As a long time reader on the Bee, I always like to get to know the couples I am reading about and I hope you do too; it puts everything in perspective for us here. If you don't like this kind of thing, then I've got plenty of wedding planning posts coming up soon!
Where we left off, I was telling you about how Mr. Sphinx and I started dating when I was a senior in high school, after meeting on a trip to Europe.
Most of our relationship has been long distance; we weren't very far away but it did last for several years. I moved to Baton Rouge, LA, for college for four years, and Sphinx worked in New Orleans. It's only about an hour apart, but we were limited in how much we were able to see each other. He got plenty of frequent-driver miles on I-10 over those years, coming up to see me whenever I had a free-ish weekend. And of course, as a good LSU student I was able to make it work it by getting him some tickets to see his favorite football team play.
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| Attending LSU games through the years. |
During the summers I was further away, since engineering students are expected to get internships and some of those involve relocating for a few months. Since Sphinx is a good sport, he would come visit me for a week or two and we would explore whatever new area I was working in. These places included New Mexico (where we went white water rafting), California (so we visited Las Vegas and the Hoover Dam), Dallas, and Disney World! Okay, so Disney World wasn't for engineering - it was just for fun with the Disney College Program after graduation!
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| White water rafting in 2008, Hoover Dam in 2009, Graduation in 2010, and Disney in 2011. |
I don't think that either of us would tell you that the first five years of our relationship were easy, but we learned to make it work. We would have long phone calls at night because we couldn't talk much during the day, and we had to make plans whenever we wanted to see each other on the weekends. Any misunderstanding is harder to reconcile when you can't see the person you're talking to; happy moments aren't able to be celebrated until days or weeks later and you have to get through tough times with just words from a phone. To top it all off, I usually had final exams on our anniversary. But those years are when we got to know each other and develop our relationship, and it made us the couple we are today. I know in "long distance world" we weren't too far away, so I commend anyone who is going through something more substantial!
When I was able to get a full-time job back home in New Orleans, we almost didn't know what to do with ourselves. This was a whole new look at our relationship, we would get to spend so much more time together doing things we never could before! But would we get annoyed with each other being around so often - or bored? We're both kind of introverted, in that we like downtime alone to do our own thing so I didn't know what to expect.
Well, we ended up not even even needing to worry about that, as a much bigger problem popped up. The week that I started my full time job, Sphinx was laid off. Seriously, universe? We're finally able to live and work in the same city, and his job was taken away because of a situation out of his control. He was able to find a new job in his field within two weeks, but it was a really crummy one. Suffice to say, he was not happy at this position and we spent a lot of time job hunting. Also during this time, my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer and passed away, Sphinx's grandmother was diagnosed with cancer and passed away, I was getting acclimated to my new job, and I bought a house. It was a stressful, rough time for the both of us, and while our relationship didn't suffer, it was very different that the times when the worst thing going on was that we had to wait to see each other in a few weeks. And let's be honest: the 2011-2012 version of Miss Pyramid was all OMG-we've-been-dating-six-years-lets-go! on the engagement, but deep down I knew it was not the right time.
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| Food and Wine Festival 2011. |
Finally, it came down to the 2012 Disney World Food and Wine Festival Trip with his parents, we had been checking out rings, and sure, his job situation hadn't improved, but I was hoping he would just do it anyway!
And then his crappy job told him he could not have the days off.
We had to cancel our trip.
Talk about a bummed out Pyramid...
But you know this story has a happier ending to it, right? As it would happen, Sphinx went in for a job interview the week we should have been in Florida, and was offered the job the next day - at a great non-profit company with a great work environment and much better opportunities. He did one of those things you probably shouldn't do and asked for time off just after starting; he wanted to reschedule our Disney trip for a week in December over our anniversary, just the two of us.
Apparently they were OK with letting him off on vacation so soon since he told them a little secret about that trip...
Jumping ahead, you'll see plenty of things from our past popping up at the wedding: songs about LDRs, songs popular at LSU football games and other paraphernalia, and a good bit of Disney magic. It also put a new outlook on wedding planning, we were able to fully make it a priority since we had just gotten through so much junk.
Did you feel like you pulled "Do not pass GO, do not collect $200" at any point in your relationship? Do you believe in things happening for a reason?
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