Some people say, "I love them so much, I would move anywhere to be with them!"

Well I actually did, twice.

I met Hale in Maryland on a night out (aka Tinder) during my last winter break of grad school (circ. 2017) and immediately fell for him, only to be told that his job was transferring him to Dallas in three days. Admittedly I was bummed, but I had a post graduation job lined up with the Peace Corps and I was not about to let a man derail my post college adventures. Despite all of that, we became inseparable for those three days leading up to his departure and by the time I had to leave his crusty MD townhouse for the last time, I knew I couldn't lose him.

I had hoped he wouldn't find a cowboy boot wearing, southern belle right away, but rationalized with myself that it would be ok if he did. Luckily for me, he hadn't even considered it.

He moved down to Texas and we started calling every night. One thing lead to another and in 2 months we made it official, in 4 months I said yes to moving in with him, and in 6 months I made my cross country move to start our lives together.

Blinded by love, I did not realize my family and friends were ~concerned~. It was only a few months ago I found out that both groups had concocted an evacuation plan if anything were to go south. Thankfully the only thing that went south was me and Hale and we lived happily ever after in Dallas...

...Until his new job required him to move to Pennsylvania.

Yet again we were faced with distance and the unknown. It was a scary time - the pandemic just started, my school just told all of it's staff that we would not be returning to the building, and we had no place of our own in PA. To say I was riddled with anxiety would be the greatest understatement of my life, but by that point Hale and our relationship had become nonnegotiable.

Thanks to both our families, we made the move in June 2020 (with our cat, Spinach, in tow) and started all over again. Hale and his family started their beer store, I made a career change and became a librarian, we bought a house in November, and rescued a puppy (Mr. Beef Wellington or Wells for short) soon there after. Writing about all those things now is easy, but trust me it was 6 months of chaos, compromise, and growth.

By spring of 2021, I thought things had finally calmed down, so when a mysterious package arrived to our home that just happened to have a return address to a jewelry store, I freaked out. Hale made me wait for a few weeks, but on May 16th after returning home from a day of brewery hopping in Lancaster, Hale asked me to marry him.

And I said yes!

In all honesty, he said he was going to do it outside on our front steps but it was raining and I totally made him do it again in the rain.

We both fell in love in those first 3 days and the course of our lives has changed because of it. I've never really referred to Hale as my boyfriend or fiancé because those terms don't capture what he is to me. He is my partner, no questions asked, and I cannot imagine being anywhere with anyone else.

-Jen