And, yet, a month and a half after the two met, they agreed not to see each other any longer. “I wasn’t ready yet,” Dr. Nguyen said.
“It was in that moment that I also realized I was in love with him,” Mr. Quan said.
The rupture in their nascent relationship was short lived — four days, Dr. Nguyen says — and their connection was repaired when Dr. Nguyen crashed a party that he knew Mr. Quan would be at, and then spirited him off to another bar to talk.
“It was a little dramatic,” Dr. Nguyen said. “We escaped from the party, went to a nearby bar, and I told him for the first time — to myself as well — ‘I’m gay. I want you to be with me.’ I said ‘I love you’ for the first time.”
“Almost seven years later, it’s crazy looking back at that turbulent time,” Mr. Quan said.
On July 18, the couple were married at the Fifth Rooftop Restaurant and Bar in Anaheim, Calif. Dr. Nguyen’s sister, Dr. Tu-Anh Nguyen, officiated, having become a Universal Life minister for the event. The couple had originally planned to be married last year, but then put the marriage off after the death of Mr. Quan’s father. Their postponed plans, for a wedding in June with 180 guests, were then also canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The couple found, as they navigated life’s tribulations — both men came fully out to their families, and both lost their fathers unexpectedly, too, in the course of their relationship — that getting through those times together helped their relationship flourish.
“He really supported me in every single way possible, when my dad died last year,” Mr. Quan said. “I myself had to be the rock for my family. And he was my rock.”