Almosts, Ghosts, and the Men Who Made Me Better.

They weren’t boyfriends; they were metaphors.

My recent engagement and reading the stories from Hinge’s No Ordinary Love campaign, like "Not Over Yet" by Upansa Barath, inspired me to reflect on love and my own experiences. Not just on why this love has worked, but also on why all the other ones didn’t.

Hinge isn’t for people chasing perfect stories. It’s for people who want something real: the kind of love that starts a little messy, maybe even misguided, but grows into something true because both people keep showing up.

That’s the kind of love I believe in, which is why we partnered with Hinge. And that’s the lesson this essay is about.

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Hinge’s “No Ordinary Love” campaign explores modern dating through the lens of emotionally mature, intentional relationships, highlighting stories that go beyond typical tropes.

I once dated a man in Atlanta who said he was “in a phase of expansion.” What that meant, I never figured out. But it seemed to involve skipping my birthday dinner and spending weekends in Athens, Georgia, with a group chat called “The Dawgs”.

He was the kind of washed-up Southern guy who still made his fraternity his entire personality at 27. He peaked in his sophomore year and had been coasting on charm, delusion, and a decent short game ever since.

We met at a bar in Buckhead, one of those places where every man looks like a groomsman on a group text you’d never want to see. I told him I was going home, and he told me I was going home with him. My friend came over to tell me everyone was headed to her boyfriend’s house, and I shot him a look that said, “See ya.” I called an Uber. He grinned. Turns out he was the boyfriend’s roommate. It wasn’t the last time he told me, “I told you so.”

It felt cinematic in the moment, like maybe this would be something. I wasn’t sure if I was the main character or the cautionary tale, but I was too swept up to care.

He was tall and aimless but great when he wanted to be. When he didn’t, he would call me and say things like, “I just feel like I’m hard to understand.” He was not. He was just shallow with a slight drawl and an alcohol problem.

I was twenty-five. Hopeful. Delusional, maybe, but earnestly so. I wanted him to be more to me. Or perhaps I just needed something to romanticize while I refreshed Instagram.

But he was the first person I ever allowed myself to be unfiltered around. I didn’t edit myself for charm or likability. I laughed generously. I didn’t try to be easier to love. I wasn’t afraid to say what I needed, even when I knew he wouldn’t give it to me. I showed up. I stayed open.

Looking back, he drained me completely. But he was also an incredible lesson.

This isn’t a love story, not really. But it’s one I think about often. The kind that shapes you quietly. That shows you who you’re becoming, even if it breaks your heart on the way there. Back then, I thought wanting it badly enough was the same as being ready for the real thing.

That’s the thing about the near misses. The people we don’t end up with stay with us anyway. Maybe they weren’t quite ready, or weren’t quite right. They’re the ones who haunt you just enough to make you wonder if it was all timing. If maybe in a parallel life, you ended up together.

I’ve had my share of those.

The endless string of hungover, half-charming Peter Pans deeply in love with their own potential. The friends who turned into something more and then back again before I knew what hit me. The man who cried in my bed and told me I made him feel seen, then vanished for six months. The almost-boyfriend who kept me at arm’s length while telling me I was the only person who ever really understood him. The ones who gave me just enough to stay hopeful, but never enough to feel safe.

For years, I felt like I was training for the Olympics in Delusion. I looked at those stories and thought they were evidence that I was doing something wrong—that I was too intense, too sensitive, too much. I believed I was unlucky in love because I had so many almosts and no forevers.

But over time, I started to see those relationships differently. They weren’t failures. They were practice, refinement, and data. Looking back, I know now that I wasn’t getting farther from the love I wanted. I was getting closer.

Each near miss revealed something: a soft spot I hadn’t protected, a boundary I hadn’t held, a quality I craved but had never prioritized. I started to see my own patterns and stopped confusing chaos with meaning. Most importantly, I stopped thinking love had to hurt to mean something.

When you’re willing to take dating seriously — not in the anxious, results-driven way, but in the honest, self-examining, heart-led way — you start to understand that getting it wrong is actually how you get it right.

When I was dating in my twenties, I wish someone had told me that real love is for people in process. That the tears, the long calls with my mom, and the broken hearts were just proof that I was showing up with the kind of honest intention that would eventually land me with the right person.

I would love to go back and tell that girl to be brave, that it’s okay to risk looking foolish for the sake of something real.

Anyone in a relationship will tell you love isn’t built on perfection. It’s built on presence. Every “almost” brought me closer to a connection that feels calm instead of chaotic, certain instead of confusing, and expansive instead of exhausting.

So I don’t regret the ones that didn’t work out. They weren’t mistakes, they were mirrors. And the more I looked into them, the more clearly I saw myself.

Had I known that at 25, I might have enjoyed those midsummer fever dreams in boat shoes for what they were: brief programming, seasonal entertainment, light fiction I mistook for memoir.

Real love doesn’t usually arrive in some cinematic, sweeping way. It isn’t drunk or wobbly. It won’t ask you what sorority you were in. It won’t ghost you for days or tell you you’re “too much”. Real love won’t have you decoding text messages.

The real thing is softer in its arrival. It won’t spike your anxiety; it will just ask for your hand. It might snore, but it will never leave you sleepless. It shows up when you do. Then it sits quietly next to you, and it stays.

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Today’s essay is brought to you in partnership with Hinge. #HingePartner