Long-distance relationships can be notoriously hard. So when one guy’s girlfriend moved across America, he looked for a way to make their separation just a bit sweeter: For 98 days ending on Emily’s December birthday, Zach uploaded a message of love every day to the Instagram account fromga2wi.
Each post is a love letter printed on a handheld sign, with messages like, “I Love You,” “You Delight Me,” “I Miss You,” and “You Are Dazzling.” The project’s crescendo is Zach’s message of “I Want to Marry You” just before Emily’s birthday — that’s when the pair reunited and Zach finally showed the entire series to his leading lady, after having kept it a secret for more than months. On the Instagram feed, he revealed she “fought back tears” and was “blown away” by the concept.
So cute, right? Well, yeah. On the face of it, it is. But we do have some questions…
Like, why on earth did he wait until his girlfriend’s birthday to reveal all the messages? It seems like the sweetest part of the project was the daily delivery of a bit of love to sustain the relationship through the miles. And from where we sit, that seems like it would have been a lot more fun than like, “Hey girl, sit down on the sofa for an hour and peer into your phone at a super long Instagram feed and then tell me what you think of it.”
But here’s our bigger thing: Zach’s dramatic finale of “I Want to Marry You” was not actually a proposal. Beneath the image, he wrote, “I Want To Marry You Someday. Surprising you. On one knee. Taking your breath away. I want our families to be ecstatic and proud. I want to get nervous and tell you how much you mean to me and how lucky I feel to be with you. I’m very much looking forward to that moment.”
OK, but if we read — or heard — “I want to marry you” from a man we loved, and realized there was no actual ring or formal and immediate commitment attached to the sentiment, we might feel a little, er, womp womp about the whole thing. Just saying.
Take a look and see for yourself below. Then tell us – how did you make a long-distance relationship work?
