Our Love Story — Eoin & Carlisle

Our Story

In 2017, Carlisle was a third-year college student studying abroad in China. After a spring semester in Hangzhou, she moved back to Beijing (where she studied during the previous fall semester) to find some odd jobs and hang out with friends. After finding an apartment with two other women, Carlisle juggled bartending shifts, teaching English classes, tutoring, and reporting for an amateur journalist gig.

To keep the fun going, she and her flatmate Lareina decided to play a dating game. Whoever went on the most dates with the most people would win. After drawing up a scoreboard for their living room wall, they set out swiping.

That summer Eoin was finishing up a semester abroad studying in Beijing. With the prospect of returning to his tiny box room back home and a stressful final year of college on the horizon, he made the most of traveling around the country, acting the maggot, and checking out the aul dating apps.

They swiped right on one another since they both had names the other had never seen before. Neither was interested in texting, so they exchanged about three sentences before agreeing to meet at a local microbrewery that day.

Around noon on an extremely hot and humid summer day in Beijing, Eoin sat down at Carlisle’s table. This wasn’t Carlisle’s first date that day (she’s competitive), and Eoin was drenched from the sweltering journey over. It was easy to say things weren’t set up for success and expectations were not high.

Carlisle thought he was charming; Eoin thought she was gorgeous and wanted to see her again. So he took her out to karaoke a few days later.

Thus began their summer romance.

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After 3 weeks, Eoin packed a bag and moved into Carlisle’s apartment, which on any given night could have 6-7 inhabitants with friends in the midst of moving apartments, divorces, traveling, and recovering from the night before. After a month of madness and close quarters, they had a final stroll through the Old Summer Palace (Yuanming yuan). Eoin mused aloud, wondering how things between them would go if they had more time. Eoin and Carlisle parted ways as he returned to Dublin while she went to Shanghai with Lareina. Though taken with each other, they did not expect to meet again. Carlisle may have won her game, but doubted she would meet anyone who made her feel the way Eoin did. She accepted he would be her “what if.”

Eoin and Carlisle had stayed in touch here and there, but had continued dating other people and focused on graduating. But in summer 2018, Carlisle was bouncing around Europe after graduating college and was planning on dropping in on her cousin Ellen, to help her move from Dublin to Cork. Remembering their connection, Eoin and Carlisle agreed to meet for lunch and see the play, Uylesses.

Sparks flew and they felt as if no time had passed. Ellen graciously let Carlisle ditch her for the majority of the trip as Eoin and Carlisle went to the beach, toured museums and crashed birthday parties. Though still taken with each other, Carlisle did not expect to cross paths again— their surprise reunion alone felt unlikely enough given a majority of her time was spent in China or the California coast.

But Eoin knew they would meet again.

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While Carlisle was galavanting around Europe, Eoin was working a summer office job as a stop-gap, feeling disillusioned at the prospect of being a software engineer. After Carlisle’s visit, he was thinking more and more of returning to China for a year to continue studying the language and to give teaching a go. He contacted schools and recruiters, and eventually decided on a kindergarten in Beijing, his old stomping ground.

In September 2018, Eoin arrived in Beijing where he reunited with Carlisle who had been there since a month prior, having accepted a scholarship to complete a master’s degree at Peking University. Within a week of landing in the country, Eoin asked Carlisle out properly over hotpot. Carlisle was a little hesitant initially, since she had just started grad school and they had only just reunited after being apart, but Eoin easily convinced her to say yes anyway.

They would eat many more hotspots together, spend nights out dancing, go on trips together throughout China, explore hutongs (Beijing’s winding alleyways) and public parks, and fall very in love. Unbeknownst to Carlisle, Eoin had only planned to be in Beijing for one year. As his contract came to close, he extended his stay another year to remain with Carlisle. Carlisle moved out of the Peking University dorms in her second year to a hutong apartment conveniently ten minutes from Eoin’s kindergarten, so every afternoon Eoin would come by for a lunch date. Eoin would drop off gifts from his kid’s parents (which included everything from gallons of milk to raw chicken) while Carlisle wrote her thesis and attended language classes.

Unfortunately, their bliss didn’t last.

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In January 2020 while traveling across Japan for the Lunar New Year, Eoin and Carlisle were advised not to return to China. Information on a flu in Wuhan was scarce, but they were told to come back to China in two weeks when things blew over. On the Tokyo subway, Eoin and Carlisle kissed each other goodbye, saying they would see each other back home in their apartment in Beijing. It would be 18 months before they would see each other again.

During this time, Eoin remained in Dublin. He finished out the school year teaching kids in Beijing remotely and then moved on to the bigger kids the next year, completing a Master’s degree in Education before moving into EdTech. Carlisle left her family in California to move to New York City with no real plan.

With the world stuck indoors, they needed some new conversation. Together they shared a book club (just the two of them) where chats about the French Revolution, the Qing Dynasty, science fiction, ethics, families, religion, class and labor, values, and the politics of empires held them together. It was through this book club that they each got a fuller picture of the mind of the other.

Carlisle decided she would eventually marry him.

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In August 2021, Carlisle and Eoin reunited in Dublin after borders finally reopened. So much time had passed,they were taken aback by the slight differences in appearance and mannerisms, how their respective accents had thickened, and how much they had to figure out before closing the distance again. From then they would take turns flying to one another about every 6-8 weeks for 2 years, getting properly acquainted with each other’s friends, families, and pets. Together they moved from relying on fortune and happenstance to thinking about building the other person into their life. On some visits, they couldn’t pack enough activities in, even flying to Italy for a pasta tour or chasing metal bands in Prague. Other trips were spent simply working remotely, reading, or cooking side by side.

In autumn 2023 they decided to take the plunge to never again be parted.

On November 30th Eoin asked Carlisle to marry him.

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We feel lucky to have found each other and been a part of a great and unlikely love. And we know many of you have been with us on this journey as our love story grew from impossible to inevitable, asking for updates and cheering us on from the sidelines.

We can’t wait to celebrate our wedding (finally!) with you.