Dexter + Marriz
A couple downsizes their wedding to the bare essentials at the start of the pandemic, and a lesson in highly intentional love.
Dexter, an MIT graduate and tech CEO, told me about how he viewed romance. “We want relationships to be this casual thing, that you just happen to meet, and feel a spark. Maybe that happens, but if you think about it, everything else in life is pretty intentional. If you’re looking for a job, you’re not just going to hope that the perfect one falls into your lap. You’re going to be very diligent in searching to make sure it’s a fit for you, and you’re a fit for it.” He some previous relationships as if they were “poor fit,” like his choices were improperly matched trendlines to the data that was his love life.
Boston, MA
14 minute read
“At this point, we’re just waiting for the next nice day. Everything else is ready.” In the BC —Before Covid— era, Dexter and Marriz had been frantically planning their wedding in Boston. After dating long-distance for two years, Marriz had just moved from the Philippines to be with Dexter in the United States. Neither were particularly attached to a large wedding in the US; their main celebration would be back in the Philippines at the end of 2020. But the US wedding would be a way to welcome Marriz to her new country and her new community. They’d be married at a local seminary, and have a reception afterwards with all of the standard wedding traditions; a three tier wedding cake, first dances, toasts, and music to dance the night away.
[photo of you two together in the US, soon after moving?]
But both Dexter and Marriz were having a lot more trouble sorting out the logistics than they’d anticipated. Aside from booking the venue, they’d put off most of the planning until when Marriz would be in the US, only two months before the wedding. On top of already leaving her family in the Philippines and settling into a new country, Marriz was also thrown into the midst of wedding planning. “There were misaligned expectations, poor planning before on my part, and a very compressed time frame,” Dexter told me.
Dexter recruited members of his church for help, but that only complicated things further. “They were trying to help plan this huge, grand wedding for me, because they thought that I, coming from the Philippines would want that to make me feel happy. But Dexter and I aren’t like that anyways. We actually wanted to keep things simple,” Marriz told me. Her first few weeks in the US were rather overwhelming.
By mid-March, the couple had resolved their logistical challenges, only to face a new unknown. Coronavirus, a “problem in China” just a month or two ago, had spread indubitably to the US. Most of the couples I’d been speaking with thought of the pandemic as their literal worst-case scenario; I fielded a lot of stressed out emails and calls that month. Marriz and Dexter, though, felt differently.
“As odd as it sounds, this whole coronavirus thing forced our hand, where there’s no big wedding anymore, and it’s actually become a huge relief for both of us,” Dexter said. The two had had their first major arguments while trying to plan the wedding together, which now, in its traditional, grand, elaborate form, could be no more. “The important thing is that we’re still getting married, and that we’re still physically together. After over two years of being a world apart, I’m just so happy to see her on a daily basis.”
[Would be useful to have a photo here too, if you can think of anything that makes sense]
“We’re finally here, and we’re working towards the journey of a married couple,” Marriz added. “If anything, this all allowed us to step back, and really think about how we wanted to do this.”
Towards the end of April, Dexter gave me a FaceTime call. It was evening, and he and Marriz, masks donned, were walking outside somewhere. “We checked the weather, and it looks like this weekend could work,” Dexter said. He turned his camera around. “We think we’ll do it here.” He and Marriz were on MIT’s campus, at a well-known spot right next to the Charles river. “This place has a lot of significance to me too,” Dexter reminisced; he’d attended the school as an undergraduate. “It’ll just be us, our pastor, a few close family members, and you.”
Dexter and Marriz met in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. They’d been set up on a date by mutual friends from church, and decided to grab coffee at a Starbucks in one of the city’s many malls. “It wasn’t ‘love at first sight’; our loved developed as we got to know each other. But I knew that when I met him that he was really different,” Marriz explained. “It was like… you know when you feel you’ve known a person for a long time, even though you just met that day?”
Dexter had been a bundle of nerves before. “I was pretty anxious, and nervous, and excited for her to be there. I thought, what are we gonna talk about? And then are we going to go outside? Or is it too hot outside because it’s summer here? Or actually is it too cold inside because we’re at a Starbucks?” But when she arrived, and they started talking, it didn’t take long for him to feel at ease around her. “The first things we talked about were our work, and our faith, and our families; my mom had recently passed away, and her dad had as well.” The two stayed in the Starbucks for a few hours, then walked outside to get a view of the Manila Bay.
