above image (we'll let you speculate on what it's supposed to be). Emily still hasn't let Ben forget it's the only B she got in that class, but it's a work of art we're still very proud of an always have up in our home.

Friendship evolved into feelings and by D-Term we were nearly inseparable. The only issue was that we were each convinced it was one-sided. Emily had a sorority formal coming up and wasn't sure who she should bring as a date. Earlier in the year Ben had expressed his general dislike for formals so Emily had assumed he wouldn't be interested. During one of our study hangs Emily casually mentioned that she might bring a friend. Ben replied with "no, don't bring a friend. I'll go with you." That was the moment Emily realized that the feelings were mutual and Ben unknowingly signed himself up for every single formal for the rest of college. Ben rocking the brutal Q-Tip hairstyle there.

We officially started dating on April 22nd, 2016. A very on brand date and entirely coincidental.

Our four years at WPI were filled with countless memories together. Some of our favorites:

Volunteering together at Second Chance Animal Shelter which required us to drive to the shelter at 7am on Saturdays (often hungover) where Ben would take care of the dogs and Emily would look after the cats.

Sleeping in the same twin bed for a full school year instead of sleeping separately.

Getting through a computer aided design course by submitting our final project together at 5 AM well after the course and semester had ended.

Taking a road trip to Ontario and getting lost on the Toronto bus system. Astoundingly, it did not cause an argument or ruin our trip. Ben's sense of direction did not help us.

Time spent with our amazing friends.

Graduating! It was the culmination of a grueling four years and the start of our post college lives.

In May 2020, we got our first apartment together in Southbridge, MA. Emily was working from home in the pandemic, Ben was commuting 80 minutes to North Haven, CT to work at Medtronic (it was worth it). We got Tuna while in Southbridge in October 2020!