Natalie was not, at least on the surface, a likely candidate to find dating success in a long-distance relationship. For one, she was still in college in her home state of Indiana. And perhaps more importantly, she struggled with a vision problem that made it impossible for her to drive and even difficult to see a young man across the room.
Yet long-distance success is exactly what she found on CatholicMatch.
It certainly didn’t come easy. “Some guys decided they didn’t want to deal with someone…who could not drive,” Natalie said, recalling her early experiences on CatholicMatch after she signed up fresh out of high school in 2008. “I decided to get off the website for a year in 2009. Then in the fall of 2010 I decided to try again.”
Sean was just looking for friends when he came to CatholicMatch. He found much more.
The person she found was Sean, just out of college and working as a financial analyst in Grand Rapids, Mich. He wasn’t even looking for a relationship per se—just a few friends since he’d relocated.
After an initial emotigram from Natalie got them connected, the spent three weeks talking on the phone and using the CatholicMatch chat feature. Then he made the four-hour drive to meet her in person.
“I sensed something right away with him,” Natalie told CatholicMatch. “For Sean it was..our third date that he also sensed something special.” That initial face-to-face date took place in November and from then until the following July, Sean assumed the driving responsibility in the long-distance relationship. Every other weekend he came to Indianapolis and by the fall of 2011 he was ready to move closer to Natalie.
“Sean found a job that seemed to be fate due to the circumstances,” Natalie recalled. “I continued to attend school and work part-time. Due to our Catholic upbringing, Sean and I chose not to move in together…I stayed with my mother and he lived down the street.”
Natalie's vision impairment was just one small part of a faith-filled person and Sean saw that.
