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Brittany L. Bergman

Savoring motherhood, building marriage, and living simply

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The Marriage that Almost Wasn’t: Our Dating Story

Aug 2 38 Comments

Dan and I just celebrated our three-year wedding anniversary (and we’ve now been together for nearly five years), and it hit me that I’ve never actually shared many details about our love story here on the blog. I thought it would be fun to share more about how we met and what our dating years were like as we start out another year of married life!

***

I met Dan through a mutual friend in June 2011, just a few days before my 24th birthday. He lived in the suburbs at the time and was visiting a friend in Chicago, and we talked all night at a gathering where I knew everyone and he knew just that one person.

Dan immediately struck me as charming and kind, so I thought he’d just attached himself to me, the first friendly face he met, because he didn’t really have connections at the party. I didn’t put it together that he was interested in me romantically until he asked me out at the end of the night. Caught off guard entirely, and not sure that I was interested back, I mumbled something like “Okay, yeah . . . find me on Facebook!” as I awkwardly stumbled off with my friends.

Our Dating Story 1

We went out about a month later, meeting for coffee and walking around a forest preserve on the hottest day of the year. Not a great conversationalist myself, I was surprised by how easy it was to talk to Dan and how there was never a lull in our conversation; he gracefully buoyed us along and asked thoughtful questions.

I don’t remember the details of what he asked or what I said, but I remember thinking how nice it was to have someone ask me questions and be genuinely interested in the answers, because my previous boyfriend had probably asked fewer questions, and certainly less-thoughtful questions, in our two whole years of dating than Dan had asked in those two hours.

At the end of the date, Dan asked if he could see me again, and without hesitating, I said, “Sure, but I’d like to spend time with you just as friends.” My answer didn’t make sense to me at the time, but I couldn’t put the words back inside my mouth. He didn’t call me after that.

***

I spent the summer wondering if I’d made a horrible mistake, but feeling too prideful to ask Dan for another chance. I kept hoping we’d run into each other at an event, but since our only mutual friend had moved across the country, there was really no chance of it.

After a few weeks of hearing me wrestle and whine and wish for impossible things, my friend Hillary told me to put on my big-girl pants, apologize, and ask him out myself. So I did, via Facebook message, and that very night, we ran into each other at a birthday party for the aforementioned mutual friend, who had moved back to Chicago earlier that week.

We danced all night and went out on another date the next week. Before I knew what was happening, “Do you want to go out again this weekend?” turned into “What should we do this weekend?” every weekend, which turned into“Where do you see yourself living long-term?” and “How many kids do you want to have?” which turned into “I love you,” and “Will you marry me?” just over a year later.

***

We spent our dating years adventuring: taking day trips to Lake Geneva, dining al fresco in Chicago, sampling craft beers and ice cream all over the Midwest. We rode our bikes all over the suburbs and stayed up way too late talking on the phone.

Our Dating Story 2

Our dating relationship was mostly smooth sailing; despite my initial hesitation, I knew very early on — about two months in — that I was going to marry him. Dan, on the other hand, hemmed and hawed despite his deeply personal questions about my vision for my future family; he dragged his heels until his friends and family began to question him about why he hadn’t proposed yet.

Each time we talked about the possibility of marriage, Dan wasn’t ready and I was crushed; he’d leave it open-ended and unclear, and I’d cry after he left.

A few days after one of these talks that ended in my tears, we went ring shopping “just to see” what I liked. He went back three weeks later and bought me the rings I wear today.

***

Dan proposed while we were on a short-term mission trip to the Dominican Republic. He read aloud a letter he wrote to me before we left, envisioning our future and assuring me of the kind of marriage we would have and the kind of husband he would be, and I can honestly say that we are living the words of that letter now as we grow together and raise our daughter.

***

During our dating, God used Dan to bring to the surface and heal many of my insecurities, and he continues to today through Dan’s patience, genuine joy, and optimistic outlook.

I started dating Dan shortly after walking through some of the most difficult trials of my life: watching my parents divorce, leaving an abusive relationship, and battling an eating disorder. To this day, it surprises me that he still found me beautiful and worthy, not a giant red flag; that of all the women he could have set his sights on, he set them on me.

I knew right away that Dan is a better human than I am — less critical, less demanding, more hopeful, more patient — and I maintain, three years into marriage, that he is truly my better half.

I’ve never loved him more than I do right now, watching him love our daughter and take delight in everything she does, in every big smile she saves just for him. I can hardly believe we’ve been married for only three years, because it feels like we’ve lived a whole lifetime together. Though I can remember my life without him, of course, this is the year that I started to feel like I’ve always known him, like it never could have been anyone else.

What were your dating years like for you and your spouse? Did you know right away the he or she was the one you’d marry? 

