‘We just had this amazing emotional and spiritual connection’

Lindsey Blau felt ready to get married at age 19. Her dream job was to be a wife and mom. She knows people think it’s a cultural thing because she’s Mormon, but she’s not so sure.

“Within myself, that’s always what I wanted,” she says.

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As the years ticked by with no husband in sight, she grew despondent. Throughout her 20s, one friend after another got married and then started having children. Lindsey had trouble getting asked on second dates.

“I was so focused on this end goal of getting married that it would scare men away,” she says. “I looked like this desperate person.”

She was living in Utah and went to every party and singles gathering she could find, but she only came away more depressed. “Being single for such a long time was a really terrible experience for me.”

In 2011, on the eve of turning 30, she decided it was time to stop focusing so much on marriage and put her energy elsewhere. That fall, she moved to Washington to pursue a job in education policy. What she ended up finding instead was seven months of unemployment. That, at least, took her mind off her dating woes.

In 2012, she was hired as a project manager for a government contractor. Although it wasn’t in her desired field, she ended up loving the work. Fully employed, she started hoping to find love again. But her forays into online dating and singles events seemed as fruitless as ever.

When Adam Pence offered to help her clean up after a church lunch in April, she was just happy for the male company. She handed the Indiana native a broom, chatted with him about the best sushi places in town and mentally wrote him off, knowing he was what she called a “summer boy” — one of several Mormon men who came to Washington to work in door-to-door businesses before leaving in the fall.

Still, she was impressed by Adam’s sarcasm and willingness to pitch in, so she gave her number when he asked for it.

The next week, he picked her up and drove to a sushi restaurant in Vienna. They covered the normal questions about career and family, but then the conversation grew more serious. She learned that unlike most Mormons, Adam, now 29, had converted to the religion after missionaries knocked on his door at age 24.

“He just kind of blew my mind with his spirituality,” Lindsey remembers. “Then he asked me a question about my testimony of Jesus Christ and I started talking about it and started crying. We just had this amazing emotional and spiritual connection. It was very special.”

After dinner, they sat listening to music in the car, and when they shared a long hug goodbye, Lindsey silently wished he would ask her out again. He called the next day and she offered to cook dinner.

Adam was working 12-hour days selling pest control door-to-door, but the two started seeing each other as often as possible. Lindsey was out of town with her family on her birthday in mid-May, and when she returned, Adam picked her up at the airport. That night, as they cuddled on her couch, she asked him to kiss her, and he obliged.