Couple Highlight: Jordan and Bronwen
This post is part of the series, “Couple Highlights.” Each Couple Highlight was originally shared in the Improving Intimacy in Latter-Day Saint Relationships Facebook Group, which is a private group. In order to share these posts publicly on danielaburgess.com, explicit written consent was granted by each couple.
Couple Highlights began on the Facebook Group as a way to hear about the growth happening for couples in the group, and to give them an opportunity to share their story--their marriage journey, where they are at, and the challenges they’ve overcome.
Hi everyone! We are Jordan and Bronwen Merrill. We met in November 2015 when Bronwen’s best friend, Lexi, introduced Bronwen to her current boyfriend: Jordan. They got along well and Bronwen remembers thinking that Jordan was quite the catch. But, Bronwen was dating someone else at the time and was living in Florida for an internship in Walt Disney World. By the following January, Bronwen had returned to BYU for Winter Semester and was “on a break” with the previously mentioned boyfriend. By chance, on the very first day of the semester, she crossed paths with Jordan. She remembered exactly who he was (“her best friend’s boyfriend”), but Jordan didn’t realize the connection, thinking Bronwen was a beautiful girl he’d met but couldn’t remember where. Bronwen re-established how they knew each other, and Jordan, slightly embarrassed, told Bronwen that since Lexi was entering the MTC in February that they were no longer dating.
Bronwen knew that she couldn’t possibly date her best friend’s ex-boyfriend. But, she was just returning to Utah after 8 months of living away, and could definitely use a friend. They exchanged numbers and got to talking. Very quickly, Bronwen realized that she liked Jordan...a lot. Jordan offered to drive Bronwen to the grocery store. They studied together in the library. They decided to hang-out (NOT a date!) and make waffles together before watching a movie with Bronwen’s roommates. Bronwen told her roommates that they could NOT abandon her that evening, because she really liked Jordan but couldn’t do anything about it! She needed group protection so that nothing would happen.
Well, that non-date ended up being pretty good. Jordan and Bronwen were getting along great, and after the movie, ALL of Bronwen’s roommates did the very thing she told them not to do--they abandoned her and left her with a cute boy! That not-a-date ended up being the night of their first kiss. After Jordan had left, Bronwen called her mom and told her that 1) she was going to officially break-up with the guy she was “on a break” with (mom was pleased, she’d never liked him anyway), and 2) she was pretty sure she wanted to marry Jordan. (Jordan didn’t feel *quite* that strongly about the relationship at the start, but it didn’t take him long to get on the same page.)
Jordan proposed in July and they got married in December 2016.
Since then, Bronwen and Jordan have moved homes TEN times. They’ve lived in 8 different cities, 2 different states, and 3 different countries. They currently live in France, where Bronwen is a Parade Performer in Disneyland Paris and Jordan is a Live Streamer for Twitch.tv.
I’m going to break from speaking in the third person now, since talking about our intimate life together from an outside perspective seems a little odd to me. Haha!
Over the last 4 years, we have learned a lot about ourselves, each other, and our relationship. Just last week, we made some major break-throughs regarding the communication styles we prefer! We feel we are constantly learning, growing, and adapting our relationship so that we can both experience great happiness.
In the beginning of our marriage, I (Bronwen) had a hard time adjusting to being on birth-control (I was taking the pill at the time) and my sex drive was really low. This was frustrating for both of us, and I felt a huge sense of guilt for not wanting to be intimate. Those early conversations were difficult as I tried to express that my lack of libido had nothing to do with my feelings for Jordan. It took somewhere between 6 months to a year for me to feel a little more “normal” on the pill. During this time we still had sex, and those times were great, but we weren’t having sex as often as we thought we would be.
It wasn’t until early 2019 that I switched to Nexplanon (arm implant) for birth control, and it made a world of difference for me. Jordan noticed it, too. I know that any form of hormonal birth control “messes with” my hormones, but Nexplanon has been really great for me. We aren’t in a place where we are “ready” (not a great word choice, it’s obviously more nuanced than that, but roll with me here) to have children right now, and being a Parade Performer at Disney while pregnant...it’s just not a great mix.
We are so happy to be our little family of two. We’ve loved being able to travel, follow our dreams and support each other in those dreams. We’re not entirely sure where life will take us next, but we know one thing: we’re happy to be going there together.