How Very Engaging

Shortly after getting engaged on Dec. 30.

Phil and I got engaged six weeks ago.

What a fun sentence to write!

I had been kind of holding back on writing about Phil and our relationship, keeping it to little mentions here and there, not giving a whole lot of detail. That’s partly because, hey, it’s personal, but also because I am a cautious and slightly superstitious person by nature, as I was bred to be. There were a lot of “keinahuras” heard in our house growing up. A lot of “God forbids.”

This actually kind of bothered me over the last few months, as it became more and more clear that Phil and I were heading towards engagement. I didn’t like it when my family hesitated to talk about our future as a sure thing just because I didn’t have a ring yet. “Let’s not give ourselves a keinahura,” everyone said.

But sometimes I found myself doing it, too. Even though on a practical level I had no doubts that we would get married, even after I knew he had ordered the ring, even after so many proofs that we were preparing for a future together, I still felt that until we were actually engaged, I was only 99.9% sure that it would really happen. (Sorry, honey.)

There’s something magical about that moment of getting engaged. It represents a shift in reality, a change in status that, though largely imagined and immaterial, feels so concrete. That’s probably why we do engagement rings — to embody that intellectual shift on the physical plane. Because just saying that you’re going to marry this person isn’t enough to bring the reality into existence. After all, we had said similar things before. It didn’t mean we were engaged. That sacred alchemy occurred at a park, at sunset, when Phil presented me with a ring and asked me to marry him. (Pretty sure I said yes, though all I really remember is dissolving into tears and grabbing for the ring.)

Now the commitment is real in a way it wasn’t before. Now we can plan a wedding, book a photographer, register for kitchen appliances. Now we know the actual date on which we will become husband and wife. There's no question.

We’re engaged!

The truth is that I always thought I’d have a difficult relationship with my future husband. I thought it would be complicated, there’d be doubts and questions, conflicts, push and pull, friction, fights. Just because that’s the kind of person I am and that’s the kind of relationship I’ve always had. I had heard of easy relationships, but I never thought I’d ever be a part of one.

And along came Phil. Yes, we all know that it was a match made in Jswipe algorithm heaven, and I have long ceased to be ashamed of that. This is 2019, people.

I almost didn’t go on our first date (as we’ll tell our grandchildren). I had been on another Jswipe date with a different guy the night before, and in that mid-April chill, I didn’t feel like schlepping into the city two nights in a row for what was sure to be a waste of time. I found myself hoping Philip Jswipe would flake on me, or perhaps not text me with a solid plan for the evening until it was late enough for me to justify not coming in. But neither of those things happened. He texted at a reasonable time — 1:30pm — and suggested a reasonable meeting place not too far from Penn, as I had requested — the District Tap House. I was fast running out of excuses. Then, after I complained about having to go in, my mom swooped in and, with the prescient desperation of a mother of a 30-year-old spinster, offered to pay for my LIRR ticket. I had no excuses left.

So in I went. “I can’t believe I’m dragging myself all the way into the city just for one stupid date!” I groused to my friends. We met, at the bar. I was struck by how much cuter he was in person than in his Jswipe pictures, which — let me tell you — is rare. And the conversation flowed. Rapport was quickly established. From the first to the last moment there was no awkwardness, no weirdness, no uncomfortable pauses, not a single reason not to like him. We had so much in common — came from such similar backgrounds and upbringings, had followed similar paths to Orthodox Judaism — and we laughed and talked and drank Moscow Mules until it was time to go home. As we walked out of the bar, a perfect stranger called after us, “So will there be a second date?” We looked at each other and giggled shyly, not answering, and then Phil said to me, “I mean, I would say yes,” and I said, “Me too.”

And the rest, they say, is history. As it happened, I would be leaving for Adamah the very next day. Our relationship continued through text and FaceTime until we met up again, and by the time our 6-hour second date, lasting until 5am, was over, it was very clear to both of us that this was something different, that we could see it going the distance.

I can’t pinpoint an exact moment when I knew we’d get married, but by Shavuot, the unknown future was gently solidifying before us. A month and a half into the relationship, he met my entire family. (And I mean ENTIRE family.) Soon after, I met his. By the time the summer came and we were facing six long weeks apart, there was no question we’d continue long distance. The separation was hard, for sure, but even though our fledgling relationship was only two months old, it was the real thing. There was no doubt we’d make it through. And in the fall, I joined him in Australia on a ticket he bought with his Delta miles. After that, I officially moved to New York, with the tacit understanding that we’d get engaged at some point in the next few months and be married before he began his first rabbinical job.

