Guest Post

Today I have a guest post for you guys from one of my lovely sponsors, Hanna from Violet Lulu. 


Rob and I share a love story that isn't quite like most. We chose to be together forever before we really knew each other and fell in love after making that commitment. I'll start at the beginning:

I was 25 when I met Rob (he was also 25) and even though no one had ever really broken my heart I was so closed off to the idea of even being in a relationship, let alone falling in love. I guess if we were to analyse it I would say that it was hard having a parent suffering from extreme depression. It was pretty hard for me to trust in relationships, even non-romantic ones and so I dated safe guys that I didn't really care for for a few months before finding some really important reason why I couldn't be with them any more. Or alternatively, they'd get tired of getting no where with me and drop me!

Rob and I are both hair stylists, pretty good ones actually (although I have no trouble admitting he is much better than I am- he works harder at his craft than anyone I've ever met) and for 3 years running I was invited to style hair for Fashion Week in Melbourne, the city that I made home when I was 19 years old. On the third year that I accepted the invitation I was also one of 4 hair stylists working the week invited to the fancy VIP opening night party. I never met the other two but the fourth was Rob who had moved to Melbourne just 6 months earlier from another city. I was running late after getting caught up at work and I'd also already had a few drinks for courage since I knew I wasn't going to know anyone there except the people running the hair department at Fashion Week- and I knew they would be pretty busy. When I arrived one of those people took me over to a man I'd never met and introduced us briefly before running off to do something else. I didn't even catch his name.

I didn't miss how handsome he was though. Rob is really quite shy but he is also such a workaholic that he doesn't make much time for friends, especially not new ones, and he also has a strong inner confidence. Anyway, the combination of these 3 traits came across to me as arrogance. Once I made a few jokes he warmed up a little bit, enough that I didn't find the nearest exit at least and I remember saying to him "look, I don't know anyone here, can we be friends for tonight?". The bar was open so we got quite drunk together and I rescued him from a few different girls, we went to the after party and shared a chair, then the after after party and then I invited him to come with me to another club where a friend was celebrating her birthday. By this stage I was totally into him but didn't think he was into me.

I was wrong, we started dating straight away. I liked him more than I'd liked most of the guys I had dated but as I mentioned, he was such a workaholic that he never had any time for me. He would call me last minute to ask me on dates, or he would call me in the middle of the night to talk after not having heard from him for a couple of days, once he took me out for lunch and fell asleep on the table because he'd been working so hard. After about 6 weeks I'd had enough, I thought "this guy is joking right? I deserve better than this!" and I got ready to break it off. Then I realised something in my life felt off. It wasn't any kind of physical symptom, I didn't even think that I was late but I knew I had to take a pregnancy test (or two). There it was: I was pregnant. I was pregnant to a guy who had been treating me badly and who I didn't even think I liked anymore. I waited a couple of days to go to a doctor to have it confirmed, just to force myself to believe it was true. I knew that abortion wasn't for me, no matter what happened so it was a pretty hard situation to come to grips with.

In retrospect I wish I hadn't waited those few days alone (the doctor confirmed on Friday, I told Rob on the Sunday), I was so scared to tell him and I was scared in general. Finding yourself 25 years, pretty much single and pregnant is no laughing matter, especially if you haven't been gearing yourself towards being a young(ish) mother. When I finally asked Rob over he started by apologising for treating me so badly, he told me that he was planning to move to London in the next year so he was trying to not want to be with me, however he wanted me to be his girlfriend anyway. He felt strongly enough about me to see how our relationship went before deciding to move away. That was a shock but then I still had to tell him that I was having a baby. He actually started smiling and kissed me. We talked for most of the night and agreed that we could and would do this together. We knew we were having the baby anyway, we knew we liked each other and we knew we owed it to the baby and ourselves to try to make a family.

We moved in together and a few months later we were head over heels in love with each other and my barriers came down one by one. He made an effort to balance work with home life, rather than throw everything into his work, with great success. We now have a 20 month of baby girl named Violet Lulu and are expecting another baby at the end of February. Of course there were growing pains and we argue sometimes, that's normal but on top of the normal stuff we are just getting to the bottom of each other, after all this time. It gets harder to learn someone else once a baby comes into the mix, I think. I'm so happy though and even though the situation wasn't ideal I often wonder if I would have let the love of my life in if I hadn't been forced to.

We look at what we made together, what we've built together, our ability to overcome obstacles together, the joy we share for our life and our love for each other and thank God every day for knowing what to do with the us.