The Man Behind The Blog

I loved your responses yesterday, dear readers!  You've reminded me how much more I have to appreciate, and for that I thank you.  But we could just go in circles here, so shall we move on to The Man Behind The Blog?

Last week, I promised you a crack at Jon and many of you wrote in with questions for him about our relationship and our plans for the future.  They were fantastic - you brought up a lot of topics that we've been discussing together for quite some time now.  And I feel like a bit of a fraud, because Betsy Transatlantically is supposed to be a real snapshot of my life (and his, for this post) but unfortunately most of your questions can't be answered in this forum.  They brought up such relevant issues that we can't address them in a public way here.  I'll try to touch on a few of them just briefly so you don't think I'm being totally evasive, but I do hope you understand that a lot of them deal with questions that are sensitive for one reason or another.

We don't know for sure where we'll be living after we get married.  We don't even know how long it will take for us to be together after the wedding.  Some of this has to do with work commitments and some with family commitments, but most of it is tied up in the bureaucracy of a transatlantic relationship.  I've got some guest posts lined up for the new year that will talk about the different visa options available to engaged/married couples in our position, but I'm afraid that I won't be able to tell you where we ourselves are in the process until much farther down the road.

Similarly, some of you asked about suggestions to make a long distance relationship work.  I've blogged a little bit about how we're navigating ours, but Jon and I both agree that we won't be in a productive place to give advice until we've come out on the other end.  Having successfully made it through months of a transatlantic engagement (and, possibly, months of a transatlantic marriage) will give us perspective that we simply don't have right now.

The one question that Jon can answer for you - well, sort of - is this: he doesn't have a favorite football team.  (He says to tell your British husband that he was born in Ipswich, which is apparently an explanation in and of itself.)

This is kind of humbling for me, actually, because I should have known that you'd ask the most insightful questions and I'm really sorry that I was totally unprepared.  But I promise that you'll be the first to know when we are able to share all of these answers publicly!

photos taken by me in Charlottesville, VA; November 19, 2012
thanks to Victoria for letting me borrow her title for this post!