Our story begins like all modern couples, on a dating app. We can all agree that dating apps are the worst and both of us had spent years downloading, deleting, and re-downloading our profiles. Until one day, in the summer of 2022, we matched.

From Alexei’s perspective, I was it. He could see a future with me. We had so much to talk about and he was so excited to meet in person. All so great! Which is why he was extremely confused when I ghosted him…

You see on my end, the second year of grad school was looming and all I could think was “what am I doing? I have a review to pass and a thesis to figure out!” and deleted my app, again. Whoops! Big mistake, huge.

Alexei and I went about our year, occasionally thinking about each other and what could have been.

In the fall of 2023, I moved back to Michigan and having graduated with no job and nothing to do, I redownloaded my dating app. On Halloween I opened a message that read “getting any trick or treaters?” And there he was. I assumed he forgot that I ghosted him, because that’s a jerk move and why would he bother talking to me again? He assumed I forgot why I ghosted him, thinking he had done something very wrong the first time around. We both hoped we could start fresh and went out on our first date- coffee in Royal Oak, that turned into a search for tea because Alexei doesn’t drink coffee and a very cold two hours of walking around and talking nonstop.

Then a second date a week later, and five more dates that week. After two weeks of knowing each other (and a year of pining) he did the very crazy thing of asking me to be his girlfriend and I did the very crazy thing of saying yes. Although it’s easy to say yes to being someone’s partner when you just kind of have a feeling that you’re going to marry them. So to those of you who thought I was crazy, I finally get to say I told you so ;)

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