how we met
I had a coworker that went to high school with Ben. I’m originally from Wisconsin and moved here by myself right after I graduated. I didn’t really know many people, but made friends with my coworker. We became friends on Facebook and hung out outside of work on occasion. Almost a year or so later, after moving on to different jobs, my coworker who I was still connected with via Facebook liked Ben’s picture and it popped up in my newsfeed saying she had liked it. I immediately though he was very cute and debated on adding him as a friend, but at the risk of coming off as creepy, I did not. About a week or so had past and his picture pops up again, this time thinking, “what have I got to lose?” I sent him a friend request and left the ball in his court. Side note about Ben, to this day, he has a LONG list of friend requests that he ignores and calls his “purgatory.” People that he doesn’t want to accept as friends, but doesn’t want to straight reject them, so they sit. Shortly after sending the request, I get a notification saying that he accepted it and then a message promptly after that asking, “Hey, do I know you?” We had one. mutual. friend. What made him decide that I wasn’t “purgatory” material? To this day, he says there was just something different about me after looking quickly through my profile pictures, but he doesn’t know what. I shot a message back quite boldly saying, “No, I just thought you were extremely attractive.” Where this new confidence came from, I’ll never know, but I am so glad she came out when she did. We chatted back and forth for the remainder of the night, talking about ourselves, our dreams, our hobbies, our fears. We exchanged numbers and went on a date 3 days later. We have been inseparable ever since. That was almost 7 years ago.
how they asked
The summer before Ben proposed, we found a rock that was painted. It said on the back to keep or rehide it and had a Facebook page to post a picture to . When we looked up the Facebook page, there were hundreds of other people in our area painting rocks and hiding them in local parks and trails. We walked one particular trail by our house quite a bit because it was close, had a lot of hidden rocks and we had frequently walked it before we were even looking for rocks. This trail was technically a protected wetlands and had a boardwalk that you followed the whole way through. At the very end, was an open lake the many ducks and geese, sometimes even heron liked to hang out at. On the day he proposed, he asked if I wanted to go for a walk. His mom was pressuring me saying how nice of a day it was for a walk so I knew something was up. The entire walk he would not let me walk on his left side (the ring was in his left pocket) and he seemed anxious. We got to the very end and he said to hang out there for a bit even though it seemed like we rushed through the whole walk. He kept checking his phone and finally pulled me to the center of the walk way and got down on one knee. His friend had been trailing behind us with a camera to get it on video! Ben told me that everyday with me has been so special and he knew there was something different about me from the first time he laid eyes on me.
