Everything we dreamed of is real to me. I still believe in that life. I know the house we would live in, where I would put my plants, how we would spend our ordinary days, and how his face would change as we grew older. Sometimes I feel that somewhere, in a parallel world, we are living the life we imagined together, while I continue my life here, carrying its details with me.
When I met him on 22 June 2023, I had very different ideas about relationships. I thought monogamy might eventually bore me. In my previous relationships, sexual desire had faded after a year or so, and I had come to expect that it would happen again. I knew what my experiences had taught me about myself. I had never imagined that I might one day want to spend the rest of my life with one person, or that doing the same small things with him, day after day, could bring me so much happiness.


But my love for him grew slowly. It grew with every meal we cooked together, every video call, every little trip, and every reunion after we had spent time apart. It grew through our laughter and our arguments, and through all the times I told him I loved him. There were so many that I could never count them.
I loved waiting for him to come home from work. Sometimes I would prepare a meal for him; sometimes we would stand together in the kitchen and cook. I loved having him in the house, sitting beside him while we watched television. Every now and then, I would turn towards him, look into his eyes, run my fingers through his hair, and kiss his cheek. A sudden happiness would rise in me simply from looking at him. Sometimes my heart felt too full for my chest, and I would kiss him again and tell him I loved him.


I adored holding his hand in the street. We would walk to the park, or to the cemetery we used to visit in the mornings when I stayed at his place. Every few steps, I would turn towards him, kiss his cheek, look into his clear blue eyes, and tell him I loved him. I was proud to hold his hand in public. I loved being seen together. Even more than that, I loved that he was the person walking beside me.
I cannot remember a single night I spent next to him without kissing him and telling him I loved him before we fell asleep. Sometimes I would wake in the middle of the night and pull him close, wrapping my arms around him so tightly that I nearly smothered him. I would kiss the back of his neck and his shoulders and whisper those same words again. Sometimes he would respond, still caught somewhere between sleep and waking, and then we would drift off.


I loved the scent of his neck and hair. I loved resting my head on his chest, or feeling the weight of his head against mine as he fell asleep. There were moments when a profound stillness settled over me. I wanted nothing from the world outside that embrace. I did not want to go anywhere or do anything else. I wanted to stay there, beside him, and let the night stretch on.
I could picture him thirty years later. Silver hair would begin to spread through his hair and beard, new lines would appear around his eyes, and perhaps we would walk a little more slowly. Perhaps we would both need glasses to read a menu. Yet I would still be holding his hand in the street, turning towards him for a kiss, telling him I loved him. I wondered what time would do to his face. I was curious about the man he would become. I wanted to know him at every age, to be beside him as he changed.


I had never expected to become such a romantic. On 17 August 2024, I brought him two rings, each engraved with the date of our relationship. Things between us were difficult at the time, but I was determined to see him and give him his ring. He did not put it on immediately. He began wearing it later, and when we got back together in March, I grew used to seeing it on his finger, along with the sun pendant he wore while I wore its matching moon.
People would notice our pendants. When they discovered that the sun and moon fitted together to form a circle, some would smile in surprise and tell us how lovely it was. Others thought it was a little too much. I did not care. I loved our pendants, our rings, and the meaning we had given them.
I wore my ring with enormous happiness. Whenever someone asked me about it, I would proudly say that it marked the anniversary of my relationship with my boyfriend. I loved carrying something with me wherever I went, something that reminded me of him and of the date we had engraved into the metal. Once, I asked him to keep his ring safe and take care of it, whatever happened between us. I wanted him to understand how precious it was to me.


We sometimes called each other “my husband” and, at other times, “my future husband.” I began imagining our wedding day. Yes, when it comes to things like this, I am very traditional. I wanted a wedding where we would both wear tuxedos, where I would slip a ring onto his finger and he would place one on mine, and where I would stand before him and speak my vows. I imagined looking into his eyes and promising to love him in good times and bad, to stand beside him when he was happy and when he was grieving, when life was going the way we had hoped and when it became more difficult than either of us had expected.


I wanted to say in front of everyone what I had told him on the day we committed to each other: I did not want him in my life for a passing moment or a temporary chapter. I wanted to build something real with him. A home, a family, a life we would share. I wanted us to support each other when one of us was struggling, and to work through our problems instead of running away whenever things became difficult. I promised to do my best to become a better version of myself, because I loved him, and because the life I wanted to build with him was worth working for.
I could see our house in a small town, perhaps in a country warmer than Germany. A garden would surround it, and somewhere in that garden there would be a greenhouse where I could grow my plants and care for them. I would have my own space to paint and make things with my hands. The rooms would gradually fill with objects we had collected on our travels, pieces we had made or chosen together, things whose stories we both knew. I wanted every corner of our home to become familiar, and for us to remember how each object had found its way there.


