Florida to Canada? A long distance relationship that worked…
Love it!!! Not only is this a successful long-distance relationship, it spans two countries! And this couple’s experience is very close to what I had with my now-husband Drew: We got to know each other so well by email and phone that it was practically a done deal when we met. Now, this is not usual, and many couples take much more time, but for us, and for Janet and Robert, it worked!
Cyberspace couple marks year of marriage
QUISPAMSIS - A couple in a whirlwind romance, who married three months after meeting on an Internet dating site, celebrated their first anniversary on the weekend surrounded by friends, still talking about how amazing it was to find each other.
Janet and Robert Hunt say that after a year, they are still amazed at being with someone who shares the same values and enjoys the same things, including motorcycles.
Janet and Robert Hunt, both in their 40s, agree that from the outside it looks like they moved very fast, but any obstacles to their union just melted away - the first being geography. She is from New Brunswick and he lived in Florida.
After making contact through eHarmony.com in July 2007 there were daily phone calls, some lasting several hours. It left them feeling they knew each other better than most people who date the conventional way. They also give credit to the in-depth questionnaire they had to answer before the dating service put their names together as possible matches.
“The end result was that I have more in common with her than anyone I have ever met,” said Robert.
Last year a friend urged Janet to give Internet dating a try. Although she didn’t have a lot of faith in the idea, she spent an hour online completing the form on July 1. About a week earlier Robert had done the same thing in Florida.
The computer matched them up, but for a couple of weeks, Janet put off making any further contact because he was so far away. Every couple of days her list was updated with a few new profiles added, and some taken off, but Robert’s was always there.
“I liked his profile, but he lived so far away I didn’t think it was worth responding,” she said.
But then she realized the worst that could happen is he would say he wasn’t interested because of the distance, so she sent a request for contact on July 13 and heard back from him two days later. By July 16 they were talking daily on the telephone.
A month and a half later they met face-to-face when he flew into Bangor from Orlando. Janet’s best friend and her husband invited them to dinner that night because they wanted to meet the man she couldn’t stop talking about. After dinner Robert got down on his knee to propose and Janet accepted. He had already decided to pop the question before he got on the plane.
“I don’t think (Janet’s best friend and her husband) were ready for that,” Robert said, with a chuckle.
“No, they were quite shocked,” Janet agreed.
“We had spent more time talking than anyone I had ever known, so I really knew her very well,” he said. “We talked five or six hours a night after work and prepared meals over the phone and sometimes we had dinner together.”
Last winter in New Brunswick, when Robert first met people who heard he left Florida to live in Canada, they teased him. But he says Canada feels like home.
When they decided to marry, Robert agreed to move to Canada without really knowing the job situation, but luckily his profession is included in NAFTA. Within a few weeks he had a job as a geotechnical technologist at Fundy Engineering and a work visa.
Janet, who is an executive assistant at Moosehead for Derek and Andrew Oland, and has two sons, couldn’t very easily pull up stakes and move to Florida.
“People move across the country for a job, so why not for the love of your life?” Robert said of his decision to relocate.
After a year they are still amazed at being with someone who shares the same values and enjoys the same things, including motorcycles.
“We’ll be thinking the same things at the same time,” he said.
“It’s like he once said, it’s almost like we share a brain,” she said.
But it wasn’t just the two of them starting off married life together last fall. Her sons Alexander, 19, and Jonathon, 16, were part of the family along with Robert’s 16-year-old daughter, Sonja. There was some drama between the teenagers at times, but it didn’t cause any fights for the parents. They think so much alike that when a problem arose they usually came to the same solution.
Sonja, who attended Kennebecasis Valley High School last winter, is in Connecticut with her mother this fall, but is talking of returning to Quispamsis after Christmas.
Although Robert and Janet had both been married before, and thought they knew what love was, they agree they didn’t. Robert said it’s like someone who ate cheeseburgers all his life, thought they were the best things ever, but was finally served filet mignon and now knows the difference.
I’m glad it works for some and they find their love even with long distance betwen them
Posted by Mac @ Motorcycle Fairings on 11/13 at 10:35 AM