The Place He Swore He’d Left Behind

It was 2007, and after three months of dating, Mike’s dinner declaration was a crushing blow for me: “Serena, the most I can commit to is a casual relationship.” A drunk dial followed by sporadic G-chats kept us in touch, but his Dubai move seemed like a sign to move on. Yet our chats intensified, becoming near daily. A spontaneous Barcelona meet-up — seven months after he dumped me and our last face-to-face — changed everything. Fast forward to 2024: married with three children and living in New York City, the very place he swore he’d left behind. — Serena Bhaduri

Wrong to Roll My Eyes

“Look at the stars,” he said. I rolled my eyes, half-expecting a cheesy line about destiny written in constellations. But it was clear: He really was enthralled by the pulsing dots in the night sky on our first date. After welcoming our second child during the pandemic, things got tough. We went to therapy and, thankfully, navigated our way back to each other. When we decided to put our kids in the same bedroom, he decorated glow-in-the-dark stars on their ceiling to look like the night sky on the day I was born. Call space his love language. — Eunice Ross

Forgotten Ticket, Undeniable Love

While Gabby was walking me home from Shabbat dinner the night we met, she told me that she had ditched Pesach (Passover) in 2021 to attend an Olivia Rodrigo concert. When Olivia came back to Chicago in 2024, after we had been dating for two years, I knew it was our opportunity to finally see her in concert together. Yet, Gabby forgot to get me a ticket. I love her anyway and we got married this August because, as Olivia sings, “how could I ever love someone else?” — Ariel Katz

‘A New Rack’

We’d been dating for two months when my biopsy results came back. Petrified, I said nothing. One morning Ram asked me why I had tossed and turned in my sleep so much. Over a strong coffee, I told him about family genetics, the lump and plans for a double mastectomy. He didn’t run for the hills. Instead, he joked, “So you’ll have a new rack; you might even like it more than the old one!” Soon after, TV dinners replaced cinema dates and I fell asleep with him holding my hand, carefully avoiding the bandages. — Marianna Patané

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