Now, bear in mind, despite my personal views on marriage, at this point in my life I was also no stranger to being engaged. I was previously in a 14-year relationship when I was living in the US, and my ex had proposed to me after civil partnerships were legalised in the state of Massachusetts, where we were living. But it was a long engagement and we broke up before we even got around to setting a date. And another guy I dated for seven months in London before I got together with Chris had actually got down on one knee and proposed to me when we were just four months into the relationship! I must have made an impression on him, but I had to squash his aspirations since really we were still in the beginning phases of getting to know one another. (In contrast, my ex in the US didn’t propose until we had already been together for over 10 years.)
So, marriage was not something that I took lightly, and hence there was a lot of anxiety about whether or not it was a step I wanted to take.
But countering all of this anxiety was also the knowledge that getting married was still something very important to Chris, and the realisation that Chris was the best thing that had happened to me so far in my life. Therefore proposing to Chris was not only something that I wanted to do, but the more I got to know Chris, something that I felt like I had to do.
And so, underneath the light of the full moon while we were on holiday on an island off the coast of Thailand, I got down on one knee and spoke the words that would set us off on yet another journey.
Chris – 1 December 2011
Not much wedding planning has happened yet so, as promised, here’s the story of how this adventure with Donny started.
I met Donny on a gay hiking trip on the Isle of Wight. From the first moment I laid eyes on him I knew he was special. There were two things that initially attracted me to him. The first was his wide, winning smile and the second was his dry, subversive sense of humour, which was always accompanied by a deliciously dirty chuckle. During the first evening of party games, I couldn’t take my eyes off him and hoped that the following two days of walking would give us a chance to spend some time together.
And spend time together we did. In fact, for the first day we spent almost the entire hike chatting together and learning about each other. Sadly, one of the things I learned was that he was going out with someone else. Worse yet, his boyfriend was a high-flying CEO of a software company, and there was no way I was going to be able to compete against that. So I told myself, ‘Oh well, at least I’ve made a new friend.’
The week after the hike I was due to fly to the US on business, so I took the opportunity to drop Donny a message to find out if he wanted me to bring him back anything from his home country. I was expecting just a two- or three-line email in return, but much to my surprise I received a long and involved message detailing all the interesting local foods I should try in the area of the US I was visiting. This initial communication led to an ongoing series of fun (and somewhat flirty) messages back and forth, and also a few social get-togethers in London, which we now refer to as our ‘faux-dates’. He was still seeing this other person at the time, but this didn’t stop us having a great time together and getting to know each other better – but strictly as friends, of course.
It wasn’t until about five months after we met that I invited him down to my house for dinner and an evening of video games. It was about 10 minutes after Donny arrived that he dropped the bombshell that he had broken up with his CEO boyfriend two days earlier. I was dumbstruck! Could this finally be my chance for some new romance? After establishing that he was doing OK, I innocently asked him, ‘So what do you think is a socially acceptable amount of time to wait before I ask you out?’ He then flashed me his megawatt smile and answered cheekily, ‘Oh, I reckon about two days.’
That visit was the start of a four-year journey of discovering more about each other, of falling more in love and embarking on many adventures. What I didn’t think would ever happen, however, was that we would get married. From a very early point in our relationship, Donny had made it clear that he felt marriage was nothing more than a piece of paper and an outdated patriarchal institution. Although I was sad about that, I wasn’t so desperate to be married that I would leave Donny to try to find someone who did prioritise marriage. I felt I was onto a winner – Donny was the best person I had ever met and I just wanted to be with him. Married or not.
And now we are going to get married, I can’t believe it!
From California to Clerkenwell
Donny – 2 December 2011
I thought I would add in my piece about how Chris and I got together, so that you can hear both sides of the story.
As an American living in London, one of the most common questions I have been asked during the past eight years is, ‘How did you end up in the UK in the first place?’
And as with most things there is always a short answer – that work brought me over on a secondment – and a long answer – which was always best left for a second date, or an evening with friends and wine. Lots of wine.
And it was the long version that I decided to share with Chris while we hiked together on the Isle of Wight, because something told me he was someone that I could trust (even though it wasn’t a date!) and that this was someone I needed to share with, even though we had just met.
And because we’re all friends here, I’ll share the longer version with you too.
I grew up in California within the city of San Francisco, which I still think of as home, since my family are all there. But I left home and went to college in Boston on the east coast of the US when I was 17, intending to go for just four years and then return to San Francisco (because Californians and east coast winters don’t typically mix). And those four years turned into fifteen in the blink of an eye … all because of a guy I met during the summer just before my second year of college.
Growing up I never fully realised or accepted that I was gay, and I always thought I was just going through a phase. Only the phase never ended, and I found myself increasingly thinking about guys and having crushes on male classmates. So that summer I was determined to meet someone, in part to figure out once and for all if I really liked guys or not. These were early days for the Internet and there was barely even email, so I posted something on an Internet bulletin board and soon had a date lined up with someone I’ll describe as the Tall Handsome Swimmer (I’ll refer to him as THS).
From that first kiss I shared with THS at the end of our date, I was hooked. I was 18 and in love, and I very quickly found myself in a relationship with THS that ultimately lasted 14 years before it ran its natural course. All my ‘growing-up’ years were with THS, and although there was a lot of love shared during those years, there was also much heartbreak at the end. And so I volunteered at work for the transfer to London in order to get a fresh start, not ever thinking I would be in another relationship again anytime soon, and not at all thinking that I would ever find love again like the love I shared with THS.
I came to London not knowing a soul – having left behind a tight circle of close friends in Boston and two cats that I shared with THS – carrying just two suitcases and what felt like a lifetime of memories stored in my heavy heart. And slowly, with the newfound freedom that comes with being young, single and carefree in a new city, I slowly rebuilt my life.
So I was in an interesting state just before I met Chris. I had been in the UK for less than a year, and after a period of single life and casual dating, had found myself in another relationship – this time with a neurotic workaholic I’ll refer to as the CEO. I never thought I would find love again like the love I had shared with THS, and at some level I stopped