Love Is Still Possible After Almost Vomiting on Your First Date
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It was early 2017 and Eliana (now 35) had a problem.
Ever since she was tempted to sign up for CatholicMatch by the year-for-the-price-of-a-month Valentine’s Day deal she had been receiving lots of messages, but not one had caught her eye. Having had one marriage end in a disaster and annulment, she was feeling a little jaded about the whole romance thing. Mostly she was just there because she wanted her children to have a normal family, though a small, secret voice insider her whispered that she wasn’t done yet.
Meanwhile, Ben (now 37) was just coming off of a life full of adventure, teaching English all around the world, and was feeling that it was high time he got a family started. He started scrolling through profiles on different dating websites to see whether any of them were worth paying for.
At the end of April, he happened across Eliana’s profile.
That was enough to make him pay for the chance to send her a message: “Hey, Eliana, how are you? You seem like an amazing person. Have a good day!”
Money well spent.
Ordinarily, Eliana wouldn’t have bothered replying. For one thing, she couldn’t tell what he looked like, since every photo seemed like a different person. But on the other hand, she liked the way he wrote his profile (like he "wasn't trying too hard to be awesome"), and if he’d been around the world that would mean they’d at least have something interesting to talk about.
So, late at night, she wrote back: “Hey, Ben. I’m just a normal, slightly nerdy person, but thank you. Things are going well. How are you?”
Ben got the message just when he was about to go to bed.
He considered putting it off until morning, but a nagging feeling told him he needed to talk to her right now. Thus began two weeks of delightful texts between the two of them.
“He was really funny,” Eliana recalled. “I was always smiling and laughing at my phone.” Through these texts, Ben achieved the seemingly impossible; he made Eliana’s parents like him before they even met him, simply because he was making her laugh.
The new couple quickly arranged to meet, and their first through sixth dates came on May 6th and 7th at Disney World.
Thing was, upon meeting they found they just couldn’t get enough of each other, leading to a marathon 16 hour dating session that started at nine AM at Epcot and included their first selfie, their first kiss, and the first time one nearly threw up on the other (this usually has to wait until well into the engagement).
The latter came about when Eliana wanted to ride the Mission Space ride.
Ben, who suffers from motion sickness, tried to beg off by mentioning that people had died on it. She thought he was joking and dragged him into line, where he stood silent for the whole hour-long wait (Eliana: “Oh, great; this guy doesn’t like me. He’s not saying a word…” Ben: “How, oh how, am I going to avoid vomiting all over her?”).
He finally decided he would just keep his eyes shut. Cue the instructional video warning people not to keep their eyes shut, as that makes the motion sickness much, much worse.
He kept his eyes open and, somehow, avoided the worst. More proof that God’s hand was at work.
At last, about three in the morning after going to see Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2, Ben and Eliana decided to call it a night. After all, they were due to meet again for morning Mass in a few hours.
On their respective drives home, they were both actually cried for joy, and Ben even pulled over to send Eliana what she called “some of the sweetest text messages she had ever read” before he even got home.
The next day was another marathon session, starting with Mass, then wandering the outlet stores and dinner at a steakhouse. Eliana asked for a to go box and, as per her habit, scraped an ‘E’ into the top to mark it as hers. Ben proceeded to add a ‘B’ and an ‘N’ to it to claim it as his own.
Unbeknownst to him, this exact thing – messing with her takeout boxes – was a long-standing joke that Eliana had with her brother.
At that point, she knew she had found her soulmate.
That night, she told him she loved him. They both promptly deleted their profiles: they’d gotten what they wanted. God had turned the disaster of Eliana’s first marriage and divorce into a blessing for both of them.
So certain were they that they never bothered with a formal engagement; they both knew from the first date that they’d be getting married.
They were married in February 2019, the day after Valentine’s (they’re both forgetful, so they picked an easy date to remember).
Eliana’s kids, who had grown to love Ben, gave her away at the ceremony. They’re now expecting a new little girl.
“The best thing about being married,” Ben said. “Is being part of a family and having people who you love to share things with.”
One final sign that God was at work: just before coming across her profile, Ben had prayed hard to find his wife. Then, after talking with her a little, he looked up her somewhat-unusual name.
“Turns out ‘Eliana’ means ‘my God has answered.’”
Fancy that!