8 quick questions from Instagram to get to know us better!

But first, if you want to know how we met, check out this post!

What was your first date?

• Our first real date was at a town fair. He won me a stuffed lion and a stuffed wolf, affectionately named Diego and Benji, respectively. I still have them, and we still love going to fairs, carnivals, and obviously, theme parks. He’s surprisingly good at carnival games (including the claw, somehow), and I’m…not as good.

What do you guys do for a living?

• We both love science! I’m more interested in biology, public health, and epidemiology, and his interests lie in chemistry and pharmacology. He’s a chemist, and I’m in school finishing my post-bacc (pre-med), and work as a medical scribe.

How do you celebrate your anniversaries?

• We’re both homebodies and would much rather have a night in with Netflix and homemade dinner than a night out. We’ve repeatedly planned fancy anniversary dinners weeks in advance, then wound up cancelling the reservation so we can stay home, try out a new recipe, and watch something cheesy or play a game (we love any kind of trivia, basically every board or card game, and Kingdom Hearts). Plus, with our anniversary, Christmas, and his birthday all in December, we try to be smart about our money.

Did he always like Disney?

• Not in this capacity. To be fair, neither did I, when we first starting dating (again - in this capacity, I’ve always loved Disney)! We’ve both developed a greater love for it over the years, me more than him, obviously. Every Disney trip, we have a competitive round of Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin. As per tradition, I talk a lot of smack beforehand and then lose horribly.

What are good presents to give each other after you’ve already given them all over the years?

• These days, we tend to go small or practical! We often say “no gifts” in order to save money for upcoming trips. Any HIMYM fan out there will understand this - for our first Valentine’s Day, I gave Don a blue French horn wall decal for his dorm room. Just little things like that to remind us of each other. We do hobby gifts, for me, it could be something photography related, for him, something for gaming or cooking.

• But we like “just because gifts,” - my favorite flowers are always perfect, I recently gave him a paperweight that reminded me of an inside joke between us - things like that. When we splurge a little, it’ll be on the shoes he’s had his eye on for months, a fresh bottle of my favorite perfume, or a new piece of jewelry. But basically, the biggest gift we can give to each other is just saving money so we can travel together!

What are some of your favorite dates?

• Aside from staying in, some of our favorite dates include crossing off restaurants on our “to try” list, going to town fairs and festivals, bowling, and when we go out with a group big enough - escape rooms!

  
  

Any relationship advice, in general?

• Don’t forget to be your own person! Having an identity outside of the relationship is so important. We each have our own hobbies, our own interests that make us who we are as individuals. I have my friends, he has his friends, we have our friends, etc. We’ve grown as lot as a couple over the past 6 years, but we’ve also grown a lot as people. Being able to cultivate your identity alongside your best friend, watching them grow while you grow, and supporting each other completely along the way? It’s truly magical.

• Above all, be 100% authentically yourself. We’re both total goofballs, love to start sparring in the kitchen, have really aggressive thumb wars wherever and whenever, and make the worst faces to each other. Being able to let your guard completely down around someone can be scary, but when it’s with the right person, it’s the greatest.

What do you think is the key to being together as long as you have?

• We talked about this for a while, and agreed that there’s really wasn’t a “key,” or some magic to this, but the one thing we say a lot is that being friends for a while first made the difference for us. We got to know each other as individuals before we even thought about dating. We learned each other’s idiosyncrasies from day one, before the pressure of a relationship was on us.

We had fun answering these! Didn’t get to answer them all, but these were some of our favorites!

xoxo,

Maya + Don