[Any photos of manila bay, or even better something from that day?]
A few more hours later, Marriz told Dexter that she had to go to a weekly church devotional group meeting, part accountability session and part religious lesson —but, if he wanted, he could wait and they could keep talking afterwards. “I thought that was amazing,” Dexter said, “that she didn’t change her plans to go to her devotional group just because we were on a date.”
Marriz grew up in Manila in a large and lively household. “Filipinos are generally a very happy and hospitable people,” Marriz told me, “and family is really important there.” Both of Marriz’s parents were naturally selfless and caring. Marriz’s mom —social, jolly, and very good with people— was the breadwinner, working as a social and health care worker, while her dad —quieter, more private, and very loving— stayed at home to care for Marriz and her four siblings.
[Photo with your family Marz?]
Marriz’s parents always had financial trouble making both ends meet, but nevertheless encouraged their kids to try all the extracurriculars they wanted to be a part of. In response, Marriz took to everything; “Singing, dancing, girl scouts, sports, anything you could think of,” she said. She’d instilled in herself that she had to work hard to do well in and finish school. After that, she’d be able to get a good job and help support the rest of her family. “When I got my first paycheck, I treated my whole family out to dinner. It felt important to me, because this was the first time I’d ever had my own salary.” She helped pay the bills, and made it financially possible for her other siblings to go to school as well.
Marriz was quickly sucked into the corporate world, working as a brand associate to help companies market and target their products within the Philippines. “My work basically became my life. I was really a workaholic, coming home tired, and just wanting to eat dinner and prepare to go to bed for work the next day.” Her father also recently started having heart problems, and Marriz was helping with those hospital bills. She’d started smoking and drinking more in this time too, and turned to partying as a way to forget the burden she felt to support her family and the pressure she felt from her clients.
[more photos of your life in Philippines @Marz?]
“In my quieter moments I just sat asking what was wrong with me. I didn’t know myself anymore, and I thought I’d become a different person. There was some kind of void in my heart that I couldn’t explain,” she told me.
Her answer, as it turned out, was her church. She was raised Catholic, but hadn’t had a great experience with it. “Before, these teachings used to just go in one ear and out the other. I felt disconnected, because I didn’t really like Christians. I thought that they were so self-righteous,” Marriz told me. She visited various churches, and started attending a weekly devotional group for single women, where they’d talk about their lives, pray together, and discuss how they wanted to think about relationships and marriage.
[photo with devo group?]
The leader of that devotional group, Jen, told me about Marriz’s change over time. “She was always honest in the group about her issues with smoking and drinking and partying, and was honest as well when she gave those things up.” Jen noticed changes too after Marriz met Dexter. “I personally saw Marriz change to a more patient, more loving, less workaholic person.”
Her family, all Catholic, didn’t understand why she was now Protestant, and Marriz avoided the subject with her family. Her father’s funeral marked the first time she had enough courage to admit her faith publicly. “I invited a pastor to pray for the community and for my father, and I prayed in front of my family, too.” Having to let go of one cornerstone of her life, her father, allowed her to shift weight to another, her faith.
Dexter and Marriz pulled up in front of MIT’s Killian court, an iconic open space that has likely hosted as many tears of joy (from scientists making new discoveries) as it has tears of pain (from undergrads furiously studying to understand those same discoveries). I greeted them in-person for the first time as they got out of the car; we’d decided that, given the situation with COVID-19, it’d be imprudent of me to directly stay with them in their home.
Dexter and Marriz arriving outside of MIT for the ceremony
“Can you help us grab some stuff?” Marriz asked, pointing to the trunk. In it were items both expected and unexpected; a small cake, some bouquets of flowers, a foldable table and accompanying chairs, some stuffed animals, a “getaway” scooter, and laptop to stream the event to friends and family. Some of Dexter’s family soon arrived too: two of his brothers, their families, and his father, who had gotten special permission to leave his nursing home to attend. “That was the hardest part of this whole thing,” Dexter had mentioned on a call the previous day. “They have very strict guidelines for allowing people to leave the home.”
