Episode 21: When You Know, You Know: A Cross-Continental Love Story

I share the story of meeting and falling in love with Juliana from Brazil after months of online conversations, culminating in an eight-day trip that changed my life forever. What began as a skeptical first meeting transformed into the most magical experience of my life when I spontaneously proposed marriage.

Please start with Episode 1. Go to my site BrandonHeld.com

• Finding meaningful connection through international online dating
• How my work colleague Mindy helped me secure a remote job and became a lifelong friend
• Traveling 24 hours to Maragogi, Brazil for our first in-person meeting
• Experiencing immediate chemistry and comfort despite initial nervousness
• Proposing marriage within five days despite it being completely out of character for both of us
• Navigating the emotional airport goodbye and beginning the fiancée visa process
• Challenges of maintaining an international relationship during COVID times

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:35

Welcome back to Brandon Held. Life is crazy. This is episode 21. Sounds crazy. Speaking of crazy that I'm on my 21st episode already, but here we are and I'll just get right back into it. Pick up where I left off last episode. I was now speaking with someone that I had met online from Brazil. Her name also happens to be Juliana, which is funny enough because watching 90 Day Fiancé, it was a Juliana from Brazil that really made me wanted to try to meet a Brazilian. And then I was speaking to a girl from Colombia and her name was Juliana. And then it just so happens that The woman that I meet in Brazil, her name ends up being Juliana. So it's almost like full circle there with the name Juliana. Her and I were communicating and we were trying to see if we had something going and she was a little bit more hesitant than I was. It's just as far as just not really Talking so much, taking it slow. She was busy, like I said, so I didn't get much of her time in the beginning. And so now I'm back at work and I'm focusing on something called a go-live, which was basically a flip of a switch from the old DOD electronic healthcare records program, switching to the new electronic healthcare records program. And we were about to do that there at Davis-Monthan. And they did a really great thing by sending me someone experienced to provide me some support for the go-live. I didn't, I wasn't a hundred percent confident going into it. They give you some guidance conceptually on what it'll look like and what you're going to go through, but it's intimidating and you're not a hundred percent sure. that you're going to be equipped and you're going to know how to do it. So they look for volunteers, people who have gone through it and who would be willing to help and travel and all that. I had someone named Mindy who was coming to my Go Live to assist me for a week. I had never met her before, never talked to her before, and she was going to be there with me side by side for a week, helping me through this Go Live. And the reason that I bring that up is because She actually turns out to be someone significant in my life, right? Just this, probably nothing she ever thought, nothing I ever thought. Just this woman who's doing this job and going to help someone during a go-live. Mindy came and she's older than me by, I don't know, about 20 years and she was just great from the beginning. She just was super helpful in expanding my knowledge and helping me get through the go live and just on a personal level, she's just a good person. I enjoyed talking to her and we were sharing life stories and life details and stuff like that. And she knew that I was talking to this new woman from Brazil and her name was Juliana. And she, I was telling her how I really want to see if this can go somewhere and see if it's going to work out because she seems really great, but I just can't get a lot of her time because she's so busy right now. So I'm not sure how to take that. I'm not sure how to take it as if she's like genuinely busy or It's a way to brush me off. So I had some doubts. I had some skepticism. And I was sharing all that with Mindy. And we became close and we made a friendship. And so we made a friendship that will last the rest of our lives. And so that's why I bring Mindy up. And so we get through the go-live. She helps me through it and I do. And I was so thankful for that and she left and we maintained a friendship. And after Go Live, after the first, I don't know, week or so of Go Live and trying to keep things going and during the switch of the record system, things died down a lot. There just wasn't a lot. going on there. And it was starting to bother me that I had to drive so far to show up to an office where there just wasn't much for me to do. And everything that I did do, I did through email. People didn't come see me face to face for interactions and things that needed to be done. They emailed me and I responded to them via email. And that was how I did the job. So I was pushing my bosses to Let me work from home and remotely. And I was explaining how this would allow me to have my kids. And so therefore I could take my kids to school and pick them up. And I'm missing out on this. And I'm in every other weekend dad now because of this situation. And they were just essentially, sorry, can't help you. The contract says you have to be on site. There's nothing we can do for you. So I know there were other teams involved. that got to work from home and got to work remotely. As a matter of fact, Mindy was on one of those. She was one of those people working from home and remotely. And so I was pushing to be moved and put on a different team and they were just saying, no, we can't help you. And I genuinely ended up feeling like it wasn't because they couldn't help me. It was because they didn't want to help me. They wanted me to be on site. because A, I was very good at it and the client was happy with me and B, they just didn't want to try to have to replace me. They didn't want to try to find someone to replace me. And I was voicing all this concern with Mindy and Mindy at the same time was a little dissatisfied with the company and wanted to make a change as well. And so she had made a connection and she got a role under a new company for the VA. And that role was allowing her to work from home a hundred percent. So she said, Hey, I got this new job with this new company that owners are great. It's a small consultant company. They're just starting out, but they have positions open for the VA that are remote work from home. And I'd love to recommend you for a role if you want to work there. And I was just ecstatic. Yes, of course. Hook me up. Let me talk to them. Let me see what's going on. Let