Some of the most formative love stories of my life didn’t end in relationships. They didn’t even begin in the way stories are supposed to. No grand gestures. No well-lit first dates. Just quiet connections that existed… on the edges.
The guy who always studied with me for our classes and did joint assignments, even though we never once called it a date. The friend who made me playlists but never said the words I needed. In fact, this guy made me laugh because he could never remember when we met and yet for me, it was one of the most significant events – I felt so much for him when we were talking… joke was, for him, it was just another great conversation (!).
So many tender moments and so many left on the way. There was one guy who very quickly, after an equally brief liaison, stopped talking to me. By then, I hadn’t wisened up to college guys and their ways. He just moved on and never looked back—but knowing him sure taught me how to spot guys like him from a mile away.
There was one with whom we had an instant connection on a flight from North Carolina to New York. We sat there looking at each other. Our shoulders moving ever so much closer. He had these beautiful eyes and it felt like it could be something. He invited me to walk Central Park with him. But before I could answer, we remembered he was engaged.
There is another stereotype I have encountered one too many a time: the almost-lover who said, “Let me get you home,” after a night out but could never quite make a move when we got to my house.
Love in the margins is tricky. It doesn’t ask for much. It thrives on eye contact that lingers half a second too long. On inside jokes. On the careful way someone says your name. It rarely announces – or pronounces – itself. But it leaves shadowy feelings. Most of the time, these comment balloons type of love, just has enough room for longing and not much else.
It took me a while to understand this kind of love. I think it took me far too long to see that some loves are not meant to unfold. They are, instead, meant to reveal. To show you what matters to you. What doesn’t. Where your boundaries are. Where your softness begins. And sometimes just to remind you that you are alive. Breathing.
These “love in the margins” people are never for a chapter in my story. They are present in memories and only ever remembered in nostalgia, or in the demands of every love scene that comes long after they are gone.
I don’t write about them often. Mostly because I don’t want to overinflate what wasn’t. But also because I know that love can be true without being permanent. That not all loves have a destination… sometimes they’re like matching in place. Love in the margins. I think this is possibly where the most human parts of love reside – not so much in declarations, but so clear in the “it could have been.”