E3246's TTC Story

Posted Monday, July 19, 2010 1:16 PM

Chance meeting

The night before I turned 20, I made a list of all the things I wanted to be and do in my “adult life”: graduate college, create a career, marry, have kids, and travel the world were top on the list. Creating this list has influenced my life, but I’ve also found that some of the most magical and meaningful things to happen could never be planned. 

 
I met my husband Rich in November of 2004 at two friends’ birthday party in NYC.  One friend was Rich’s neighbor, and the other friend was my co-worker’s sister! We both didn’t know it would be a “tango party", and as we were the only two there who didn’t tango, we sat and talked for several hours. Rich was at Pratt working on his second Master’s degree, this time in industrial design. I was working on a graduate level Master’s degree in Acupuncture and interning at a hospital. He had a very peculiar sense of humor, and I laughed and laughed at some of his commentary and thought he was interesting; he asked for my number at the end of the night. The next day he told some of his art studio mates about meeting me, and how he never asks for girl’s numbers.They asked if he was going to call me. He said he would wait the obligatory three days before calling. The girls shrieked and laughed and told him to not do that!-- to call me right away. So he called me the very next day and we have been together and talking ever since. 

Going the distance

A month into dating, I knew he was special and could envision him being my partner. Through five years of courting though, we had many challenges as we were getting to know each other. We had very different communication styles, backgrounds, worldviews, lifestyles, schedules, friendships and even activities we liked to do. I was a goal setter, a go-getter, and Rich had a more relaxed approach to everything getting done at its own logical pace. Whenever I thought of us, I envisioned a scale; one tipping the other and then back and forth. But during those initial years, as we were both finishing grad school and heading out into the world to develop our careers and livelihoods, it was pressure time, and we were supportive of each other. We could have broken up several times; I think we did for a day, but we both came from divorced families so we knew from the start that we wanted our relationship to differ from what we had known.

To make things work, I began swimming very uncharted waters, studying everything I could find about conscious relationships, communication skills, sacred intimacy. I wondered, did these issues relate to our own childhood, family history, cultural expectations, religious upbringings, financial habits, social circles and life goals? I believed it wasn’t a mistake for us to be together because our “issues” seemed so complimentary at times. I started psychotherapy to address the life changes I was going through leaving my 20’s and entering my 30’s. I attended personal development workshops, changed my diet, practiced yoga, meditated, and just kept moving forward.  Even though I didn’t know what to do or why we were acting the way we were, I was motivated: if we somehow married, or became pregnant, I wanted to clear up some of my own issues so that I wouldn’t “pass them on” to a child. I also wanted to be in the healthiest relationship possible for this child.

Rich made three promises to himself that he has told me recently: to ask my father for permission to marry me in my family’s language (I’m Korean-American, Rich is Italian-American), to pay for my ring himself, and to financially prepare to start a family. So far, he’s delivered on all three. He’s also been more supportive during times when I would have ran out on my self.  In many ways, we are letting go of our youthful programming and becoming adults together.

As deep as our challenges have been, we have experienced such great heights too—traveling the world together, trying new things, holding a space for one another, loving one another until we felt we could reach for our own dreams.  I’ve never met anybody else with such deep compassion and acceptance before. 

Getting hitched

In our sixth year of being together, we closed the doors on our dating life and said hello to day one of marriage! Rich and I got married in Iceland, in a little country church in an old whaling town.  We invited 12 family members and friends to our ceremony, as well as a traditional Icelandic priest and the older couple who owned the church.  It was the first time both of our families met (formally), and we all spent a long weekend together touring all over Iceland seeing the geysers, waterfalls, geothermic hot springs, and more.

We've realized that we want to have children together but we’re still working through things, even as we are TTC. We’re committed to couple’s therapy to work through some of our core issues.  I don’t know if there’s ever going to be a time where everything is so perfect we can say, “Now! NOW! Let’s conceive now!”  Rich once told me long ago that I focused on the negatives while he focused on the positives. I’ve since learned that us combined seems to equal everything out in our lives. So we’re making the most of this time now as a gift, an opportunity, to prepare meaningfully for parenthood. If it happens, great. If not for a while, I’m still getting used to my first year of marriage! 

I’ve experienced valuable life lessons and blessings not on my “wish list” that I never would have known to even ask for. 

> Want to share your TTC story? Email it now to kstanford@theknot.com!