I had no idea who "Elizabeth Gaus" was, even though she lived on the floor above me at Cornerstone University.

I followed Gabe on Instagram (he didn't follow me back until after our first date... yikes) and had a couple of classes with his sister Maggie, but had never met him even though he was one of the RA's in my building. I had noticed that we were mutual friends with someone I grew up with in Arizona, and curiosity was killing the cat, so when I passed by him at a school event one evening, I decided to stop and ask how he knew them.

The first time I met Libby, she was taking pictures with one of my friends at a school dance, when she stopped me to ask how I knew a mutual friend. We had a nice conversation, but I didn't really think anything of it, and we went our separate ways. I was an RA at Cornerstone University and a few weeks later, the last night of finals week, I got back from a Meijer run with my roommates and she was "illegally" hanging out in the hallway with her roommate and some of the guys from my hall. Since I was graduating at the end of the week, I didn't care enough to enforce rules, but I felt responsible to keep an eye on the situation, so I brought out Mountain Dew Baja Blast for everyone. I joined the conversation, interrupted the "studying," and Libby and I ended up talking till 3 am the next morning.

The next time I ran into Gabe, I was in his hallway and breaking the rules. (A great first interaction with an RA, I know). I was surprised when, instead of kicking us out, he joined our conversation. We talked till 3 am that night, and no, I did not pass my 7 am final the next day.. oops. The next day I was having lunch with my Camp Director from my days at Spring Hill Camps and mentioned how great of a guy I thought Gabe was but said I wasn't sure I was at all interested.

After chatting in the hallway until 3am, the next time I saw Libby, she randomly offered me a slice of pizza, immediately following my graduation ceremony at Cornerstone. At this point, I was thinking we could probably be friends, but I knew I was working at Spring Hill Camp for the summer, so I didn't think too much of it. A few days later I thanked her for the pizza via Twitter, so I guess you could say it all went down in the DM's. We chatted on Twitter for a few days, when she finally invited me over to watch the NBA Playoffs with a couple of other mutual friends. To be honest, I really just went to hang-out with one of the guys that was there, but I had a really good time that night. Even though I found out that she was terrible at Euchre (she claims she was just tired, but she renigged twice), I decided I wanted to try to see her again. A few days later we walked around Reed's Lake together and talked for about 4 hours and I used the excuse of "helping" her install her WiFi to come back around that evening where we kept the conversation going for 5 more hours. It was refreshing to be able to have such deep and meaningful conversations with someone I had just met, and that's when I started thinking that she might have the potential to be "the one."

Ok... can we just take a moment for how that went from "we could maybe be friends" to "she might be the one." That was a really fun couple of weeks to live through... let me tell ya! Now back to the chronological story... Full disclosure, our mutual friend Shane is the one who invited Gabe over, via my phone, possibly against my will. Earlier that day, I had told Shane that I "woke up to Gabe's number in my DM's, but wasn't going to do anything about it because Gabe was going to camp in a few weeks." Previously Shane had asked me "What do you look for in a guy that Gabe doesn't have? Just curious for future wing-man endeavors." Well, I didn't have a good argument against Shane, and he decided that night was the night for his "wing-man endeavors," so Gabe showed up at my door 20 minutes later. We had a great time watching basketball and playing Euchre that night (I promise I'm not as horrible at Euchre as Gabe claims I am), and a few days later, we went for a walk around Reed's Lake together. I remember enjoying our deep conversations about life, the Gospel and each other's hopes and dreams and thinking "this is either going to last 3 weeks or forever... I kinda hope it's forever." About a week after Reed's Lake, Gabe finally asked me on a real date. He wanted to know what kind of food I liked and I told him I love Mexican. We went to On the Border. Those who know us well know that was the beginning of a lifetime of me loving Gabe despite his meal choices ;).

And now we come to the part where I start overthinking everything. I really liked Libby but it was very out of my comfort zone to commit to a relationship with so many unknowns. I was headed to camp in a few weeks with the desire to focus on God and serving students and was not looking to start a long-distance relationship in the midst of that. Out of respect for Libby, I decided not to rush into anything... sort of.

Let's be clear. By deciding not to rush into anything, he means asking me how I felt about him and promptly friend-zoning me after I shared that I really, really liked him.

What she means by saying "she really, really liked me," was that she liked me but wasn't sure about long-distance for the summer. I heard that as "not that interested."

By "not sure about long-distance," I really meant, "I know how aggressively flirtatious camp girls are(no offense to all my camp girls, I love you all!), and everyone looks cuter when you're stuck in the woods for 8 weeks," and I didn't know how much I wanted to compete with that. To-may-to to-mah-to. Anyway, 3 days after Gabe friend-zoned me, he kissed me, so that really worked out well for him.

I really wanted to kiss her, but since she was hesitant, I didn't want to do something I'd regret. So I did what any logical male would do and performed a cost-benefit analysis.

Out loud. He performed a cost-benefit analysis out. loud. in the middle of an episode of New Girl. (To all my single, male cousins, this is NOT how you get the girl.) He even asked for my input. I was thrilled, as I am sure you can imagine. And all this cost-benefit analysis ended in was a kiss on the cheek. I spent another episode of New Girl with steam coming out of my ears and when it ended, he got up to leave, but finally kissed me, just when I thought I didn't have a chance. About a week later, I met Gabe's family and later that night we had the "DTR" talk (define the relationship for everyone who didn't go to a Christian college.) I asked what the deal was, and if we were still "just friends" and he said, "well I guess we're dating now." That was May 18, 2018, and on October 18, 2019, we'll celebrate 17 months out of the friend-zone with the best party ever!