Unlike many modern ceremonies, which couples often see as formal fluff to be shortened and merely tolerated, Dexter and Marriz planned theirs to take around 45 minutes, with a full message given by the pastor. Their faith, after all, was what brought them together, and when they talked to me about their wedding they always said it was simply a way to show their commitment in front of God and their friends and family.
We found a spot, as good as any, in the middle of the green to put everything down. Marriz puzzled over how to give the impression of an aisle. She settled on a rough arrangement of small potted flowers.
Marriz, Dexter, and other family setting up the ceremony area
The ceremony stumbled to an endearing start. No one really had any idea what marked the beginning of the ceremony; Dexter was still standing by the computer with seemingly no intention of leaving, Marriz was idling a few feet away, and everyone else stood in haphazard pairs all around. Eventually, Marriz gently nudged the flower girls to start walking, and the ceremony began.
Photos from the “processional”
Each person laughed as they stepped down 15 or so feet of “aisle", unsure of whether to be formal or simply embrace the charming strangeness of it all. Dexter held his phone and manned the laptop until the last possible moment, turning both to follow each person’s walk down the aisle so the many friends and family joining over Zoom could watch. Only when Marriz was standing in place did he set the phone down, check the Zoom feed, and hurry on over.
Zoom recording of the processional
“So certainly this is an unusual time,” their pastor began, “but we’re here for a reason. A wedding is nothing to be entered into lightly. I got to know Dexter and his mom some five or six years ago now, and while we don’t know exactly how things work for people who have gone on —can they see the grief around the world right now?— perhaps they can only see the good things. And this, certainly, is a good thing.”
Dexter and Marriz at the start of the ceremony with their pastor
The flower girls, bundles of energy just minutes before, now sat slumped behind their parents on a picnic blanket, uninterested in the formalities of the ceremony where they weren’t the stars.
The flower girls taking a break after their jobs had finished
Marriz and Dexter exchanged their own vows, and those on the Zoom call watched teary-eyed from their homes; many had dressed up for the occasion.
An ethereal peace infused the scene; occasional joggers or passers-by would stop to watch or snap a few photos on their phone, smiling as they did so. This was likely one of the more heartwarming parts of their days.
Family photos taken around MIT after the ceremony
Dexter is the CEO of a nerve-sensing company based in Boston called Pison, which he founded in 2017. His mother passed away from Alzheimers a few years prior, and much of his inspiration for the company came from watching her movements become more and more limited in her final years. Their product, a small wearable device that straps onto your wrist like a watch, detects the neural signals coming from your brain to your hand that say pinch, and performs certain actions. A friend of mine who worked at the company gave me a demo; witchcraft, is what it felt like.
[any photos about Pison?]
After graduating from MIT, Dexter worked in finance in Chicago for the better part of a decade before returning to the east coast to be closer to family and reflect on a career change. For two years, he took classes to learn new skills and worked as a volunteer firefighter in Virginia. “I never wanted to specifically be a firefighter per se, but I wanted to do physical activity, and to be in a club, a social group. Those were some of the happiest times of my life actually.”
[photos as firefighter?]
Dexter’s personality, as both he and family members describe it, has always been “atypical.” “I deal with things on my own, and I don’t really have close friends, which is not great for a guy. But I’m also emotionally sufficient that way, and able to internalize things well.” He has a methodical way of speaking that you might expect of a CEO.
The third of four sons to Chinese-Filipino parents, Dexter grew up in suburban Virginia among an academically gifted family. His oldest brother attended MIT after scoring a perfect 1600 on his SAT, and Dexter matriculated there himself a few years later. Doing well in school was always a given in their household. “When I was in middle school, my mom would tell me to get high school-level books, and when I was in high school, to get college-level books. I’d just look at them; I didn't understand them at all. But the attitude was that I could choose whatever I wanted to learn and then just learn it on my own,” he told me. The four brothers didn’t do too many extracurricular activities growing up. “I played a lot of video games with them. We’d rent a game from the store and then just play it all weekend.” Dexter paused. “I don’t know if I ever talked to them about anything else other than games growing up.”
[photos with brothers playing games?]
