Meet Our Intended Parents
Explore these heartfelt stories of families hoping to grow
Meet Johan & Arjan
Location: Alphen aan den Rijn, Netherlands
Watch our video:
Hi, nice to meet you! Before we introduce us and our biography we want to start with the following:
To be honest this is quite a difficult task, since we’re not writers and are absolutely not used to ‘showcase’ ourselves. So please stick with us exploring on how to introduce ourselves in order to appeal to you and your family (which feels very weird to write).
Therefore also this additional sidenote… We would like to apologize up front. We’re form a small country in Europe, called ‘the Netherlands’, inhabitants are also known as the ‘Dutch’. This might feel as a random fact however this is certainly relevant. This is all to let us introduce some cultural differences between Canadian and Dutch people, especially in social interactions. Dutch people are often known as very direct, straight to the point and sometimes a bit impolite. We consider ourselves more on the polite side of the Dutch spectrum. Nevertheless it could also happen to us even when it is not our intention or even being aware of this. Please know we are very open to hear when this happens so we can learn in the process. Secondly a lot of Dutch people can be modest, in our case we tend to be even very modest (yet not so modest to claim this indeed). Which underlines the difficulty in portraying ourselves. There will be more to us as what can be read in our profile.
But without further ado…
Who are we?
We are Johan and Arjan and we are in a strong and steady relation since 2011. We started as friends and became a couple in the same year, now we are happily married and living in a nice town Alphen aan den Rijn. We live close by our friends and family and wouldn’t want it any other way (although a bit more sun would be nice, so we often take advantage of good summer days). First of a bit about us:
– Arjan
o While we are both in this together I try to take on the more emotional and creative side of the journey. I could sometimes be a bit lengthy in my communications since I never like to skip details (somehow I often find a lot of details important, silly me). I am also better at showcasing others instead of showcasing myself, nevertheless we try in our profile.
o I’ve studied Biology (BSc) and Biomedical Sciences (MSc) but also tried Product Design, acting, dancing and singing (no I wasn’t very good at it, yet it’s really fun to do). One could say this is the perfect demonstration for me being detail-oriented and creative. Often it’s easy to be genuinely be interested in others, which I like about myself.
o As for work I’m a Functional Analyst, say what? Well I’m the person that communicates with the technical ICT colleagues and the other departments about what they need to be changed in their software to become more enabled in their jobs. So I’m the one trying to understand and communicate with both worlds and the diverse departments and their processes.
o Even though I like this job it’s not always very creative. Therefore I often do something creative outside of work. For example I’ve taken Modern Dance lessons and investigate how to bleach-paint clothes in order to customize them. I also like to ride the bike (very common in the Netherlands) and like to swim even though I don’t swim as much as I like, yet in France in a mountain lake I always feel refreshed. Besides these activities I truly love playing boardgames and videogames with others but can also lose myself in analyzing new strategies and other things to investigate. However my head also likes to slow down to enjoy a night on the couch with Johan watching movies and series.
– Johan
o In contrast to Arjan I’m a bit more introverted and definitely more concise and business like in some of my communications. When this doesn’t seem like it, it’s mostly because Arjan edited my part since he did want to include all kinds of details and I kinda love him for that (most times).
o As for my studies I’ve done something which isn’t very common in The Netherlands. I progressed from community college to my bachelor’s degree and afterwards also did a master’s degree at the university in the field of building technology and real estate. This was all possible because of perseverance and a good support system at home (they didn’t push me towards higher education, but they supported every decision along the way and enabled me to do this).
o This educational journey brought me towards the company I’ve been working for since 2012 until 2025 where I had different roles where I contributed in internal quality improvement and managing certifications and coordinating team ICT. However foremost my focus was my role as a Fire Safety Advisor. In the end I was the Senior Fire Safety Advisor and Teamlead. Mid 2025 I took a chance to join the government in the role as an Expert Fire Safety Advisor, which is a nice and challenging step up.
o In my spare time I truly love building with Lego, which I combined with my enthusiasm about Harry Potter (but please don’t ask my house at Hogwarts, we know 100% Arjan is Ravenclaw, however I never get comfortable being in 1 house). Besides this I like to read or take a nice walk to create some headspace. Having a game night is also very fun and something I like to do regularly however just like Arjan I also enjoy the evenings on the couch watching movies and series.
As described above we both have interesting jobs, a home where we love to play board games there’s something we didn’t describe yet. While we play games at our place we’re also accompanied by our cats. There’s even more about us in our IP Look Book so please take a look 😉
So far about ourselves in general, we also like to share about the start when we knew we would start this journey at some point, so…
Why start this journey?
When we started hanging out and gradually evolving our relationship there was a lot of fun, but there was always room for serious topics as well. So early on in our relation this lead us to the topic of our future lives together. This also made us fantasizing about a little one running around, or lazy on the couch as a teenager. Well since we are here there is no need for a spoiler-alert, we both had this as a cherished dream and from that moment on we shared this dream together. Johan’s brother already had 2 sons and Arjan’s sister soon got a daughter and a son. So we have been around our little nephews and niece on many occasions. This always made it even clearer as we felt our dream growing bigger and bigger. Family is something we highly value and we like to spent time with them as well as with our friends. So our hope is, if there comes a little one, we provide them with a warm and loving environment to grow up in.
Only as you can imagine, a male-male couple just comes with obstacles to overcome. We did our research to prepare us for this amazing yet intimidating journey eager to come closer to our big little dream. Since the start we made exciting progress and we’re definitely not at the first stage of our journey, but…
Where in our journey are we?
We are so proud to share we have 7 healthy embryo’s! A little about that part of the journey:
September 2022 we went to Toronto, truly nothing in the Netherlands can compare to this country and city. This trip to Toronto was to make our donation at CReATe (our fertility clinic). This had to be done before we could progress with our initial egg donor. Unfortunately she wasn’t cleared until mid 2023. So in August 2023 we searched for a new donor, which we have found. We worked closely with Egg Helpers and CReATe to make progress in this journey and with good results since we have some great PGS-screened embryo’s!
Even at the start of our steps towards our embryos we couldn’t sit still and knew there is more in this journey to overcome, which brings us to you, anticipating that you’re considering to become a surrogate and maybe even our surrogate. Only…
Who do we hope to find for our journey?
First of all it is a good sign if you’re still reading this, especially when you are interested to get to know us better and become our surrogate. We believe it’s key to be interested in each other, and you reading this is something we like about you already!
Additionally we can say we look for you since we choose to share our profile with you! We don’t share our profile with everyone since we strongly believe we need to be compatible since it is a wonderfull yet intense journey we would like to take together. Besides wanting to get to know each other we also need to keep in mind that there is literally an ocean between us. This will creating challenges for sure, which we will overcome, most likely with the technology these days. It’s something which can impact so many things, therefore we hope you’ll also have great support from your loved ones.
And of course there are some obvious things we hope to find in our surrogate like being able to become pregnant and have an healthy pregnancy for the little one, but also for yourself which is also very important to us.
And last but not least: we look for someone who wants to help make our dream come true. Hoping this becomes an interesting journey together.
If you are interested in us we like to encourage you to reach out to us.
Interested in Matching with Johan & Arjan?
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