me see what that's about. And she did. True to her word, she got me connected with the owners of my new company and I was able to talked to them and hit it off great with them and they're great guys. And so they gave me some position ideas and it took a few months. I was ready for this to happen quickly, but it took a few months for this process to play out. But eventually I did get an interview with the leadership of the company they were subcontracted under and it went great. Everything went well. I got, I got a, invitation to get a job with them the same day that I got the interview. So that was great news. So now I was getting out of this role that I was happy to be employed and get back on my feet. But now I could get into something that a was moving on and be was more suited for me because I needed something where I could be at home so I could take my kids to and from school and not be in every other weekend dad, but be a 50-50 custody dad. So that was set. That was worked out. And I was super excited about that. And in conjunction, at the same time, Juliana and I had... made a decision that we were going to meet in brazil we were getting closer we were having more video calls and that relationship was picking up a little bit so it was time for me to come out to brazil and meet her and so that too was set up and so After a few months of knowing her and talking to her, both in video call and via text, I was finally going to Brazil to meet up with her. And so we did a destination meetup. I didn't go to where she lives. She didn't want me to. I didn't want to. That's too awkward when you're just meeting someone for the first time. So we decided to meet up in a beautiful place called Maragogi. And the whole way I'm flying there, I'm thinking it's been tough to get her time. It's been tough to get her attention. I don't know how this is going to go. I genuinely was concerned that this might be a fail and I had booked this eight day trip together in Brazil. And so she was going to meet me there as well. The whole time flying there, I'm excited. but also worried, right? Excited because of the potential possibility, but worried because it could be a complete disaster and just another failed situation that didn't work out. But I knew the potential was great and that's why it was all worth it. So I take the long flight to Brazil and it's especially long because you have to fly over Recife, which is in the northeast part of Brazil. And you have to go down to Sao Paulo and then back up to Recife again. And it was just a really long trip. I don't remember how many hours it was total. Somewhere around 20 or more of travel. And that's just being at the airport. flying. That doesn't include arriving to my Tucson airport an hour and a half, two hours early. So that doesn't even go into effect. So it's probably like 24 hours or something by the time I actually get to the airport and I get off the airplane and I go get my luggage and she was scheduled to arrive later than I was, but When I get off the airport, she texts me. She's like, hey, or when I get off the airplane, I'm in blue and glass apparently. When I get off the airplane, she texts me. She says, hey, I too have landed. I'm here. I landed. All I have to do is get my luggage and we can meet. And I was like, great. Now the excitement slash nerves were really kicking in. And I was excited to get my luggage. I'm texting her, where do I meet you? How do I find you? And we're not really, I'm not familiar with this airport in Recife. And obviously neither is she. I don't think she'd ever been here before, but it was still her culture, her world. And so she was basically finally just wait where you are and I'll come find you. But I was too nervous. excited to do that so I was walking around pacing staying in the general area but still looking and then finally like she rounds the corner when it's during COVID time still not COVID like the rest of the world COVID but more like the airlines are still requiring us to wear face masks on the plane which really sucked by the way having that thing pull on my ears for 24 hours and and you had to wear face masks in the airport still and so she rounded the corner and as soon as i saw her she was just beautiful like immediately i could tell Oh my God, this girl is amazing. And I went to her and I hugged her and I picked her up off the ground and I gave her a big hug. We remove our masks and I kissed her and that's how it all started. I said in my head, it just felt right. It just felt perfect. I don't know how to explain it. Like can't explain how you can go from having so many doubts and fears and worries to, I don't have anything to worry about. This is great. And so just from the moment we met, there was nervous anticipation. I could tell she was nervous and excited. I was nervous and excited, but we were super happy to be together and finally meet each other. And we get her, we get, we go do the basic stuff you got to do, find our way out of the airport, go get ourselves a taxi that's going to take us to our hotel because Maragogi is, I don't remember, 45 minutes, an hour away from the Recife airport. And so the first thing we had to do was drive in a car together, but there was just no awkwardness. It was nothing. immediate comfort we're sitting next to each other i'm hugging her i got my arm around her she's got her hand on my leg we're talking the conversations are smooth she has a nice thick accent because her she was still learning english basically and i'm just learning all these things about her just on the drive there as i had been doing for months previous and the reason All that significant is because in past relationships, they almost always got physical pretty quick. Even if you say in a week or even longer, it took to get physical with someone like you still really don't know someone that way in a week or so. And then once the physical gets into it, it also changes the way a relationship looks and feels. But I had spent months just getting to know her just as a person, asking her questions, what makes her tick, how she thinks, just all those things. And her the same for me. And now we were in this car on our rides, getting to know each other even better. And it just was such... a smooth transition from, I had never met you in person before to, oh my God, I feel like I've known you forever. And that's what it felt like. And it went amazing. We spent our first couple of days in Brazil at one smaller hotel. I let her pick the hotels that we stayed at. And then we, after those couple of days, we went to a different hotel and resort that was more all-inclusive and we stayed there and i think we were together four or five days i'm not sure everything was so dang perfect that i asked her to marry me and it flew in the face