Dexter likes to think of his current personality and worldview as a near-perfect combination of his parents. His mom grew up in Hong Kong, and had parents who divorced when she was a young child. The social stigma was intense; her mother (Dexter’s grandma) got a lot of grief from her family and from those around her. Dexter’s mom started working when she was 6 years old. “Her family was getting a discount from the landlord on their rent out of pity, and in exchange they had to do certain jobs. Her role was to collect buckets of sewage from each of the apartments and take them down to the bottom of the building. She worked as the lowest of the low, and always in really challenging and demanding environments.” Dexter’s mom was hardworking, and never complained.
Dexter’s mother, with her brother, as a child
Dexter’s dad holds a Master’s in Chemical Engineering from one of the best schools in the Philippines, Mapúa Institute of Technology. “He’s very, very smart,” Dexter told me, “and always had this drive to own businesses. Unlike my mom though, he’s not super reflective. It’s only recently he’s learned to be a bit different."
[photo of dad?]
Dexter’s parents divorced in 2011, well into his adult life. “My dad has a very strong and commanding personality and my mom’s very meek. When everything was successful, it worked out fine, but when things weren’t successful, like when my father filed for bankruptcy, we had a lot of challenges. My mother was the only person working, at a grocery store, for the whole family, and I think that’s when their relationship broke down. Still, they never argued in front of the kids, and so I grew up thinking that arguments never really happened.”
“It took probably 30 years for me to develop a level of confidence about who I was, and only after I really understood each of my parents individually, when they separated and I spent time with them 1-1.”
[If you have any photos that make sense here would love them. perhaps with mom or dad]
When I talked to one of Dexter’s brothers, Desmond, he told me about how Dexter’s personality and thoughts contrasted with those of his brothers. “We all took differently to this idea that we felt relatively marginalized growing up,” —their area had pretty much no other Asian people living in it— “and I think Dexter, particularly, has always really wanted to have a tight-knit, close family, one that’s boisterous and very welcoming. That wasn't the sort of environment that we had. Dexter was always looking to be close to the family. He always wanted to play when we were growing up.”
After the ceremony, Dexter asked if we could make a detour to a local park. “There’s a specific photo I want to take”. As we walked there, we passed by a few newly budding cherry blossom trees. Normally, the park would be filled with people to look at the blooms and enjoy the changing season, but coronavirus had whittled the park’s visitors to joggers and cooped up families looking to get some fresh air.
We were surprised by the cherry blossoms in full bloom at a nearby park
“Before my mother passed away, this used to be her favorite spot to sit at,” Dexter reflected. It was a calm stretch, paved for runners, and on the Boston side of the Charles river looking out towards Cambridge on the other.
Dexter and Marriz at his mother’s favorite spot to rest and reflect
Just as Dexter’s personality was atypical, so was his approach to finding a partner in life. “It took me being a CEO to develop the maturity to know what kind of person I wanted to find.” Dexter had been in some relationships before, but, as he described them, they were “poor fit,” like his choices were improperly matched trendlines to the data that was his love life.
“I don’t think it’s healthy to even think about romance in the traditional way,” he began. “We want relationships to be this casual thing, that you just happen to meet, and feel a spark. Maybe that happens, but if you think about it, everything else in life is pretty intentional. If you’re looking for a job, you’re not just going to hope that the perfect one falls into your lap. You’re going to be very diligent in searching to make sure it’s a fit for you, and you’re a fit for it.”
Dexter’s trip to the Philippines and meeting Marriz were the result of a lot of this intentional thinking. “I first visited the Philippines in 2015 with my father on a church trip, a few months after my mother had passed away. I thought immediately that the values were naturally very aligned with how I ended up thinking about the world; very family oriented, very social, very caring. And from then on, in my mind, I thought, if at some point I can’t find my partner in the US, then my plan will be to move and live in the Philippines and hopefully meet someone there.”
[Any photos that might be relevant in this section?]
Two years later, he did just that. One of the elders in his church in Virginia, a Filipino woman named Juliet, helped connect him with a few other churches in the Philippines and introduce his name and background around the community.
“I went there, very intentionally, for 10 days. This was my first trip, and I knew it might take many trips to connect with someone.”
Marriz, perhaps anticipating my hesitation, jumped in. “Some people, in the Philippines especially, may have thought that I was just being picked out to go to the US, but that wasn’t true. I had no plans to leave; I’m a very career-focused woman, and a breadwinner in my family.”
