Mark & PJ
Met through: Tinder in 2014
Love is when the person is your other half, no matter the distance
Mark Bautista, 24, and his girlfriend of over a year, Precious Joy aka. “PJ,” 22, met on the social dating app Tinder in 2014. The location-based application, which connects to Facebook, matched Mark and PJ up as a pair while the two were both working in Manila, where Tinder culture is large and thriving. After just a few weeks on Tinder, Mark asked PJ for coffee, and the rest was history. The two made it official after just a few weeks of dating.
“My friends would always make fun of me for using the app [Tinder], but then I showed it to them and soon they were using it too,” Mark, a videographer now based in Southern California, laughed.
When he and PJ began dating, it was apparent from the start that the both of them were going to leave to the US to launch their careers individually. Back home in the Philippines, they hardly saw each other because of PJ’s frequent visits to her family in the northern province of Isabela. They communicated frequently, and when they did see each other, it was as if no time had passed.
Soon, long distance began to run its course. Mark obtained his visa and went to California to continue his career, while PJ took up a temporary position in Colorado, working for hotel management, before she went back home to Manila for work in December 2015. Mark remained in Southern California with his family. Despite nearly a day’s time difference, the two have always made it work, with the help of communication and technology, mutual respect, and maturity.
“We’re really private about our relationship, and it’s one of the factors that’s kept us going. No one’s going to bother you. We’ve gotten a lot stronger as a couple, especially after this first year.”
The two were also able to see each other last year, sharing their love for travel while visiting the East Coast; Canada, New York, New Jersey, and Washington DC. It was a rare moment for the two to be face to face, in a relationship rooted and sustained in online digital communication.
“We connect mostly through Facebook, Viber, and Skype–we Skype almost every single day, at the same time, while I’m going home and she is on her way to work,” Mark shared. “As a long-distance couple, communication is the thing that will really hold us together.”
The couple also sends each other surprise gifts for birthdays and holidays, despite being oceans apart, and they have many future travel plans in mind, including a grand tour of Asia.
“You need to bond by doing things together, and learn from each other. We love to travel; she loves photography, I love video. She teaches me cooking–for example, when she was in Colorado we were on Skype, and she taught me how to cook while on camera. Those are our dates. And we are very similar–she’s the girl version of myself.”
Mark and PJ hope to settle together in the US someday, but for now, they will continue to pursue their careers and work on growing themselves. They continue to communicate every day.
“Respect and communication. That’s key. You need to be mature enough to know what’s right and wrong, and to be understanding of one another’s situations,” Mark shared. “Now, after a whole year–I’m proud to say we are making it.”