of everything that i thought i wanted to accomplish right i thought i wanted something distance to slow it down. I thought I wanted something distance to be able to live my daily life, but yet still have someone in it without us being right on top of each other. And as soon as I met her and we were together, I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. And I knew that also not really understanding just how incredibly hard it was going to be to actually be together. And I wasn't really thinking about that or worrying about that at that time. I asked her to marry me. She said, yes, like I could tell she was stunned, but she felt the same way. And she said yes. And so now we had a couple of days left and we were engaged. now so we went from being these two people that met online to we were meeting for the first time to now we were engaged to be married and it sounds crazy and if you ask her or you ask me we would never recommend for anyone to follow in our footsteps i would never tell someone Yeah, go meet someone from another country and get engaged immediately and get married quickly. Like it doesn't make any sense. I get that. She gets that. Nothing about it makes sense, but it just felt right. After someone who'd been married three times took his time, two years and five years in those relationships to actually get married and Now I'm asking someone within five days of meeting her in person to get married. And she, as crazy as I was to ask, she was equally as crazy to agree. And I say that jokingly because if you knew her, like I know her, everyone else in her life knows her. She's not someone that's quick to make a decision. She's not someone that makes rash decisions. She takes her time. before she makes decisions. She's very practical and pragmatic about her approach in life and how she decides to do things. And hell, I really didn't even know that about her yet. But if I would have known, I probably would have been even more afraid, too afraid to even ask her because that's not who she was. But I blindly was feeling this thing that I just acted on. And luckily it worked out and she said yes. And so that was what I affectionately consider the eight greatest days of my life. It was a perfect, as close to perfect eight days as I've ever had in my life. There was one small incident there where she was getting food from The buffet thing at the restaurant and a cook there had stuck his hand out to touch her ass. And I saw the whole thing happen. And he was just a pervert, a creepy pervert. And I saw it, but I was helpless. I was in another country. I couldn't just go tackle the guy and beat the shit out of him like I probably would have if it would have happened in America. And I just felt helpless. I saw it coming. I saw, I saw him behaving creepily the way he was looking at other women and the way he was carrying himself. And I was trying to get her attention to get out of the situation, to get her to come to me. And she saw me, she just kept, and I was like waving that motion with my hand to come here. And she would put up her finger like one second. Cause like she was almost done. She didn't know what I wanted and it ended up happening. I ended up. Sticking his hand out and touching her butt. And of course she thought, oh, excuse me. She turned around thinking she just bumped into someone. She had no idea that it was a pervert being a pervert. So that was really the only hiccup we had in the entire meeting. First meeting slash vacation together. Otherwise it was absolutely perfect. It was perfect. She's beautiful. We get along great. She's intelligent. It was just the best eight days of my life and still is to this day. Maybe someday that will get toppled. But until then, that's it now. And so now we were, our eight days were over and we were going to the airport and we were about to depart just now. Taking that practically, okay, we spent eight days together. Now we got to turn around and go home until we can be together again. And just not putting a lot of thought into it, right? So we're at the airport and I know I'm dreading leaving because it was eight amazing days. Brazil is absolutely beautiful. And by and large, the Brazilians were good to me and good people outside of that one guy. And I just really loved it there. And I wasn't ready to leave her and I wasn't ready to go back to work, but I knew it's what had to happen. And I'm a pretty logical person. And we were getting our last food in at the airport and we were saying our last goodbyes. And when we got to my airplane, when I was about to board to leave from nowhere, and I'm not ashamed to admit this. I realized how much I was going to miss this woman. And I broke down and started crying as if someone just had flipped a switch that I went from feeling semi-normal to, oh my God, I'm going to miss this girl so much. And just started crying. And as soon as I started crying, she started crying and it really sunk in. Holy crap. We have this love, this relationship. And we're going to be continents apart, not really, but countries apart. And it's just hitting us that we don't know when we're going to see each other again exactly, but we know that we're in love and we know that we love being together and we know that being together is amazing. And now we have to separate and go back to our lives without each other. And it sucked. It really sucked. And I get on the airplane and I depart and it goes from the eight most magical days in my life to, oh, now I got to go back and live a life without this woman that I want to see every day. And I can't, right? She's, I can't just move to Brazil. I have kids. I have a job. I have a life in America. And it takes a visa to get into America. And that takes time. And it was COVID time. The only thing I can do is what I can do, which is take the steps to get her to America. So as soon as I get back to America, I immediately apply for a fiance visa, which for those of you that don't know, is the premise behind the show, 90 Day Fiance, because we're If you come to America on a fiance visa, you have to get married within 90 days. And if you don't, the person not from America has to go back to their country. And, or if they leave the country, say she came to visit me and left for any reason within that 90 days and we didn't get married, she still couldn't reenter the country. The visa then becomes null and void. Yeah, we had all that going on and now the only thing I could do was miss this new love in my life and focus on work and working out, trying to get, still trying to get better fit and better shape and spending time with my kids when I could, but really just focus on trying to get my new fiance into the country. And that's where I will stop this episode. Thanks for joining me. I'll talk to you next time.