Juliet Bumbled. Ben swiped. Juliet grumbled. Ben griped. The year was 2019 and in an online dating sea of infinite possibilities, there still didn’t seem to be quite enough fish for either of them to find one tasty enough to keep.

As the months turned to years, it felt to both like maybe The Apps weren’t actually designed for finding love at all! Maybe, just maybe, they were all just digital platforms cleverly designed to gamify emotional attachments, addicting users with a primary goal of maintaining attention and engagement long enough to mine personal data that could then be sold on to other corporate interests! But no. As it turns out, they are benevolent and good after all. In September 2019, Ben and Juliet found each other on Hinge, and something felt different about this match.

Their first date was spent walking around the Chestnut Hill reservoir, where Juliet impressed Ben with her humor and compassion, and Ben impressed Juliet by keeping up with her walking pace. That was a one-time effort unfortunately, and his ability to keep up on walks has since flagged significantly…

One date turned into two, then three. Despite an early bout of food poisoning that Ben is convinced was given to him by one of Juliet’s ex-lovers at Burro Bar in Brookline, and despite Juliet’s concern that Ben catfished her by not alerting her in advance that he had moved from easily accessible Brighton to practically foreign Cambridge just before meeting, we were both committed to the relationship.

Many adventures have ensued, with living situations constantly in flux, a new adorably anxious dog added to the mix, and a lifetime of laughs packed into our first five (plus) years. And after all that, we can’t wait to celebrate the official, legally sanctioned, insurance eligibility-conveying continuation of those adventures with you in August!