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Filed Under: Marriage Tagged With: dating, dreams, gratitude, husband, love, marriage, relationships

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brittanylbergman

Brittany L. Bergman
✔️ Kamala shirt ✔️ Kamala pearls ✔️ Ka ✔️ Kamala shirt
✔️ Kamala pearls
✔️ Kamala mug 
✔️ Kamala curls

It’s a great day to witness the shattering of a glass ceiling, to embrace empathy and decency, and to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The work is only just beginning, but today, we celebrate. Congratulations, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris! 👏🏼🎉💙
What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaki What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaking, cozy, chaotic-but-strangely-quiet Christmas we had. ✨🎄✨

That’s a wrap for me on 2020—I’ll be off social media until sometime in January. May you be filled with peace and hope as we close this year but still wait for the close of this chapter in our history. 💜
I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; d I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; depression and rage; exhaustion and loneliness. But I can honestly say this is the weariest Christmas I can remember. I say that not to shine a spotlight on me, but to say that I have a feeling this might be your experience too. I’m with you.
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And so the words to my favorite Christmas hymn hit me different this year. They resonate in a place much deeper, more tender and true than ever before. I rejoice in the giggles of my meltdown-prone child. I rejoice in stolen moments alone in the dark, the room lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree. I rejoice in every video and every social media post I see of a frontline worker receiving the COVID vaccine, our ticket out of this nightmare. I rejoice in the vision that next Christmas might look more familiar than this one does. I rejoice in the hope of Christ, whose universal, creative, motherly love holds the whole universe together.
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On this Christmas Eve, I’ll leave you with this quote from Howard Thurman. I hope these words bring a slant of light to your day.
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“The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”
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Whatever and however you celebrate at this time of year, I’m sending you all my love and peace. 💫
I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in the nick of time.

I baked cookies with Selah without getting frustrated (first time ever?), took the kids on drive to see Christmas lights, and wrapped a bunch of gifts.

But here’s what I think did the trick, and please do steal this idea (because I stole it from someone else but have no idea who): Magical Movie Night™️.

On Saturday night, I stealthily placed a golden ticket under Selah’s pillow (which I printed from the internets and colored quickly with a yellow marker; good enough is good enough for Magical Movie Night!). We put Eamon to bed and got Selah ready for bed too, going through all the normal motions of brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, picking out a book. When we climbed into bed, I told her to look under her pillow.

She was confused when she found the ticket, and I told her it was for a Christmas movie night. “When?” she asked. “Right now!” I said. “What do you mean ‘right now’?” When it dawned on her that she was going to stay up past her bedtime to have a special movie night with Mommy and Daddy (sans Eamon), she lost her mind with excitement.

Bonus: Gramma was waiting downstairs with a bag of popcorn and Swedish Fish!

We snuggled under blankets, turned on Elf, and laughed our festive butts off. (This was her first time watching Elf, and it felt like the dawning of a new era. It’s such a big kid movie! And she loved it! Hold me. 😭)

Deck the halls, bring on Christmas, fill my mug with holly jolly goodness. 

I also acknowledge this has been a crappy year in so many ways, and I know many of you are not going to be able to access Christmas cheer this year. That’s okay. The real spirit of Christmas is light breaking through the dark, love making a way, and the beauty that can’t help seeping through the dirty, messy, horribly human moments of our lives. So you’re covered.

(And if you want to fake it ’til you make it, give Magical Movie Night a try. It’s the actual easiest.)
In which I couldn’t come up with a clever captio In which I couldn’t come up with a clever caption. There are signs of life but my brain is dead. 💀
“This is what I find most mystifying about Adven “This is what I find most mystifying about Advent: the period of waiting ultimately ends in great joy, but we can’t get to that great joy without intense, active, unbearable pain. In Advent we sense the mingling of anticipation and anxiety, excitement and disappointment, joy and pain, hope and fear.
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“On this side of history, we have the luxury of waiting with great hope, great joy, and great expectation. We know Jesus will be born, we know he will save us and redeem us, we know he will die and rise again, and we know he will set all things right one day.
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“But before Christ came, Advent was dark. It was lonely and unknown, as the Israelites waited in faith to hear from God, and all they got was… nothing. Silence.
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“Isn’t this more characteristic of the waiting we usually do? The waiting seasons of our lives are less often marked by joy and hope and more often marked by pain and fear. They are not often cozy or comforting but difficult and dark and even laborious.
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“We wait as a pregnant mother waits for her child to be born—there’s a vision of the joy to come, to be sure, but in the throes of gut-wrenching labor pains, we think we might actually die before we see that joy fulfilled. After a long season of pregnancy, when the fullness of time has arrived, the advent of labor ushers in the real period of waiting—and it is active and painful and raw.”
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// From “In the Fullness of Time,” a new blog post on @first15. There’s a link in my bio to the whole piece, with thoughts on pregnancy, Advent, and waiting well in an exceptionally hard year. 💜 Thank you so much to @first15 for publishing this post!
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Brittany L Bergman is a for-profit blog. Any company that I collaborate with is chosen by me and fits the theme and readership of my blog. At times, posts may contain affiliate links or sponsored content, which is never at any charge to you.

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