"So I’m Andrew, Anna’s fiance. I live in Vancouver, and for a living I spend 12 hours a day sitting in front of a computer."

"Intelligence, the ability to be warm is something that I have not really had in a relationship…it was new to me."

"Trustworthiness, that’s a big one. It takes the ability to really trust somebody - I don’t mean just in terms of whether or not they’re going to cheat on you or something, but if you know who they are in all possible situations - that because you’ve been living together in one situation with a certain group of people, that down the road, let’s say she’s in a different situation, she doesn’t have her friends around, it’s in a different city or you have an argument, that some part of her character doesn’t suddenly kick in and she’s not quite the same person you thought you knew."

"I have fallen in love with a couple of previous girlfriends before Anna. The first time was probably the one I thought could last, but it was when I was 19. Eventually I decided that the relationship wasn’t go to go to marriage simply because I was so young and I wanted to try a few others before settling it, so I left it there and of course you never really end up restarting such a thing. The second time I was in love, it was actually ended by the fact that we were living in separate cities - though ultimately the relationship didn’t have that much hope, because there were certain fundamental problems."

"In my case, the reason relationships have broken up is that you realize you don’t have the same expectations of each other. For instance, my expectation was one of a casual relationship, and I think hers was possibly more, and that’s a problem."

"For me, I think the most important thing in a prospective mate is that she be emotionally mature, so that you’re not running into the kind of problems that will destroy a relationship. And also very important of course is intelligent, and also important to some extent is looks."

"With Anna, one of the biggest differences to previous relationships is that I can discuss my feelings in a very open manner and I’m not worried about it. In other relationships, it’s more that I was guarding something. I didn’t want to open up and I just no longer feel that’s the problem."

"It was[the proposal] motivated by her constant complaints that I’d never given her flowers - and I had a reason. I don’t think flowers are a very practical thing. You spend a lot of time bringing home something that dies in a couple of days - why bother? So that was what I did - I filled the place with flowers."

"This particular relationship has changed me a lot, and I don’t think that’s necessarily the case for a lot of people - but my particular psyche, for whatever reason, I grew up fairly slowly, I matured fairly slowly - I had relationships which were in some senses quite poor. And also I suppose, my maturity of dealing with a relationship and dealing with my feelings. Anna has had a huge influence on me in that way, and that is one of the reasons why now, I suppose, that I’m in a situation where I’m getting married - whereas if you’d asked my friends 2-3 years ago do you think Andrew will get married in the next couple of years, they probably would have laughed."

"Anna and I both come from families with greater than 2 children, which is something I think is a good quality in a family….but I don’t see that much commonality in our backgrounds, apart from the fact we both come from families where our parents were well-educated and we were well-educated. Our family cultures are quite different…In my family, there were 3 boys and 1 girl, and my dad was pretty much the dominant figure. We never really touched on the touchy-feely stuff, and I was probably the most un-touchy-feely of the siblings. Whereas in Anna’s family they’re always running around hugging each other and whatnot - and her mother was the more dominant figure. Her father was less assertive than mine."

"I do expect her to change. I suppose the woman usually expects a man to change and often as not the man doesn’t change. (But) I expect her to mature as she takes on a career and responsibilities and I don’t think that’s an unreasonable expectation. Of course, in many cases the woman might not expect the man not so much to mature, but to become more loving or caring or some other unrealistic thing like that."

"Gender roles have changed. Most men that I know have no problem at all with the fact that their girlfriends are professionals or earn more than they do. It’s not really an issue - it’s certainly not a problem for me. I would see it as an advantage, frankly - financially, of course - but in terms of other potential as well."

"I’d say that’s usually the case, that women tend to try and look at a relationship more seriously than men."

"My priority is my career. It simply takes precedence because I’ve spent however many years on my career now vs. 2-3 years on my relationship…that just is more important for now, and she understands that. Obviously I’m willing to make some sacrifices. Say, for instance, I have to move to California for my career to continue on a reasonable track, and she refuses to move, then only at that point, with an extreme example like that, would it cause a problem."

"I see myself as traditional in the sense that I’ve always had a fairly clear idea that I would be getting married. In fact I was quite certain that was what I was going to do, and children have always been in the back of my mind as well. Mind you, they’re not goals that I have been working actively towards in my life, I’ve pretty much just put them off, and they stayed in the back of my mind. As for the nature of a relationship being traditional, it’s not. My parents’ relationship is a very different one from what ours will be. I’m not even thinking about children - I don’t know if or when at this point …Their relationship is different from ours in that my mother has never worked. She’s always looked after the children and the house - that traditional mode - whereas should we have children, it would be more a case of having a nanny so we can both have a career at the same time. I do not look at my parents and say, ‘that’s the way my relationship is going to be.’ In fact, I pretty much knew that it was going to be two professionals parenting, rather than a professional housekeeper parenting."

"I believe that if two people want to continue to be entertaining and interesting to each other, they should be at a similar level in their lives. If one person goes off and runs a company for 10 years and flies around the country and meets people, and the other person stays at home cleaning and taking care of the kids, their mutual conversation possibilities are definitely narrow."

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