Mike's Parents Didn't Want Him to Get Married

Editor's note: Mike and Lauren shared their success story last year. Here is an exciting update! 

Lauren and Mike met on CatholicMatch in May of 2012 when they were 19 and 20. Their union may have never happened, but for three things: Lauren’s CatholicMatch scholarship subscription, Mike’s confidence and willingness to stand firm against an obstacle, and because they didn’t let the nearly 1000 miles between them get in the way of falling in love.

Lauren had just returned from serving as a Catholic missionary, and she was signing up for college classes. Since she was broke, she emailed CatholicMatch to ask if they offered any membership scholarships or discounts for poor former missionaries.

“They said, ‘Write us a letter and send it in the mail. We’ll potentially give you a free CatholicMatch subscription.’ I thought it would be incredible to be able to try this. I sent them a letter in the mail and CatholicMatch sent me a free six-month subscription. I was only expecting a month.”

After Lauren signed up, she saw Mike’s profile, and she sent him a wink. Mike didn’t have a full membership, so they sent smiles back and forth until he signed up a few days later.

After messaging for a couple of weeks, “We decided to Skype just to make sure we weren’t getting “cat-fished” (a person who is not who he or she says she is), says Lauren.

The two were becoming fast friends, but neither thought it would turn into a romantic relationship because Lauren lived in Minnesota and Mike lived in Canada. The distance made dating seem impractical.

“We really enjoyed each other’s company, but Mike was so far away; we were both in college, and we didn’t have much money,” Lauren says.

Lauren always Skyped in public, so all of her family members had talked with Mike. One day in August, while the two were Skyping, Lauren’s mom happened to ask her if she wanted fish, chicken, or beef for her cousin’s October wedding. “I was asking Mike, ‘What do you think I should have?’ Then my mom chimed in and said to Mike, ‘Why don’t you come to the wedding?’”

Lauren says, “When Mike started to look at flights to visit, that’s when our relationship changed. We started looking at one another as a potential spouse. For the first time, I thought it could work out.”

More Prodding

Mike recalls, “We were trying to decide how long I should stay. If we didn’t like each other, then five days would be a very long time—whereas if we did, then it would be a pretty short visit. Fortunately, it ended up being too short.”

At the wedding reception for her cousin, they were standing really close to one another, and it seemed natural to hold hands. “For me, it was like that first moment of ‘Okay, we are in a relationship,’ even though it had never been made official,” Lauren says.

If there were any doubts between them, Lauren’s Aunt candid questioning forced the issue. “My aunt met Mike, and she said, ‘So, what are you guys? Are you boyfriend and girlfriend?’”

“I looked at Lauren and said, ‘Are we?’  Lauren looked at me and said, ‘Sure, if you want to.’”

Mike says normally he would have asked Lauren right out, but he didn’t want to put any pressure on her considering that they would be spending so much time together the next few days. “I didn’t know what was on her mind. My plan was that at the wedding, she would have to introduce me to someone and then we could talk about it. And somehow she went the whole day without having to say, “'This is Mike, my boyfriend,’ or whatever she considered me to be.”

Flying Back and Forth

They planned their next meeting to be in December. Mike would visit for 10 days during his

Christmas break. Unfortunately, he was terribly sick for most of the visit. “He couldn’t even keep down Jell-O. I was taking care of him and loving him through it. I am the oldest of four, so I know how to take care of someone who’s sick. It meant so much to him. I loved him and took care of him at his worst.”

For 16 days in February and March of 2013, Lauren came to visit Mike in Canada.“I got to meet his family. It was really nice. It was really important to our relationship to have a dating experience. We felt like marriage was where we were moving.”

Then in May, Mike visited for five or six days. “We decided pretty much the next time we saw each other that Mike would propose,” Lauren remembers.

Later in June, Lauren made her second visit to Canada. She recalls the wedding proposal. Mike was studying to be a pilot, so he and Lauren biked to his school to practice on the flight simulators. “Afterwards, Mike said there’s a cool detour we should take. The school is near an airport, so he took me to a field right off the runway. I was like ‘Okay, what are we doing out here at 1:00 a.m?’ He got down on one knee and told me he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me and he put the ring on my finger. He didn’t seem to mind that my hair was windblown and I needed a shower. He loved me anyway.”

Getting Married Young

Unfortunately, Mike’s parents were against them getting married, and they tried hard to convince him to wait. They thought he was too young and they wanted him to become successful

before he married.

“A big thing for them was that they grew up in Communist Poland where it was typical for families to be poor, to have lots of kids, and to be very Catholic. When they came to Canada, they put so much work into becoming successful, so when they realized that I wanted what they had fled—getting married young, having lots of kids, being very Catholic, and not worrying about having lots of money—they probably saw that all of their efforts were going down the drain. They didn’t want that to happen.”

Mike desired to get married young because he wanted to experience life—and all of its firsts—with his bride. “I think my biggest reasoning for getting married young is instead of leading separate lives up until the point you get married in your late 20s or early 30s, why not get married young? Then you go through more life experiences together—bonding you even closer together.”

Lauren and Mike took getting married seriously. With permission from Lauren’s priest, they started pre-Cana shortly before Mike proposed.

Despite his parent’s initial wishes, the couple married on March 1, 2014.  “Lauren and I are

maturing together, and we’re sharing the same experiences, bringing us closer together. If we had waited to get married, we would have more differences than commonalities,” Mike explains.

The last year has brought many blessings to the couple. Among those are Mike is now one of the youngest pilots for one of Canada's major regional airlines, they’re expecting a baby mid-September, and Mike’s parents have been gracious and welcoming.