In Honor of My Sweetie's Birthday, which is today…
When we talk about setting, we’re often plotting a dot on a map or making a mood board filled with cactuses or city scapes. But a large part of my sweetheart and I’s early courting took place inside a dropbox file, I kid you not.
It’s their birthday today, and so in their honor I’m going to share some of the story of how this particular pixelated, black-text-on-white-page courtship took place.
It started with boundaries. And Grover loves a boundary, so that’s apt. Thing is, we were long distance….
I knew within 48 hours of our first date that I would have married this person and had their babies in our circumstances were different. But ours were …impractical. To say the least. For one, Grover and I did not live in the same place. In fact, we lived on opposite coasts when we met. We were on the same crew at an annual music festival in Michigan, which is where we had our first date. Some of you might know which one I'm referring to.
But when it was clear that neither of us really wanted to leave the other one well enough alone, we had to figure out a way to communicate that wasn’t disruptive to our daily lives, too emotionally intrusive, or simply too tempting—they were finishing their PhD, FFS. We knew that notifications flying across our screens while they were teaching their students or while I was presenting to some marketing team or executives would send us reeling into an “omgwhataretheygonnasay???” tizzy. I, for one, would definitely, definitely have opened every message IN my meetings and then would have spent the next hour crafting the most excellent response—I am a writer, afterall—great for the relationship, terrible for my livelihood.
Gif by thenopecat on Giphy
Gif by inkygirl on Giphy
So back in 2011, instead of sending emails or text messages, we opened a DropBox file and wrote a letter. There was a mutual agreement: when one of us had the time, or the desire, we would seek each other out in that space. We ended up writing each other in that one document three to five times a day. And if I remember correctly, everytime one of us would make a change we would update the filename by a factor of 1. The version I am looking at is titled “Read This First 79.”
The beauty of it was that we were giving each other the space we needed — to have our own lives, to take care of our own needs — and choosing, over and over again, to come together in that space.
And in that way, the document grew, and so did we. That document is 96 pages. And yes, of course, I still have it.
xo
Nova
P.S. It’s worth nothing that Grover is also a writer. And, while I’m not gonna say that writers getting to know each other in writing first is for everyone, we were engaged after four months. Just sayin’…
P.P.S. Wanna share how you and your sweetie(s) past or present fell in love?
Last week there were some issues with the zoom link. Please DM me in instagram if that happens again and I’ll DM you the link directly.