And it was easy. It was so easy.

Of course, we have fights and disagreements and differences of opinion like any other couple. Our relationship is not perfect. Anything else would be unnatural. But I think it’s as near perfect as possible. We are always laughing. We’re both easy-going and flexible. We feel similarly about a lot of things, including the importance of daily ice cream. We enjoy the same leisure activities.

Most importantly, we share the same values. We occupy the same fringe space between religiosity, spirituality, and the real world. (The same hashkafa, in frumspeak.) We have the same vision for the future. All those things that you need on paper, plus everything else — chemistry, good conversation, affection, communication, joy. Life is just better when he’s around. We make each other happy. We are #blessed.

And yeah — we just knew. It was obvious. We fit, we made sense. It worked. Our relationship was something neither of us had ever experienced before, and we weren’t scared to admit that, or to talk about the future. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t anxious that I’d say the wrong thing, that something would come to ruin my happiness, that everything would fall apart, that this would be just another fling that wouldn’t work out. I wasn’t filled with doubts. This would work out. Keinahura.

And everything progressed as it should.

Honestly, that’s it! That’s the whole story. I spent so much of the last eight years of my life obsessing, constantly, about if or when I would meet my future husband. Praying for it, crying over it, writing about it, talking about it, thinking about it. I went through such hell, watching everyone else get engaged and married, feeling like I’d be the last single person left on earth, wondering how I could ever find love. It consumed me at times. The idea of being happy, of having a partner in this life, of finding someone whose soul could match with mine, who would see me and want to be with me while I also wanted to be with him, seemed so incredibly remote, so far away from my lived reality. It seemed, frankly, impossible. It was like being a cactus with aspirations of becoming a cocktail waitress.

I am obviously not alone in this experience. Many people have felt this way, many other people feel this way now, and many people will continue to feel this way for years to come. And there are no guarantees that everything will just turn out okay. Yes, MOST people get married, or find what they’re looking for, but the truth is that not everyone does. And even if they do, that doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily be happy, or that the relationship will be easy. I’m not here to tell you that no matter how much you suffer, everything will be okay. I don’t know that. There's no overarching moral to this, no lesson to be learned.

I’m just here to tell you my own little story. I suffered a lot. It is not easy to watch everyone around you pair up while feeling like you’ll never merit to have love in your life. It isn’t easy to have relationship after relationship fail for one reason or another, to hold your breath with a smidgen of hope before collapsing back into an even deeper despair. It’s not easy feeling like the one thing in your life that you want more than anything is just not within your grasp, no matter what you do.

The only thing I know for sure is that timing is everything. I wasn’t ready, all those years. If I’d met Phil in Jerusalem (which was theoretically possible, as we were both there for at least one overlapping year), I don’t know if we would have gotten married. Maybe neither of us were in a place, at that point, where we were ready to see each other the way we do now. I think we both had to go through a lot of difficult things before we became the people we were on April 17, 2018 — relationships, disappointments, revelations, growth, change . . .

It’s funny thinking back on all the prayers I sent up to Hashem over those many long empty years. So many supplications, so many tears, so many earnest appeals, and my heart was in it every time. I wanted it so badly. And all that time Hashem was listening, knowing He couldn’t answer quite yet, but at the same time knowing that Phil was in my future, that he was traveling his own long, winding path towards me, knowing that despite my misery, I would one day be happier than I ever thought possible. I didn’t know that, but He did.

Sorry to get all religious on you, normals. But you know what to expect at this point!

I’m engaged. We’re engaged. I am living in this reality now where the person I’m meant to be with is finally here. I used to live life thinking about that empty space next to me, that gaping hole where partnership and love belonged, wondering what it would be like to have it, to go through the world with your person. Not alone. To have someone beside you, whether to comfort you in your darkest moments or just hang out and watch TV.

It’s so much better than I imagined. Really.

And not just because I’m loved, not just because I have a wonderful, cute, funny, caring, thoughtful, sweet, smart guy who loves me, but because I get to love him.

Turns out I have a lot of love to give. All those years, it just backed up inside of me until it curdled into anger, frustration, and misery. All I wanted was someone to love, to care for, to nurture. I remember folding my laundry and thinking that I couldn’t wait until I got to fold my husband’s laundry too. I WANTED to do his laundry! That’s how much I loved my imaginary future husband! Except he wasn’t there. And neither were his socks.

And now he is. And they are. And approximately 130 days from now, his laundry will become OUR laundry. Just like I always dreamed.

See, children? Dreams really do come true.