Steph, This is.. for you.
Ben and LeighAnn, it was not love at first site. I was dating this guy named Kendall. Nothing serious. My friends and I decided to go play at Nichols park(aka Castle Park in Kaysville). I decided to invite Kendall. He texted back and said he was going to bring a friend(Ben) with him so he wanted me to make sure there was a girl for him there I told him there were a few around i am sure he would enjoy. I tried to convince my friend Lexi to flirt with him, but she had recently been in a car accident and didnt feel like herself. So i got my friend Chari to try to keep him away from Kendall and I. Chari failed miserably. Ben followed us around everywhere we went. I didn't get a second alone with Kendall. I was so annoyed(even if he was good looking, i didn't care. He was ignorant and rude for not letting Kendall and I be alone to talk or hangout.) I didn't see him again, until he showed up at church with Lexi. I hadn't talked to Lexi in a while and she went through guys quicker then you go through toilet paper. I was surprised to see Ben with her though, I thought to myself, now that must be a very interesting relationship.
From time to time we hung out over at Lexi's house with her annoying boyfriend. I was still mad at him for not leaving Kendall and I alone. Even though that relationship never would have worked out. I slowly decided to change my opinion of Ben. He was very clever and since he was my friends boyfriend, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. So i tried really hard to be nice to him. He introduced me to a friend of his named Andy. Andy and I dated for a while, and we would go on double dates with Ben and Lexi. Ben and Lexi always fought. About everything. Andy and I got so annoyed, so we would end up ditching them. A few weeks later Andy and I broke up. This relationship just wasn't going to go anywhere.
Over the next few months I had many failed relationships. Ben and Lexi's relationship also failed. Big surprise. Ben decided to text me, and we started to have a little friendship over text. I would tell him about my guy problems and he would help me out. Then he asked me out on a date. I said no. And he said, "oh come on. I know you flirted with me when I was dating Lexi, and I know i flirted with you." I had no idea he was into me. Even a little bit. I really thought we were just friends. A week or two later, another one of my bad relationships failed. I texted Ben and asked if he wanted to do something. He got the impression i wanted to go on a date with him. I just wanted to get out of the house and didn't want to be sulking over my bad relationship. I went along with the date. We went to Temple square to see the Joseph Smith movie. This is when i was able to see there was more to Ben then just good looks and sarcasm. I remember thinking, okay, this dude is actually kind of cute. We went to get ice cream at Baskin Robbins, Then back to Nichols Park. This is where we shared our first kiss. Perfect date until... The rest of the night he talked a lot about his ex girlfriends, so i still wasn't too sure about him. We drove around, ended up sitting in a parking lot talking about his ex girlfriends still. And then.... yes it gets worse.... A cop drove up to the car and asked us for both of our licences and wanted to know what was going on. We told him we were just on a date and talking. He went back to his car and looked us both up and i swear he was back there for way too long. I asked Ben if he thought we would get arrested for anything. Ben said he hoped not because he had a ticket that he took a while to pay and he wasn't sure if they had received the check yet. I was out with a guy who possibly had a warrant out for his arrest because of an overdue ticket expense. The cop finally brought back our licences and let us go. I made Ben take me home. After a day or two of thinking about it, i thought okay Ben isn't a bad guy. Maybe I should give him another chance. He came over and hung out with me a few more times, and then i didn't hear from him. I figured he had moved on to some other girl and i should move on too. Again there were many failed dates and relationships. Finally i heard something from Ben. Months later. I asked him how he had been. He said He was starting to feel better, but not like himself quite yet... That's when i found out he didn't just write me off. He had been practically dead, in a coma, in the hospital and now in recovery. May 30, 2008 Ben had fallen out of the back of a pickup and had a Traumatic Brain Injury... I felt so stupid. I had no idea. I didn't date him for very long and i didn't know many of his friends or any of his family, So i had no idea. He came over to my house and we sat on the front porch while he told me the full details. He didn't remember anything from the whole month of June. We decided to remain friends. We tried to hang out a few times, but something else would come up and we didn't start dating again until October. That's when it happened. Annoying Ben almost completely disappeared and i fell really deep in love with this boy. I was never bored with him. He was so fascinating I always wanted to be around him. And him with me. He came to Thanksgiving with me in Idaho. We went to his family Christmas party, We spent New Years cleaning his room and dancing to Garth Brooks song To make you feel my Love, Kinda lame for New Years i know, but it was amazing. A few months later Ben started to get a little worried about our relationship. He realized we were heading towards marriage. This freaked him out. He quickly and out of no where broke up with me. I was devastated,. After spending everyday together it was hard to not see each other. We still dated, but we saw other people as well. I feel really bad for all the guys I went out with at that time, because i think i cried on almost every date... These guys were not Ben. This breakup only lasted a month at most. He missed me too. We got engaged quickly and married with in 3 months after we got back together. Our first year or two of marriage wasn't the easiest. We were broke all the time, still are, and it was really hard to learn how to live with each other. I'm a clean freak, and he is not.. Overtime we have made it work. Learned a lot about each other, and we have fallen even deeper in love with each other. More then i ever thought i could Love any one. We have a beautiful baby girl together and couldn't be happier.
And so my friends, The moral of this story is... Love isn't always Love at first Site.
As my friend Stephanie said in her blog post, What is your love story? I would love to read about it.
