Online Dating as a Catholic: Part 3

Today is the final post in our series on on-line Catholic dating. It is written by my friend Matthew Grivich, author of the book Rational Faith…

As I mentioned in the first post, Catholic Match “how we met” stories are not helpful because they are more advertisements than anything and don’t really help single people. For this reason, I will give our “how we met” story and I’ll leave in a lot of the little details (and things that could have derailed the relationship). It gets to be a long story, but I would have valued these types of stories when I felt like I had no idea what I was doing.

Early history

I had a serious relationship in high school and college. We met the traditional way (in the band room). We ended the traditional way (early grad school for me, late college for her, marriage would not have worked). We should have ended it sooner, but we were young and idealistic. I tried to meet women the same way in grad school. That is to say, just hoping to randomly meet and fall in love. That was ineffective, especially in Santa Cruz, where orthodox Catholics are a bit like rebels of the underground. I spent a brief time on Catholic Match and a different site that is now dead, had two dates with one woman, but got disgusted with how few women replied to my messages and cancelled my account. I then pinned my hopes on moving to St. Brigid’s parish in San Diego, where lovely and orthodox women are plentiful. Unfortunately, though, I lacked the confidence to ask many women out and those that I did ask out always said no (in varying ways). It wasn’t just me though, as it used to be that no one at St. Brigid’s was getting married. Thankfully that problem has been resolved and marriages among St. Brigid’s young adults have become common. After being in San Diego from 2006-2013 with no verified and official dates, I decided to try Catholic Match again as I was approaching forty and running out of time. Even though men are technically able to father children well into their fifties, everything else, from meeting women still in their child bearing years, to adapting to marriage, to raising children becomes much harder.

Jennifer had a long term, but not particularly serious, relationship in high school that ended in early college when she realized that there was no future in it. She had a serious relationship in her mid-twenties that ended very badly. This, as well as some other complications, made her emotionally unavailable for several years. In parallel, she lives in San Mateo, and like Santa Cruz it is very difficult to just randomly meet marriageable orthodox Catholics. In 2013 though, she also realized that she was running out of time to have children (as well as being lonely like me) and turned to Catholic Match.

Catholic Match

I was on Catholic Match for about a year before I met Jennifer. I would typically check profiles once a week or so and send a message if I saw a woman I liked. Over the year, I sent roughly twenty messages. At least half of these had no response, most of the rest were a polite no, and few had short e-mail conversations in which the women stopped responding. In the fall of 2013 I dated a woman for about a month. On paper she was an excellent match. However, we didn’t have chemistry. I also was too timid to push for deep or revealing conversations and she was not inclined to share. Finally, it seems like whenever we learned something new, it was a surprise to the downside. For example, my family plays video games, to the point where the majority of the time I spend with my family is spent playing Warcraft. She, on the other hand, saw gamers as overgrown man-children. She was too polite to say it to my face, but didn’t really hide it.

Jennifer was on Catholic Match for about six months before she met me. During this time, she had a policy of responding to virtually all messages. When she wasn’t getting enough messages from men that she liked, she would send e-motes to new men. During this time, she dated several men from the San Francisco Bay Area and had remote un-relationships with a few men not from the Bay Area. Her biggest complaint with the local men is that they were not aggressive enough, both physically (that is, no touching) and emotionally. One man, for example, would not initiate a hug after six dates and did not react that well when she initiated. The remote men would not visit. Both of us are confused as to why a man would start a long distance texting and phone relationship with someone and never take the time and money to visit. Some of the men are obviously not marriage material (for example, one would sent inappropriate texts, even after she told him several times to stop), but the majority of them are respectable.

Jennifer browsed my profile late in December of 2013, found it completely uninspiring, and moved on. However, because of Catholic Match’s feature (that I criticized above, ironically), I got a notice that she browsed me, so I browsed her back. I liked what I saw, so I sent her a message on December 30^th. I wasn’t too hot about a long distance relationship, but I hadn’t been getting any traction in San Diego, I’d lived in the San Francisco Bay Area before and knew I could handle it, and she is lovely enough that I was willing to put in the extra effort. The message I sent her was sweet and she liked it. We e-mailed long messages back and forth for a week or two, with her responses getting slower and slower. After a particularly long silence (12 days), I feared that I was losing her and sent her an annoyed message with, “Should I wait for you, should we talk on the phone, should I visit, or call this off?” Luckily, she wasn’t too mad at me for this. Unluckily, she had gotten in a (no injuries) car accident and was dealing with that. Also, even though she had been sending me long messages, she found writing very draining. Finally, at this point she was used to long distance men who would never progress the relationship, so she suspected (whether consciously or not) my exclusively e-mailing meant that I was just another wet noodle. Anyways, she suggested moving to phone so we did so.

