| This is the 11th story of Our Life Logs |
I was always worried about finding the right person for me. I was scared I would never meet my soulmate or I would miss my chance with her. I had trouble in my youth with communicating, so I feared I wouldn’t find a woman that loved me for me. I think it is a real fear once you get past a certain age that you’ll never find love. You spend your whole life thinking it’ll be easy, and everything will happen like you planned it. All I can say is that it rarely does. Sometimes it just takes patience and strength to wait. As a man who is finally engaged to the girl of my dreams, I promise it is worth the wait.
I grew up in the suburbs of Rochester, New York in the 1980s, until I moved to Dayton around the age of 15. Starting over in Ohio was exciting for me, but it wasn’t long until I ran into trouble in school. I was an inventive kid that loved science, and I think that made me a target for kids. People would provoke me and try to make me angry. I had to spend a lot of time with the school administrators while they helped me work through my explosive attitude. I was taught to respond and listen instead of reacting without much thought.
My love of inventing and working with machines continued into my adulthood. I went to school for electrical engineering and additionally received education in management. Over the years I worked on a lot of different machines, including amusement park rides, claw machines, and arcade games. While I worked on the claw machines, I was on the road a lot. I’d drive around the Tri-State area in a large, creeper-style van filled with stuffed animals and candy to fill the machines. It was a nice job, but it got exhausting and I wasn’t home much.
Due to the underwhelming chance of meeting women at my job, I believe it was divine intervention that I met my future wife at a church picnic. Initially, I thought her to be intelligent and beautiful, but I didn’t think immediately that she was “the one.” I had a feeling she liked me, but being a few years older than her, I worried about her level of interest. I didn’t get the chance to get to know her very well, though I really wanted to. All I could do was wait for another chance.
A few years passed until I tried again. There was a weekly church potluck that we both attended. When I saw her, I asked her to sit with me and began to initiate a conversation. I could tell she was shy, but once we started talking it was hard for either of us to stop. I didn’t want to be too forceful, so I never got her number, or a chance to ask her out. For the next few weeks, we sat together at the potlucks and got to know each other. One week, she didn’t come, and I was disappointed.
After that potluck, I began to casually browse an online dating site. By chance, I saw her profile on an online dating website. I was surprised, not just by the fact that she was on the site, but by the fact that we had a 93% match. I hadn’t updated my profile in over six years, so my picture wasn’t great, and it was littered with grammatical errors. I didn’t care to change it. I was focused on reaching out to her. I knew I couldn’t miss my chance again.
I messaged her, with all caution thrown to the wind. She responded, and we gradually had a comfortable conversation. She joked that I was lucky she had already known me because my profile was so terrible, and she would have rejected me otherwise. With her previously being a teacher, I couldn’t blame her, but was happy she gave me the chance anyway. I asked her on a first date to an amusement park, and she agreed. After that first date, I knew she was something serious.
I was extroverted and social, while she was introverted—and as they say, “opposites attract.” She gave my life adventure. We started going on more and more dates, to newer and different locations. We didn’t call going out together “dates,” but rather, “adventures” so that the pressures of a date were gone, and we could just enjoy the time together. She wanted to travel everywhere, and all I wanted to do was follow. She was beautiful. To me, she represented unbounding freedom, restrained only by her own sense of insecurity. I liked to think I helped remove that gradually, and she let me in. I had never met a more sensitive soul unaware of her own enchantment. Needless to say, I was in love.
After dating a year and a half, I decided it was time to buy a ring, and ask her to be my wife. I didn’t want to spend my life with anyone else. We went to the Chinese Lantern Festival in Columbus, Ohio, which is a stunning display of lit floating paper lanterns flying across the night sky. I had it all planned out, and I knew it would be perfect. That night I was nervous, but ready. I turned to her and asked if it would be okay to call her my wife. She looked off into the distance and said, “when we’re ready.” Her response took me off guard. What did that mean? She added, “we need to talk.”
Anyone in a relationship knows that “we need to talk” is the scariest phrase a person could ever hear. I was petrified, thinking the woman of my dreams was leaving me. A thousand scenarios ran through my head about how badly I would miss her, and how after everything, I didn’t think I would be complete without her.
She sat me down and told me what was on her mind. She said she loved me, wanted to marry me, but wanted to set a few ground rules. I had to find a job that would let me stay home with her and keep me off the road. I had to agree to premarital couples counseling to work on our communication since she had little experience with dating and neither of us had marriage experience. I was the only person she ever dated, and I felt special to be her first everything. Lastly, she asked me to be there for her always. With tears in both of our eyes, I agreed in seconds, and put the ring on my soulmate’s finger.
I have never been in a better place. My life has led me to this point of greatness and peace. I have found the person that makes life worth living. The only goal I have is to make her as happy as she makes me. I was always scared that I would miss the chance to be full of love, yet here I am. We make each other better people, and I am excited for our wedding in a few months. The best advice I can give is to never give up, your person is out there, and they are worth the wait.
This is the story of Nathan Foser.
Nathan lives in Kettering, Ohio with his fiancée. They are continuing premarital counseling and plan to get married in the church Nathan works at. Nathan worried that he’d never find but was lucky enough to meet his soulmate later in his life. He never gave up hope that love was out there, and he doesn’t think anyone should. In their free time, sometimes he and his fiancée like to play piano together.
This story first touched our hearts on June 23, 2017.
| Writer: Sean Link | Editor: MJ |
Update as of March 2018: Nathan is now married to his soulmate. They got married in October 2017 in the church Nathan works at. They had a small wedding with 60 guests, which were mostly family. He wrote humorous vows to say to her, with promises such as “I promise not to purchase an ice cream truck for our family.” He believes that the premarital counseling helped them work through any fears they had about marriage. Now that they are married, many of the fears are gone.
His wife is going to school full time, working full time, and they are now expecting a baby. It’s going to be a boy, and he’s due sometime in August of 2018. With his wife having so much on her plate, he’s been helping around the house and preparing for the baby. He’ll be 40 close to the birth of his son. Nathan plans to work to improve his health, so he can be around for his son as long as possible.
