The College Years

I have been having a ton of fun on my walk down memory lane this week.  (click here to read the beginning of the story).The other day I opened up a hat box which I have filled with Every.Single.Card and note Scott wrote me from our pre-marriage days and our first 2 years of married life.   I told you my love language was words of affirmation and if you needed the proof, it is in the box.

I knew I loved Scott long before he felt that way about me.  And being a words person, I told him.  Because I couldn’t help but tell him.  I felt that way and I felt he should know.

My sweet man was taken a back and replied very honestly that he appreciated that but in his mind those words meant something very special, as in forever kind of love, and he wasn’t ready to tell me that yet.

So, he didn’t.

For years.

He told me very specifically that he wouldn’t tell me he loved me with the forever kind of love until he was ready to put a ring on my finger.

So, I waited.

For years.

We had our ups and downs.  He went off to Grove City for College that fall and I went to Towson.  We were 5 hours a part.  To make it worse my parents moved that year to western Pa.  So, when he went home for breaks, he went to Annapolis and when I went home, I went to PA.

We e-mailed and called, but not as often as I would have liked.

I had my doubts at times about his feelings for me.  But I kept remembering my mom telling me as I was growing up, that “Love is a decision, not a feeling.”  And I knew I loved him.

My sophomore year I transferred to Slippery Rock University in Pa because my parents move meant in state tuition moved to PA.  I loved Towson and had some great friends there, but I didn’t love it enough to pay out of state tuition rates and I wasn’t ready to move from home to declare residency on my own in MD.

I picked Slippery Rock b/c it was a state school (read affordable) which had a good education program and was 7 miles from Grove City. (yea, that was really the number one reason).

I spent every weekend at Grove City that fall.  Thanks to Scott’s sister and her room mate for letting me stay in her dorm room.  I even recall sharing the top bunk with her on many a night.  Part way through that first semester I realized, that I wanted to be at Grove City and the big thing keeping me from applying to transfer was pride.  So I swallowed that and transferred YET AGAIN that January.

That spring semester was also rough for Scott and I as I thought now that we went to school together, we could see each other all the time.  And I didn’t have many friends of my own, so I relied heavily on Scott.   He was an engineering student which meant insane hours of homework and when he wasn’t studying he did want to spend time with me, but not all of his time with me.  He had other friends. It took some adjusting for me to realize he wasn’t going to spend every free minute with me.  I credit him with keeping us from being one of those couples that was glued at the hips.  He kept us in balance.

We spent another summer a part, him in MD and me in PA.  But we called, e-mailed and visited each other when we could.

Our junior year was when our relationship really started to grow.  Many couples started talking about getting engaged.  I had friends that had their entire weddings planned out, even knowing what day they planned to get married, before they were officially engaged.  It should come as no surprise to you that Scott was not one of those kind of guys.

He was very clear that he didn’t want us to be engaged before we were engaged.  No looking at bridal magazines or talking about wedding dates before I had a ring on my finger.

That Christmas he told his parents he was going to start shopping for a ring.  He bought it sometime that winter and told me later he had it in his dorm room for months and would take it out and look at it often.

He had decided when and how he wanted to propose to me and patiently waited for that time.  It killed him when two of my best friends called to tell me they were engaged.  I was naturally thrilled for them, yet there was this part of me that wondered when he would be ready.  I remember when the second phone call came he was in my room.  He heard the shrieks of joy as I chatted with my friend and inwardly groaned.  When I got off the phone their was some awkwardness in the air.  He later told me it killed him that night b/c there he was with the ring in his room and he knew I was wondering why I hadn’t been asked.

But my man had a plan and he stuck to it, wanting to ask at just the right location and just the right time.

Come back tomorrow, on Valentine’s Day to read the story of how and when he asked me to marry him.  (I know I said that yesterday but I felt I had to first fill you in on the 4 years between his first holding my hand to his asking for my hand in marriage…and it just took more words than I had initially thought).