We're Getting Married!

In late December 2014, Janet and Spider met at a mutual friend’s dinner party in an Indian restaurant in New York City’s East Village. We were seated next to each other and started talking about illegal sublets, as Spider had moved into his aunt’s Greenwich Village apartment THAT DAY. (Do not believe Spider when he says Janet picked him up at the Port Authority with a sign seeking straight men for adult films.) Mutually curious about each other, our first date was a month later at a NoMad Lebanese restaurant. As clichéd as it may sound, we ended up closing the restaurant. The next day, Spider emailed Janet that “talking to you is as easy as breathing.” Happily, we have been breathing together ever since. Among the topics discussed on our first date was the “36 Questions” article that had come out in The New York Times “Modern Love” column a few days before. Subtitled “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This,” the article describes the author’s experience following psychologist Arthur Aron’s experiment of bringing two random strangers into a lab (one man, one woman) and their asking each other a series of 36 questions. The experiment would theoretically lead to greater interpersonal closeness between the two subjects. You can find links to the article and the 36 questions in the 'Links To Check Out' section of this site. Janet mentioned the article to Spider over dinner, and we decided to start with one question. Over the course of the next three months together, including a long road trip to New London, New Hampshire, we proceeded to ask each other the rest of the questions from the list, and fall in love. In 2017 Spider moved from his illegal sublet into Janet’s no-longer illegal 750-sq foot apartment in Manhattan’s Murray Hill. In 2019, Janet and Spider rented a furnished mid-century “weekend home” in Newburgh, NY in the Hudson Valley. Little did we know that three months later, due to the Covid Pandemic, we would be setting up full-time residence in Newburgh. Thanks to a friendly neighbor, in July 2020 we bought a home in Newburgh just two doors down the road from where we were renting. Janet’s mother kindly hosted a virtual Housewarming Party in September 2020, and generous friends sent everything a first-time homeowner would need. We also adopted three kittens to round out our little family. In September 2024, Janet started a new job as Director of Alumni Relations at SUNY New Paltz. She loves this new role and campus community and looks forward to working here for many years. Spider, meanwhile, started working at Salesforce in 2017 as a Marketing Cloud corporate trainer. Today, Spider continues to train clients on Salesforce software as an independent consultant. Spider is also an artist and you can check out his gallery site and his YouTube channel by using the links in the 'Links To Check Out' section of this web site. In November 2024, Janet and Spider went to the Caribbean island of St. Kitts for a Thanksgiving holiday. It was there that we discussed finally getting married after ten wonderful years together. Spider proposed, Janet accepted, and the planning for our wedding began. Looking ahead to September 6, 2025, we can’t wait to celebrate our love and marriage with friends and family from around the world. If you are unable to join us, we look forward to celebrating with you another time. We believe our story is just getting started and we cannot wait to see what life’s next chapters will reveal.