Lauren received a message from a member name Neal, but he didn’t have any photos on his profile.
“I was like, really?” says Lauren, 34, from San Diego.
Still she felt intrigued enough to message him back.
“There was something about the way he wrote his profile that got my attention. I could tell there was more to him, so I wanted to give him a chance.”
Ironically, Neal, then 37, contacted Lauren because he liked her picture. He hadn’t realized that he didn’t post a picture of himself on his profile.
Lauren messaged Neal back and asked him if he had any photos.
“And he immediately sent me a few selfies. He was in the middle of working out at the gym!” Lauren laughs.
Seeing that Neal took care of himself impressed her.
So, she asked him out.
They messaged back and forth that week, and Lauren casually asked Neal out.
“I just said, “Would you like to get coffee?”
The night before their date, they Facetimed to make sure they liked each other enough to meet.
Lauren says Neal made a good impression on her. “I noticed his thoughtful manner. He asked me questions about myself."
After video chatting with Lauren, Neal definitely felt interested in seeing more of her. He noticed that Lauren seemed to be genuinely interested in getting to know him. She also asked a lot of questions.
“The number one thing that attracted me to Lauren is that she’s absolutely beautiful. The number two reason is the more that we talk to each other, the more I realized how much she cares about people. She's an elementary school teacher and that's a heavy responsibility.”
Lauren liked that Neal, who’s in the Navy, is service-oriented. Whenever he sees someone in need, he jumps up and helps.
“I remember one time at Mass there was this lady who came in kind of late, and she was struggling with her walker. He just got up and helped her. Neal’s always doing things like that.”
Going the distance.
About five months into their relationship, Neal got stationed in another part of California, which was six hours away.
“We were already really serious by then, but I knew that this would be a big test of our commitment to each other. It was either going to make us or break us,” Lauren says.
She adds, “I had an intuition that it was going to make us be stronger and make us prioritize each other and the relationship first,” she says. “Having a long- distance relationship wasn't something that was on my radar. When we began dating, I didn't know he was going to be leaving.”
Neal explains, “It wasn’t something that I hid from her. I found out three or four weeks into our dating relationship.
When he told Lauren, she thought, “This isn’t going to work.”
Lauren continues, “Long-distance wasn't something I really wanted, but Neal was adamant that he would make the time to see me on the weekends.”
Bringing up the M word.
In early August 2018, two weeks after Neal was re-stationed, Lauren went to the Fresno area to attend a function with Neal’s command. Two weeks later, he drove down to San Diego, so they could attend a wedding and spend time with some friends.
Attending the wedding gave Neal the opening to test the waters with Lauren.
“I asked her what her thoughts were on marriage, and she said something to the effect of, ‘I already know what I'm going to say.’ So I kind of took that as saying, ‘Go forth and conquer.’”
The next weekend, after having dated Lauren for six months, Neal bought a ring. The Sunday of Labor Day weekend 2018, they were at Lauren’s apartment and when she left the room, Neal got down on one knee. When Lauren returned, she got a surprise!
“I was not expecting it,” she recalls. “He was acting so nervous that whole day I was actually getting kind of annoyed with him.”
The proposal changed her mood, and she began to cry. “I was so happy and of course I said, ‘Yes!’ I had never felt this way about anyone.”
They both knew they had something special that neither of them had ever experienced.
Longer than your average bear?
Lauren and Neal gave a speech at their June 22, 2019, wedding reception. Lauren said to Neal, “I waited a long time for a man like you, and you were worth the wait.”
Both of them felt like they were lucky to have met “the one.” They had been single “longer than the average bear” as Neal says.
They feel God saved them for each other, and they’re glad they'd never settled.
