It wasn’t Italy, it was New York. She was Italian, I am not.

I had just that day accepted a job halfway across the country and was moving within a month. Our first date was a setup – it was supposed to be a casual dinner with friends; instead, it was clearly a blind date gone wrong.

One simple text message later, just a date, time and name of the restaurant, had me waiting and wondering if she would show. 

She did, she wore a white turtleneck and carried herself… differently – she was unique, a polar opposite of anyone I had ever dated prior; poised, charming if quite reserved, wouldn’t come home with me on the first night (or the second, or third…). 

Walks through the city that stole her from Italy just a few months prior, sharing headphones and listening to my playlist, occupied our days off. We bonded over the after-work hours spent stuffing our faces with meals she couldn’t get back home. Just as I had never dated a girl who wouldn’t sleep over nearly immediately, I had never, ever met a woman who could eat so much and talk about the next meal shortly thereafter. I’ve only since come to find out this is a crucial part of the Italian bloodline. 

After a few weeks of dating, I pushed back my start date for the new job, realizing that I might have been falling in love. She would come over, we would share a bottle of wine and talk about our meals. I would ask her to spend the night, and she would politely decline, making up some trivial excuse (“I need to change my socks”), only to disappear for a few days. I started buying women’s socks and stocking them for my magic tricks (“Tada! No need, here they are.”). She eventually stopped delaying the inevitable and spend the night (and not just for the socks). 

Two months in, she returned to Italy to see her family. Before she left, I promised to pick her up from the airport, just days before I was set to depart. While in Italy, she broke up with me due to what she said were “cultural differences.” She followed up with a call a few days later, “Will you still pick me up from the airport?” I obliged. 

A silent car ride from JFK to her apartment in Chelsea was followed by an intense conversation the moment I parked the car. 

Isn’t love supposed to be easy?

After over 200 cross-country flights, a few shared apartments, dozens of fights motivated by the same “cultural differences” she referenced in our first big one, more cross-country flights (I moved away a second time) and spare cross-cultural fights (those she kept stashed away for special times), we found understanding like pasta water and sugo… 

We shared our vows on a SoHo rooftop and had our lives change like everyone else in 2020 – the best change imaginable… she pulled us back to Italy.

And if you couldn’t guess, I’m in love with this secret Italian woman.