My name is Sharon. I’m 27, and until that morning, I would’ve told you I had the least dramatic love story of anyone in my friend group. Which, if you knew my dating history, would’ve been a genuine miracle.
As if it were evidence.
Before Ian, I dated a guy who kept a second phone in his glove box. Before that, a guy whose “cousin” turned out to be his fiancée. My early 20s had been, to put it politely, a masterclass in red flags.
Then Ian walked into my life four years ago and just refused to be a mess.
From the very beginning, our relationship was a breath of fresh air.
A masterclass in red flags.
“I don’t do secrets,” he told me on our third date, sliding his phone across the table with the passcode already typed in. “It’s exhausting. Let’s just not.”
“You’re joking?”
“I’m really not.”
And he wasn’t. For four years, we shared passwords, calendars, bank alerts, and group chats. If a woman from his office texted him past nine, he showed me before I could ask. If I had a weird dream about my ex, I told him at breakfast.
“I don’t do secrets.”
Ian is the most grounded, fiercely loyal, and transparent person I have ever known.
We built our entire relationship on complete honesty. That absolute, unwavering trust is exactly why I fell so deeply in love with him.
It sounds unromantic when I say it out loud. It wasn’t. It was the softest, safest thing I’d ever had.
Which brings us back to the tuxedo.
It sounds unromantic when I say it out loud.
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