Dear JDate,
It all started in the summer of 2005 when I received an email from a cute guy named David Bussell. David was living in Ft. Wayne, Indiana and was recently separated from his spouse. He was originally from Southfield, Michigan and moved to Ft. Wayne with his family to work as a mechanical engineer. David emailed me on JDate, and even though he was younger than the men I was looking to meet, I met his search criteria. Little did I know how gorgeous and amazing David would be!
We met downtown on July 16, 2007 for dinner and it was quite a unique evening. The food was not so great, so of course, as a typical tough Brooklyn woman with some Israeli chutzpah, I showed my strong and demanding personality by complaining about dinner to the waitress and manager. David thought, “What I am getting myself into? I am a laid-back Michigan man and Paula is a full-speed-ahead, fighting-with-missiles, tough Brooklyn gal.”
Well, later on, the evening became even more interesting while we were chatting by the fountain in downtown Indianapolis (as you see in our photo, taken a year later). My hands are always moving when I talk, so during our chat, I accidentally flung my cell phone into the fountain. David realized that I needed to get my phone in order to try and save the SIM card. He proceeded to step into the fountain, only to quickly realize that it was deeper than he expected. So, he stepped out, and just as he did, a teenager walking by was kind enough to offer to get in the water and retrieve my phone. David really appreciated the help, so he slipped the teenager’s girlfriend some money for them to have a nice dessert on us. David immediately turned to me and said, “Aren’t you impressed at what I did on our first date?” and of course, with the way I am, I replied, “Well, you did actually sub-contract the work out afterall.” He probably thought, “Wow, she is a tough one to please.” Little did he know…that was an understatement.
Due to the fact that I was working out of my home office as an advertising sales manager and spending every other weekend at the GAP, I did not want to get involved in a serious long-distance relationship. I wanted to date someone closer to Indianapolis. I was a single Mom with a five and six year old and I didn’t want to have a long-distance relationship when I was alone on my weekends. Even though David did pursue me quite a bit after our first date, I made a mistake by simply turning him away. Well, David emailed me four months later, right after Thanksgiving 2005, and asked me out again. I immediately accepted and David drove in from Ft. Wayne and we had a wonderful dinner at Bone Grill in Indy. During dinner, he took out a menorah, lit the candles with me and said the Bracha right there at the table! At that moment, I knew he would be my future husband. During dinner, we actually sat right next to each other and David caressed my face and we fell in love. We knew that we were going to get married at that very moment, even though our first date was in July and our second date was four months later, on December 26, 2005.
After our date at Bone Fish Grill, we began to date exclusively and David was able to relocate his engineering job after just three months. He moved to the Indianapolis branch of his company, and then we started to make official wedding plans. We are having an orthodox Jewish wedding on May 24, 2009. We have five amazing children between us and we are going to combine our families to make a wonderful Jewish family.
Thank you JDate, for your gift to us.
Paula & David
Indianapolis, Indiana