Long distance

She says that I came on too strong (in the asking aggressive questions sense) early in the call and she was almost ready to hang up, but by the end of the call she decided that she could give me another chance. She had started to get the impression that she was talking to a member of the cast of the “The Big Bang Theory”. Luckily for me, she has a crush on the cast of “The Big Bang Theory”. We set up another call for a few days later. On that second call, I initiated and we scheduled the first visit for February 15^th. She didn’t really believe me though, because of her prior problems with men not acting like men. My attitude is that long distance relationships are too difficult to be timid and slow and once I say I’ll do something I will. I didn’t realize till later that I had to send her the airfare confirmation so that she would believe me. I bought it after the second call. If it was going to go badly, I wanted it to go badly as quickly as possible and that required a visit as soon as possible. If we “broke up” before the visit, I’d only be out a few hundred dollars. As the month progressed, we talked more and more on the phone till it was nightly for an hour or more and started texting (beginning on February 3^rd) more and more till it was every morning and frequently during the day. For a day or two the texts were business related, but they quickly became mostly romantic (I started it).

By the time the visit was almost upon us, I was starting to suspect that she was the one, but she was still much more afraid than hopeful. She had baggage she wanted to share in person and I had some as well. I sent her Valentine’s flowers on the 13^th, which she appreciated, and flew up on the 15^th. She picked me up at the airport and we went to an Indian place for lunch, and then a Peet’s Coffee & Tea in Palo Alto. There is a semi-private room there that she likes. There, she unloaded her baggage, I said that I still wanted her in my life, and I held her. The chemistry was strong, nearly immediate, and is still there today. I told her I loved her, but she wasn’t ready for that. Later we came to the realization that we mean somewhat different things by “love”. I mean that she is the woman who I want to be with, but it is not a statement of commitment. For her, it is practically a marriage proposal. Both of us, though, were willing to work through complications like these with a minimum of fighting as we both want it to work. Later (I don’t remember exactly when, now, and it wasn’t all at once) I revealed my weakness to her and she was unimpressed. I think this is typically the case. For people who want to be together and do what it takes for each other, most issues are not really that serious in the final analysis. We were officially in a relationship (Facebook and everything) as of February 15^th, 2014. The following morning, we went to mass (which we do together as frequently as possible) and I flew back in the evening.

In mid-March, she came down to San Diego. After that, we would see each other every three or four weeks, with me making the majority of the trips. Shortly after the second time we met in person, I started looking for work in the Bay Area. It was too soon in the relationship for me to move, but looking for work takes a while, and I had a feeling that I would end up moving. It made much more sense for me to move, because I have no family in San Diego, most of her family is in the Bay Area, I wanted a new job anyways, and it is much easier for me to get a job in the Bay Area than it is for her to get one is San Diego. I do miss San Diego, but Jennifer is just better. I kept Jennifer appraised of my job search efforts, so that she would know that I was working hard on it. I met her mother on April 5^th (her father has passed) and she met my parents on May 4^th. Throughout, our families have been positive on the relationship. This is hugely important, as we know well because both of us have had issues with problematic families in past relationships. Throughout the long distance portion of the relationship, we spent a lot of time missing each other, a lot of time counting down days till the next visit, and our relationship was slowly getting stronger. Many of our early fights were either of us worrying about getting hurt in a way that we had been hurt before. As those hurts did not happen, the worries and fights receded. I imagine that in a bad relationship, fights get worse instead of better. For the most part, I do what she asks me to, and she does what I ask her to, but there are notable exceptions.

The move

I was able to find a job in Berkeley, starting in September, which was convenient because it was a month or so before her busy season at work.  We then had lots of time together while she was available and I got settled into my job. After that, she was still making time for me, but she was grumpy and tired a lot of the time. Regardless, she was still into the relationship, so I started ring shopping. After I’d ordered the ring, but before it had arrived, Jennifer texted me at 4:30 in the morning (on November 1^st) to say that she had to talk. It woke me, so I called her. She told me that she was up all night thinking, and she had something to tell me. Then, for the first time, she told me that she loved me. Me, being half asleep, said “thank you”, “I love you too” and went back to sleep. If you recall from earlier, the implicit understanding here was that I now had permission to propose. This was good, because proposing without permission is even more nerve-wracking than proposing with permission.

The engagement

I still had to wait a bit for the ring to arrive, but more importantly I had to practice. Every once in a while she would make a comment that she would like to hear me sing (other than at church). I would always say, “Sure, some day, but I need to practice first.” Even though I’m a strong singer, I’m a weak guitar player and a cappella solos always sounds empty to me, especially when I’m doing the singing. Of course, the other reason I stalled is that it would be a lovely way to propose. During my early practicing, I would hide the guitar so she didn’t know what I was up to. Later, when I starting leaving it out, she said, “Hey, you should play something sometime” and I would say “Whenever you are ready”. She didn’t get the hint, but she was pretty tired from work. The busier part of her busy season was fast approaching and soon I would not see her much, so on a Sunday evening (November 23^rd) when she was mostly awake I sat her down in my apartment and sang “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You” and proposed. She said yes! And it only took me a few tries to get the ring on the correct finger. It wasn’t my best performance, but it was my most effective. I had expected that the engagement would not change that much about our relationship, but I have noticed that she has become much happier and more relaxed. Even the grouchiness and exhaustion of her work seemed to fall away. We are now (February 23^rd, 2015) well into wedding planning with a date set for August 8^th. We hope and pray for many happy years together and we pray that you find what you are looking for and that it suits you as much as you imagine.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3