The Story

Josiah

Natalie and I officially met on the Brooklyn waterfront in 2020. We are both convinced we brushed shoulders at some Belmont party in Nashville or a college party in Chattanooga. 

I moved to NYC in 2020 and begged my friend Tori to let me crash her girl picnic in Brooklyn because I desperately needed friends. Natalie was at this event, and I recall being struck by her insane confidence and huge aura. I really couldn’t get her out of my head. 

I was new to the city and full of wanderlust. I needed a similarly minded partner to explore the city with. Natalie had the perfect sense of adventure, and we became fast friends. 

Around this time, I began going to church again. I brought Natalie with me to a church full of musicians. After church, we formed a habit of getting boozy brunch where we began to discuss deeper topics. It was during these discussions that I learned of her individual thinking. I was impressed that she really didn’t seem to sponge up the belief systems of her friend groups/surroundings. (Over the last 6 years of knowing Natalie I have benefited quite a lot from her ability to fly a free-thinking freak flag).

I caught feelings for Natalie at some point during our church/NYC adventure friendship. I stopped dating around, and started pondering the idea of "making it weird" by professing my feelings for my friend. Eventually, it felt like it was a "have-to-do" kind of thing, and so I took the plunge. 

After some time of consideration, we started dating. Quite quickly we began discovering some very different relational muscles under the hood. She embraced conflict and was quick to point out when things felt off. I was a professional avoider of bad vibes, and would let things pile up. The misalignments began piling up and compounding. After 6 months we broke up. 

The following 6 months were brutal. Both of us nursed our wounds and sought inner-healing. Even though we had only dated for 6 months, we had made a deep emotional impact on each other. 

We began chatting again. We both discovered that healing had come through the pain, and that many of our relationally rough edges had become sanded down. We cautiously decided to try again. This time with an intense dedication to solving the issues that split us apart the first time. After several months of walking through our friction points, we arrived at a deep long-term alignment and professed our love together. We had discovered - no - earned, chemistry. After years of fighting for each other and refusing to settle for the status quo, we are getting married, knowing that we have the core values alignment and faith to anchor our commitment. 

Here’s to many adventurous years.