Cross Border Love During a Pandemic

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Myrtle Alegado: With today’s technology the world doesn’t seem so large, and we can easily connect with friends and family. It has even made it easier to find a romantic love interest across borders, or even across the world, and stay in a long-distance relationship. We’ll discuss more about this in our episode today.

Welcome to Happy Life, a podcast brought to you by INC Media Audio that aims to help newlyweds navigate through the first years of marriage. I’m your host, Myrtle Alegado, and I’ve been married to my husband, Paul, since 1999. And later, we’ll hear some Bible-based advice through Brother Felmar Serreno, a minister of the gospel in the Church Of Christ.

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Inspiration to make your marriage thrive, you’re listening to Happy Life.

Myrtle: Our newlyweds, for this Happy Life episode, are a long-distance, cross border, transnational love story success! Zachary is originally from Toronto, Canada, and Isabelle is from the Bay Area of Northern California.

Thanks for agreeing to chat with us today on Happy Life, Zach and Isabelle.

Zachary Sese: Hello, Myrtle. Hello, everyone. Thank you.

Isabelle Sese: Hi, Myrtle. Thank you for having us.

Myrtle: So how was your day today?

Zachary: Not bad. We’re here traveling towards an area in Wyoming, a long drive.

Isabelle: Yeah, it was a long drive. This is our seventh state in the past seven days.

Zachary: We’ve traveled seven states in seven days, yeah.

Myrtle: Wow! Well, we appreciate that you’re joining us today, despite your traveling, and despite all the distance that you’ve logged on your car probably.

So we’ve had a lot of previous Happy Life guests who were also in long-distance relationships before marriage, but we haven’t really discussed, in depth, the challenges of being in one. Why don’t you two share how you met, and how you got engaged, and of course eventually married.

Zachary: Before we were married, we were actually both District KADIWA presidents. It’s an organization in the Church Of Christ for the youth that’s aged 18 and up who aren’t married. In 2018, we had a KadCon. This is a conference for those members within that organization. I was actually District KADIWA vice president at the time. Part of this activity is that we recorded something with KADIWA officers all across North America, and these videos would be shown to every local [congregation] across the world.

Through these videos, that’s where I actually noticed Isabelle in one of the videos. I guess she definitely caught my eye. I started to like her from those videos. So, I guess you could say I was a fan of her, but I mentioned to a friend of mine that I thought she was cute, she was pretty. And it turned out that Isabelle had actually visited Toronto recently to attend a wedding, and the friend that I mentioned to had actually met Isabelle. So yes, it was actually interesting. We actually had mutual friends already.

Myrtle: That’s so cool.

Isabelle: Yeah, so two months after that KadCon, late 2018 so probably late December and even early January 2019, the friend that Zach told that I was cute, shout out to Chryselle, she actually messaged me. She said that she had friends who were visiting the Bay Area for vacation. So she asked if I could meet up with them and tour them around. Then she eventually gave me Zach’s contact information.

So when I did reach out to Zach, I asked him for his itinerary, when they were planning to be visiting. But when I found out the dates he was visiting the Bay Area, it just so happened that I was going to be in the Philippines, so we didn’t actually get to meet in person. But we did start messaging on Telegram starting from then.

Zachary: Based on that, when we started messaging, I personally thought that she had no idea I was interested in her. I thought I was playing my cards right.

Myrtle: Playing it cool?

Zachary: Yeah [laughs], but we just kept talking and sending video messages to each other. And it was when she got back to California, after her trip, we started to video chat with one another, and then in January or February 2019 I finally told her that I liked her. And then from there, she mentioned, “Hey, you know, you’ve got to ask my parents.”

So in April 2019, so just a few months after, when I was able to get enough vacation days, I flew to California and asked her parents if I could officially court her. And then, thankfully, we got engaged two years later in June of 2021. Actually, I wanted it to be sooner. I wanted to propose, actually, the year before that. But because of COVID-19, the restrictions were really tough. So, I was just waiting for that one opportunity to just be able to fly.And then we ended up getting married in January 2022.

Myrtle: Yeah, that darn COVID.

Isabelle: Oh, yeah.

Myrtle: You know, if anything, it kind of taught us patience a little bit didn’t it?

Zachary: Yeah. [laughs]

Isabelle: It definitely did.

Myrtle: Well, that was kind of a whirlwind, you know, relationship from 2019 to getting married in 2021. What were the biggest challenges in having a cross-border long-distance relationship or, you know, what people call LDR?

Zachary: See, what’s actually funny is that before I met Isabelle, I actually didn’t want to date anyone from the West Coast. I apologize to anyone from the West Coast. Just hear me out. [laughs] It’s just that it’s far from Toronto, and I always thought that there was a big challenge with the time zone. The three hours, it can get pretty, pretty difficult especially later at night.

But when we did get to see each other it was never long enough to visit, and the limited vacation days and other responsibilities, it made it really hard for us to be able to have a lot of time to really spend with one another.

Isabelle: So for my side, very opposite side of the spectrum compared to Zach. I’ve actually been in long-distance relationships, and I actually preferred it because I had a little bit more of independence. But when Zach and I were in an LDR, I thought it was way more difficult because I knew he was the one, and I wanted to be with him already, especially in person.

So, I guess the biggest challenge was to be patient while waiting to see each other in person. With the three hour time zone difference, it was definitely difficult to schedule quality time, because whenever I was sleeping, like early in the morning, he was already getting ready for work. And then whenever he was getting ready to sleep, I was just getting out of work. So, that was pretty difficult for us to coordinate, especially with our busy lives, but we found a way. He would usually just stay up till 2am and wait for me. So that’s how we were able to find our quality time.

Zachary: Actually to interject with that, it’s funny because the years that we were dating, because I really pushed myself to stay up for her to adjust to the time zone, I  think all these years I’ve always been on the west coast time zone.

Myrtle: [laughs] You started training yourself early, I guess. Well you know, I completely understand, because when my husband and I were dating, way before video chats were even available by the way, he lived in Hawaii and I was in Toronto. So, our time difference was six hours.

Isabelle: Oh, wow!

Zachary: Oh, man!

Myrtle: Yeah but you know, we made it work too. So, that’s one thing you take away from long-distance relationships, right? You put in a little bit more work, but it’s worthwhile.

So is there anything you enjoyed about having a cross-border, long-distance, relationship?

Isabelle: For me, I really liked being able to focus on my life. In relationships, when both people are from the same area, you tend to see that they devote a lot of time to each other, which is not a bad thing. But from my personal experience, I felt like I always put myself on the back burner and focused on the relationship only or more. So, being in a long-distance relationship, that really allowed me to find that balance. So, I got to spend more time with my parents, I focused on my career, my responsibilities with Church, and even my self-care time, and I got to spend time with Zach because we really had to schedule everything.

Zachary: We talk about it a lot that we both really enjoyed the space. I personally felt like I had the appropriate amount of space, and even though we were apart, it [was] almost as if we had the space, but we were still together because we would video call a lot with each other. So, I could do my activities, she could do her activities. I could perform my duties, she could perform her duties, and we could do whatever we needed to do. It was enough for us, because we were still in each other’s lives. But because we were so far from each other, we were very understanding that we both had