There would be cats and a dog, perhaps a cow, a goat, a sheep, and a few alpacas, which he adored. I could see him examining one of the animals—he was a veterinarian—while I worked in my little studio or tended to the plants. Eventually, we would meet in the kitchen and decide what to make for dinner.
Even in that imaginary house, we had our little disagreements. He would tell me he did not want to eat animal products or drink milk because he did not want to exploit animals. I would tease him that if we cared for them properly and gave them the best life possible, perhaps we could have a little milk from the cow or the sheep. We never reached a final agreement, and he eventually became vegan. I could imagine us having the same conversation years later in our kitchen, laughing as he explained to me, for the thousandth time, why he refused the idea.


The clearer that house became in my mind, the simpler my desires seemed. I wanted somewhere to come home to, someone to share the details of my day with, and a garden where plants would grow from one year to the next. I wanted us to disagree over small things and stand together on the things that mattered. I wanted to look at him in the middle of an ordinary day and feel the same happiness I felt when I turned towards him on the sofa and kissed his cheek.
During the ten days we spent at his parents’ house, that life felt close enough to touch. We were together, spending time with his family, and we visited the city he had told me was the most beautiful in Germany. I fell in love with it. I told him I could imagine living there with him. He nodded in a way I took as half an agreement.
I was happy during that trip in a way I still struggle to describe. I was experiencing parts of the life I had imagined for so long: being together, the house, the family, a city that might one day become ours. I could see myself waking up beside him there, waiting for him to come home from work, walking hand in hand through its streets. I pictured the years we might spend in that place, and how its details would become as familiar to us as the routes to our park and the cemetery had become during the years we spent together.


Whenever I pictured the years ahead, I found myself returning to a small scene from our life: waking in the middle of the night, reaching for him, kissing his neck and shoulders, and telling him I loved him. Then I would see myself doing exactly the same thing many years later, when his hair had turned white and we had lived in our home for so long that we could no longer remember when we had bought some of the things inside it.
I could imagine the future in such detail because I loved the life I was already living with him, and I wanted it to continue. I loved the man in front of me, and I wanted to know the man he would become. Sometimes, with my head resting on his chest as I listened to him breathe, I felt as though our entire future could fit inside that one small moment.


All these scenes passed before my eyes in a matter of seconds.The rings. The sun and the moon. The meals we cooked. The scent of his neck. The nights I woke to hold him. The city I had fallen in love with. The greenhouse, the animals, our wedding, the silver hair I had imagined spreading through his beard. Memories of things we had lived became tangled with the promises we had made and the life I had dreamed was waiting for us.
I was sitting in front of my phone, on a video call we had arranged after our breakup.
He told me that he had thought about the possibility of us moving into a home together, but that he had said to himself he could not imagine living in the same house as me. He asked me to imagine how he would feel if he went out and came home to find me with someone else. That, he said, would be devastating for him.
I cannot remember how long it took him to say those words. I remember what happened inside me as I heard them.


Every image came rushing towards me at once, like a wild animal tearing through everything I had kept safe in my memory and imagination throughout our relationship. I was no longer seeing only the screen of my phone. I was seeing the man I had loved, the house I wanted to build with him, the years I had imagined us living together. And I was hearing him tell me that he could not imagine sharing a roof with me.
We had real problems. Trust had been damaged between us, and infidelity and the choices we had each made had consequences I cannot deny. I know that the depth of my love does not erase what happened, and that being willing to work on a relationship does not mean I always succeeded in doing what was needed. I understand, too, that the fear of being hurt again can make the idea of building a life together frightening, however strong the feelings may be.
But I heard those words for the first time after our relationship had ended. I do not know how long he had felt that way, whether his fears had changed when we got back together, or what he had been thinking when we spoke about marriage, our home, and the years ahead. I do not know whether he said it in anger or whether he was telling me something he had quietly believed for a long time. I do not know if I will ever have answers to those questions.
I know how deeply his words hurt me.


The breakup had already happened, shortly after we returned from the trip during which I had experienced a glimpse of the life I wanted with him. He had ended our relationship through a WhatsApp message, despite having previously promised me he would not end things that way again. I had wanted to see him, to sit with him and talk, to understand what had happened between us. Then came the video call, and with it something I had never known about the future I had spent so long imagining.
I still have my ring. I put it away in a drawer, and I know exactly where it is, but I do not yet have the emotional strength to take it out and look at it. I used to wear it with pride. I loved telling people what it meant to me. Now, merely thinking about it is enough to bring back that house, that city, and the man I imagined growing old beside.


Everything we dreamed of is still real to me. We lived some of it. We built some of it through words and promises. And we gave the rest such precise details that it became familiar long before it could happen. I still see that life sometimes, as though it were unfolding in a parallel world where we continue our journey, come home to each other, and grow old together.
I did not know, as we built that world, that perhaps we were building castles on sand. I did not know that a single sentence, spoken during a short video call after our breakup, could make me see everything we had lived and everything we had hoped for in the very same instant.
I could see our house so clearly that I knew exactly where I would put my plants.
And I am still trying to understand how I could have seen our life together in such detail, while My Sunshine was afraid that one day he might come home to that very house and find me with someone else.