Weather across Africa

A moment that changed me: a failed date led to one of the greatest friendships of my life

A moment that changed me: a failed date led to one of the greatest friendships of my life

My romance with Steven quickly fizzled, but I had gained something just as good. It made me realise that in the endless, exhausting pursuit of love I had closed myself off to other kinds of connection

This autumn is my third anniversary with Steven. In October 2023, we matched on Bumble when I was in his home town of Atlanta for a wedding. We met for dinner downtown and even though we’re from different countries, we discovered a mutual love for the British comedy show Stath Lets Flats. It was a done deal.

But Steven isn’t my partner, he’s my friend. And if we’re being teenage about it, I’d probably brand him one of my best, despite living 4,000 miles away. Over the past three years, we’ve visited each other’s homes, holidayed together and met one another’s friends and family. I’ve even had dinner with his ex-wife, whom I also now consider a friend. Steven and I have all the hallmarks of a perfect relationship. We just don’t fancy each other.

Continue reading...

In brief

My romance with Steven quickly fizzled, but I had gained something just as good. It made me realise that in the endless, exhausting pursuit of love I had closed myself off to other kinds of connection This autumn is my third anniversary with Steven. But Steven isn’t my partner, he’s my friend. We just don’t fancy each other.

This is the opening of the story, shared with credit to The Guardian — Life & Style. The rest of the report — with every detail — continues on the publisher’s website.

Continue reading at The Guardian — Life & Style ↗

Cookie settings

Choose which cookies we may use. You can change this at any time from Cookie settings in the footer. Details of each cookie are in the Cookie Policy.

Strictly necessary

Needed for sign-in, security, payments and remembering these choices. Always on.

Preferences

Remember settings such as dark mode.

Analytics & performance

Help us count visits, understand which pages, devices and countries our readers use, and measure how well the site performs – anonymous and aggregated.

Advertising & marketing

Lets advertising partners show and personalise adverts, measure impressions, clicks and visits, prevent ad fraud and pay us – this is how the free site is funded.

🔔 News notifications

Get headlines from NewsHub on this device — even when the site is closed.

You can switch this off at any time. Works on Android, Windows, Mac and Linux browsers; on iPhone/iPad add the site to your Home Screen first.