the last time you fell in love

Edward Hopper, Room in New York, 1932

I am speaking at the Love Symposium at Lighthaven (Berkeley) at 6 PM today about friendship if you are around and want to come :)

Hi! I have been anonymously asking subscribers about the life and love dilemmas we all go through. I really enjoy hearing about other people’s experiences with things I struggle with but struggle to describe—I think these topics are really hard to talk about and much more universal than we expect. Here are the questions I asked this week:

How old are you?

What’s your gender?

Where do you live?

Who did you fall in love with? When did it happen?

How did you know you were in love?

What happened? Are you still in love with them?

Here is last week’s post on friendship breakups.

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Charles - 19, male, California

Who did you fall in love with? When did it happen?

I fell in love with my best friend. We technically met in middle school, but we first talked through an anonymous Instagram account (which I created because I didn't know how to talk to people in real life) where I messaged her so that we could become friends. She knew that we went to the same school, and I think she figured out who I was pretty quickly, though she never pressed me for details. It took until our senior year of high school for us to actually meet. It was in between those times that I fell in love. It was the year of COVID lockdowns and zoom classes, and we began to spend a lot of time together. We would go to the same voice channel on discord and we would both be muted (I was too shy to talk), and she would screenshare herself playing Pokemon. We would listen to music together, laugh together, play games together. We had a private server with individual channels where we could just blog and the other person could see it. It was during one of our late night text conversations that I realized I was probably in love with her. It was nice to feel special, to be needed, to be meaningful enough to someone that they would spend their night with me.

How did you know you were in love?

I think it was during one of those late night voice calls. I was doing an all nighter for school and she was sleeping, and we were both muted on the call. I know it is kind of cringe, but I felt so peaceful knowing that she was there with me, even though it was digital. When I look back on that memory, I think of that one scene from Porco Rosso where Porco is sitting at the desk with a lamp and the girl (Fio) is lying down next to him, observing quietly until she falls asleep. A part of me wanted it to be like that forever.

What happened? Are you still in love with them?

It was clear that we both liked each other at the time, but I don't think I was ever enough for her, and so we were never anything other than ‘best friends.’ She found other boys, and eventually we weren’t spending as much time together. I was much too shy and scared that I wouldn't live up to her expectations, and this was only confirmed when we met in our senior year of high school. Every time we met, we were only able to exchange a few words before we both stayed quiet until we both had to go back to class. I was fine with this, but I think she expected someone different and was bored with me, so eventually she stopped wanting to hang out in person as well. She was always someone who wanted more affection and energy than I could give her. We now study at different universities, and we are still good friends. We text each other to catch up about once every 2 weeks. I wouldn't say I'm in love with her now, but there is a part of me that longs for the years when we had so much free time and could hang out the whole day.

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Jenny - female, 29, Switzerland:

Who did you fall in love with? When did it happen?

My husband, 8 years ago.

How did you know you were in love?

I met him right after a really bad breakup where I was leaving a 5-year toxic relationship. I thought I was ready to stay on my own for at least a couple of years. That's until I noticed that even though I was free to choose anyone or no one at all, I chose him. And that just witnessing him going about his daily life and doing simple things gave me so much joy. He, who gave me so much without asking for anything in return. This made me want to give him everything and all of my time. And I did.