How do you know they're THE ONE?
I'M ENGAGED ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.
—Proust
We started off as friends. We met in November 2023. We started dating in May 2025. We got engaged 98 days later. Love is a friendship set to music, said Joseph Campbell.
Here’s my attempt at answering the age-old question: How do you know when someone is THE ONE?
You know they’re THE ONE the way rivers know which direction to take to merge into the sea, the way eyes don’t fret over their own blink because they have faith that they will open back up and be allowed to view the world again; there is never any hesitation, only recognition, only the soul recognizing the other soul that it wants to walk home with to heaven’s gates.
You know they’re THE ONE when laughter and prayer start to sound the same because everything in your heart and on your mind is too large to be delight and too certain to be chance; it’s as if God had kept this one breath aside when He was building the world, when He was busy with the cosmos, and said, “This—this is the breath I will press into her lungs the moment she meets him, the one I made for her when I designed the tilt of the planet, and she will finally exhale so completely that no breath she ever takes again will be taken alone.”
You know they’re THE ONE when it feels like they exist to prove how unbearable distance can be between two people, and to show that God doesn’t make mistakes, only metaphors, and that love is His favorite one, and if this is not what was meant for you since the first sunrise, then you want no other thing ever again.
You know they’re THE ONE the way love feels like one long, never-ending conversation, like the connection creates not just a relationship but a condition, like humidity or dusk, like it never really came into being by taking away from anything, but because it always was.
My dearest heart makes me feel like the luckiest woman in the world every single day. Saturday, August 9th, 2025—she is betrothed.
To matrimony,
Below is a selection of essays that, in what is now officially hindsight, feel like everything that has led up to this post:
Sherry, you are the most beautiful writer. I sent your love letter to my wife for her to read. I knew she was THE ONE because of the butterflies that jumped in my heart whenever I saw her, or thought of her. We have been married 28 years this month. Congratulations, and God bless your marriage.
Wonderful news! And congratulations!! 💒 🥂