How I met and fell in love with my Husband
/OUR FIRST DATE
Despite having some positive exchanges with an intriguing man online, I was having resistance to going out on yet another first date on a sunny Friday afternoon in June 2011.
I had spent the early part of the day practicing Thai Massage on a friend in her Brooklyn home, lamenting about my resistance to the upcoming date.
“You make it sound like torture, girl!” she said to me.
I had been dating for a while at this point, and feeling pretty convinced that nobody lived up to my standards or would match my drive and ambition in life. I was also pretty full of myself in those days!
At the same time, I couldn’t deny the synchronicities we’d discovered after meeting online.
Within a few back and forth messages, we realized that although we were online hoping to date outside our social circles, we came to find out we not only shared a social circle, but had over 70 friends in common, and had been at many of the same parties and events over a 6 year span.
He even had photographs of me performing a New Year’s gig two years prior to our very first conversation.
One of several photos nick had of me from a performance 2 years before our first conversation
And we’d never met.
I realized I needed to get out of my head and into a better frame of mind.
I took myself out to dance in my hoop later that day. At the time, I was addicted to hula hoop dance: teaching classes, performing with fire, and choreographing big group dances as part of my Joyful Movement business.
I got carried away and lost track of time. By the time I got back to my apartment I’d lost the time to shower and primp for the date.
I received a text that my date was running late too.
I was eager to cancel, but he insisted, proclaiming he really wanted to meet me.
My resistance persisted, I no longer wanted to get on the train and follow through with our original plan, so I directed him to the Mexican joint at the end of my block. He was agreeable, and was on his way.
He beat me there and had gotten us a table. Instantly I noticed he was cuter in person than in his profile.
We ordered tacos, and he proceeded to dive into asking my thoughtful and insightful questions about my life, my work and my art.
This delighted me to no end. I received the attention I craved, the genuine curiosity I desired, and felt seen by this man.
As we wrapped up the date, he reached for the check with no hesitation and signed the bill with his left hand, both of which made my heart skip a beat.
A gentlemanly act and a Lefty to boot! Being a Lefty myself, I find joy in knowing other Lefties as only 10% of the worldwide population is left dominant. I’d never dated a Lefty before!
He then asked me the magic question which 100% secured a second date with him, “Would you like to see my motorcycle?”
It was over this said motorcycle we had our first kiss, and mutual expression of desire to see each other again.
ME, on said motorcycle three weeks after we met
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FALLING IN LOVE
Our second date was the following Monday. He picked me up on his motorcycle despite my completely inappropriate but cute attire.
We drove out to industrial parts of Brooklyn to take in a sunset, and later a bite to eat. On this date we shared about our upbringings, families, early life experiences, and found even more commonality in our individual life paths.
I knew I felt expansive with this man, and I desired to see him again.
Our third date he walked me from a gig back to his place, where he had made the most delicious dinner for me. We discovered more and more alignment in our values, work-ethic, passions and lifestyle. He made me feel at ease, connected, and like we’d known each other for a lifetime.
It was this date that I decided internally I’d be up for exploring a long term relationship with this man.
Concurrently as Nick and I were getting to know each other, I was rehearsing my biggest creative work to date: a choreographed dance for 50 hula hoopers for an upcoming outdoor NYC festival.
Following the performance of HELLO HoopDance
Weeks before Nick sent his first message to me online, I created a 10-minute hoop dance for the NYC Roller Derby team, at the invitation of a Pilates client of mine who’d been nudging me to perform a halftime show for months.
I pulled together two songs I thought worked well together, created a 10-minute dance and taught it to some hoop friends to dance it with me.
As I typed out the song lyrics for my dancers, I chuckled at the irony that the two songs together spelled out a love story, while I had just experienced my first healthy, adult, romantic breakup.
Once the derby show was over, I decided to keep the dance going and entered it into an outdoor NYC arts festival several weeks later, and dove deep into recruiting even more dancers and running rehearsals.
The topic of the dance came up on my first date with Nick. Nick, owning his own production company at the time, offered to shoot & video document our performance, sight unseen. I was beside myself with the generosity, and gleefully accepted his offer.
Two weeks and five dates later, the big day of the dance arrived. In the middle of my performance, It struck me that the love story spelled out in the lyrics of my music was unfolding in my own life.
I had written my own love story, and realized the man I’d “cleared” for long term consideration was more than just a great man, he was my PERSON.
And there he was filming me. I’d brought all of my people together in dance to welcome him into my life. The name of the dance was called HELLO. Synchronicities kept unfolding.
After the final bows, he invited me to escape the chaos on our bikes to another part of the festival. We sat down and out of the blue asked me, “Do you believe in Soulmates?”
We both knew in that moment that what we had was special, and declared our love and commitment to each other.
Some people might argue that we fell in love “too fast”, or perhaps we were attracted to each other’s wounding.
Maybe they’re right.
But the fact that we’re both committed to growth, learning about love, and believe in the human capacity to evolve, is why we’re still loving each other today, 12 years later.
Bex & Nick, clockwise from top left: 2011, 2014, 2015, 2022, 2018, 2017