Marriz wasn’t thinking about “finding a man from the US to run off with,” but she was thinking intentionally, just like Dexter, about whom her future partner might be. “I wanted to date someone I could imagine marrying, building a life together, having kids with. Someone who was Christian, who would remind and encourage me in my daily life as well.”
I asked whether Marriz was taken aback by the idea of Dexter coming to the Philippines specifically to try and find a partner. Marriz shook her head. “To be honest, when we met, I really appreciated the fact that he was very intentional. When I became a Christian, I learned you need to be intentional in all things; in your relationship with God, and in your relationship with other people.”
Marriz continued. “When I’ve dated people in the past, I never saw a direction of where we were supposed to be in the future. Dexter was on the same page about how he saw dating for the pursuit of marriage, to build a life together, to have kids.
[photos from your dating days would be cute here!]
Dexter had the same sentiments, peppered with his own quantitative flair. “You’re finding a partner in life; you need to be intentional, and you should try to optimize the probabilities you’ll find that person as well. I realized this later on, but it’s way better to focus on positioning, rather than throwing Hail Mary’s and hoping they land, which is what I had done my whole life. Also, when you do it that way, you mature as a person, and start to figure out what you’re all about.”
Dexter and Marriz both speak about their faiths with an energetic confidence. Dexter’s journey to faith began in high school and solidified in college. “My experience to become a believer was very clear cut. I was walking on MIT’s campus during the summertime, and I literally heard a voice from God. And God said that I needed to have a relationship with Him. And it was just that one sentence, and it only happened that one time. But from that moment on I was very, very different, understanding that I needed to pursue a relationship with Him.” He was the only person in his family who was religious. “My brothers, the people whom I care a lot about —really the only people whose acceptance matters to me— didn’t respond to this, and even though I've gotten past that, it hurt me a great deal.”
Marriz was similar in some ways. As noted before, she was raised Catholic but chose to be Protestant instead, something her parents questioned quite a bit, though admittedly the gap between Catholicism and Protestantism is narrower than the gap between Christianity and Atheism.
A lot of the strength in Dexter and Marriz’s relationship comes from how they both directed their attention, early and often, not just to one another but also to their faith. “When we were doing long-distance, we’d encourage each other over video calls,” Marriz shared. The two, drowning in their work from their respective jobs, and separated by an obscene number of miles and hours, still always found time to talk to one another. “We became more comfortable partners, reminding and encouraging each other that every day was an opportunity to glorify God in our lives, not just on big things, but even in the smaller things. I'm not saying we're perfect; we're actually very imperfect, but there's a transformation in our hearts that happened when we became Christians and that continues in our journey together as Christians.”
[If you can think of any photos in this section?]
I asked both of them about how they were thinking about the future, both independent of and in light of COVID-19. Dexter went first. “In my mind, we’re just working to nurture the strongest possible relationship. We have no idea what life is going to bring us, and I’m ok with that uncertainty. I have no grander vision about the future.” Marriz echoed the sentiment. “We’re living in unprecedented times, and it’s reminded us how so much in life is just beyond our control. Even if we can’t celebrate our wedding at the moment, we’re really grateful just to be together. We’ll do what we can, and we’ll live with the bare essentials.”
Dexter, as a CEO, lives in a world of near-constant uncertainty, while Marriz, who’d just gone through a dramatic uprooting of her own life, was plenty familiar with it, too. Her decision to join Dexter in the United States and leave her family had been a difficult one. “I had to let go of a lot of things, actually. It was not an easy decision.” Marriz had been having a stellar year at work, and obviously she’d be leaving behind all of her family and friends in the Philippines. “I’d been praying to God to prepare my heart and have the right attitude towards it,” she said.
“But, when people ask me about the decision, I always tell them that Dexter is worth it for all the things I had to let go of. I’m not saying goodbye forever; I can always go back. But I’m starting a life outside the country, and I’m so happy to be marrying Dexter and to be building a life with him.”
Before we parted ways, Marriz and Dexter had one last request. “We’ve been practicing some TikTok dances. Could you help record some for us?” I noted that I felt old for not really understanding TikTok. “We don’t either, but they’re still really fun.” As the countdown ticked down to record their version of Right Foot Now Left Foot, I thought about how beautifully absurd it was that the two of them, separated almost their entire lives by over 8000 miles, were now dancing, a married couple, next to one another for an internet challenge.