- How are we doing everybody?

Welcome to the Story Exchange.

My name is Brendan Kennedy.

I am going to be introducing everybody here, also talking a little about my own experiences before we get some of the other storytellers out.

Thank you guys so much.

You guys are amazing for coming out.

Give yourselves a round of applause.

So I guess real quick round of applause.

Who here has been to one of these Story Exchange shows before?

Okay.

I see one hand up.

I heard a woo.

That's pretty good.

Thank you so much for coming out again.

So for those of you guys, this is your first time out here.

There are people in Hampton Roads coming out sharing real stories from their lives.

Some of them are going to be funny, some of them may be not, but they're going to be real things that they live through and I am really grateful for you guys coming out and taking the ride with them.

All the time the stories kind of share a theme and I wanted to make sure I got this right.

The theme for tonight was romantic love.

The prompt was share a moment when vulnerability deepened your connection with someone.

Romance often asks us to risk honesty.

Recall a moment when opening up with your heart, your fears or your truth transformed a relationship, bringing you closer in unexpected ways.

And I think that's such an interesting thing to think about because I think anytime you meet somebody with the prospect of falling in love, you're putting yourself out there hoping for affection, but you're also out there hoping that they don't hate you.

It's kind of like an unspoken ask.

Because even if the relationship begins well, you see that person every time you bump into them, you start getting butterflies and it's all excitement.

And then over time that can just slowly become... Nobody wants to get ugh.

It's not fun.

But even if a relationship goes well, you're still going to get a little bit of that.

I remember the first time you tell someone I love you, it's like this amazing feeling that starts in your stomach and then it just bursts forth out of you like a fountain just coming out of your lips like, oh, I love you.

And then hopefully they look back at you and say like, I love you too.

Or hopefully they're not like, sir, this is a Wendy's.

So I have been with my wife now many years and our relationship is pretty good because it's built on a very strong foundation of annoyance and hate.

I have a lot of hyper fixations that I talk to her about.

My wife has learned so much about coffee and bicycles and photography against her will.

And I think our relationship goes way back on that.

Our relationship has the kind of annoyance and hate that other couples have to work decades for.

We just started it off from the very beginning.

My wife and I actually met at a frat party, a typical rom-com meet cute.

Now I wasn't a member of the frat.

I was there with my friends and we were having a good time.

I was kind of exhausted at the time, not from studying or anything, but the kind of exhausted that you get when you drink beer all night till one in the morning.

So very tired, the kind of tired where you need to drink Gatorade and then sleep for 11 hours.

And I'm hanging out with my friends.

I think as a guy, when you go to a party in college, it's an exciting opportunity to kind of forget about your inhibitions, be kind of crazy, be kind of goofy, just be the weird guy you can't be necessarily when you're sober.

And I think when women go to parties, they mostly just don't want to be bothered by weird guys.

So I'm hanging out with my friends and I see a couple of girls over there and I'm like, "Hey, I'm going to go make conversation because I went to college in the early 2000s and this was before Tinder.

So if you wanted to meet women, there was this thing called eye contact or introducing yourself."

So it was before the iPhone.

So I go over, I start talking to a girl and it's kind of going okay.

She's telling me about her major or something and it's happening.

We're both listening to each other.

And then I see the woman who's going to become my wife and I just think, wow.

Have you ever been having small talk with somebody and then all of a sudden you're bored and you just want to Heisman trophy them out of the way so you can move on with your life?

Or like when you go to a restaurant and you've placed your order and then the waiter comes by with fajitas sizzling and you're like, "Oh, I want that."

That's how I felt when I saw my wife.

Now I am married to her now.

I've gotten to know her and my wife, her heritage, she's half Japanese.

I didn't know that at the time.

I saw her and I was just like, "What kind of genes came together from all over the world to make a person this beautiful?

I need to get to know this woman."

And so very eloquently, I walked up to her and I was like, "What are you?"

And she replied, "What?"

Which is a completely valid reply to an insane question like that.

And we do make a little bit of small talk.

Her friends were kind of able to translate my paps blue ribbon dialect into something that she could understand.

And we go through the motions, but I know it's not working and I leave them to their evening.

So a month goes by.

I am getting on the elevator to my dorm and she gets in with me.

I'm like, "All right, Brendan, this is your chance to make the save."

Doors closed and I'm like, "Hey, I met you at a party a few months ago and I was really drunk and really stupid, kind of made a fool of myself."

And she's like, "Yep, ding."

Gets off on her floor.

And then we would kind of walk around campus and just make brief, random, uncomfortable eye contact.

She would look at me with pure hatred and I'd be like, "Yeah, deserved."

And we would go on to our different classes.

And then a year goes by.

I have at this point moved off campus and I go to visit a friend of mine on campus, go to his dorm, we hang out for a second.

He has to go meet somebody else.

We walk over to their dorm room and I look in somebody's open door and I think there's that woman who hates me.

Let me go bother her.

So I go over and we start making small talk and then all of a sudden something clicks.

Maybe it was the stars.

Maybe it was destiny.

Maybe it was the fact that I was sober and not hitting on her friend right in front of her.

But finally something is happening between us and we're talking and we're having laughs and I get her instant messenger handle so you know it was real.

And we start talking, we start hanging out in person, we start dating, we start dating long distance.

We had lived together and now we're married, we have a kid, we have a house together and she still hates me, but just, just enough less than she actually loves me.

She's wonderful.

So that's my story about love.