If you want to find a life partner, do this.
10 years of marriage: reflections on a decade of adventure together.
If you want to find a life partner, you should probably make an independent film that takes you around the world. It might an unexpected journey, but it’s worth it!
At least that’s my story.1
Today, Petra and I mark our 10th year anniversary, and I thought I’d share a few parts of our experience from my POV to mark the moment (for which I am so truly grateful).
A play, MA, then a happy day
I wrote a play about a real-life human trafficking incident and it caught fire. It was my first legit stage production as a playwright and it was well received. And a bunch of people believed in it, and so we ended up touring Canada with this little story that has big heart.
That all sounds so easy. It was anything but.
The story made its way across Canada, playing fringe festivals and other venues, funded by people who bought tickets or donated funds and, like me, an unexpected playwright, became unexpected advocates against one of the most terrible evils in the world: child trafficking).
When the tour hit Ottawa, I did some press on the CBC with then Member of Parliament Joy Smith who, that very day, presented to a Senate committee (which ultimately led to a Bill that would change the criminal code and increase sentences for traffickers).
In a meeting in a stuffy office on Parliament Hill, a woman in red high heels, in an act of desperation, handed me her new iPhone which had just interrupted the quiet with beeping.
She asked me if I knew how to silence the device.
Despite being an Android smartphone guy, in what perhaps would become one of the most consequential moments for my future, I instinctively did. (Human-centered design for the win!)
We had lunch together in the Parliamentary dining room (she was working for International Justice Mission at the time and had helped put together the briefing). Important government ministers whispered at tables nearby and we had a nice lunch across from each other in that big-windowed dining room.
And the rest is history! That woman in the red high heels is now my wife.
That sounds so simple… but it’s really not.
After the lunch, during which I had the most inward calm I’ve ever experienced in my life (I’m and Enneagram One, a writer, was a single male and thus had an endless internal monologue, so this calm was noticeable), we parted ways. I flew back to Alberta and she returned to her life in south western Ontario.
And I didn’t reach out for close to 6 months. (Partly because her FB profile was a picture of her with a young child that could have been her daughter, but was really her niece… so I thought she was married. Partly because I was starting Phase 2 of this unlikely creative adventure, which was to bring the play to life as a film as a first time screenwriter).
Finalizing the screenplay, raising funds, running around trying to bring an indie Canadian feature film to life while working full-time, was the backdrop of our courtship which took place, primarily, through letter-writing across the country, while she, as it so happened, worked full time and completed another Masters degree.
But I took the risk to reach out, which was a big leap across the unknown for me—a gap that felt as wide as the 3,123.3 km that separated me in Red Deer, Alberta from her in London, Ontario at the time.
10 years in
But now we’re here.
It all seems so straight forward, like connecting two points on a map and driving the distance in-between, but it wasn’t.
And that, I guess, is part of the joy.
If you want to find a life partner, my advice is to write a script, tour the story and then produce it in a foreign country as you learn to navigate the complexities of the international film market: Love, it seems, appears when you’re giving yourself, your gifts, wholeheartedly.
At least it did for us.
We didn’t set out to find love or “make marriage happen.” We leaned into our lives as best we could and by God's grace our journeys intertwined. And I’m so grateful that our story was written and woven together in this way.
We’ve had an exciting journey ever since, navigating marriage and parenthood, creativity and careers with all the complexities of life (bumps, bruises, thrills).
It all sounds so exciting.
And it is.
As it happens, it’s also my brother
’s story - just different films, different decades. Bro, we need to do a podcast episode!
Love this story! Congrats! And great advice for anyone looking for a partner.