I listened long enough to hear my boyfriend say, “We didn’t. You just looked a little tired,” before I turned my back and burst into tears.

A month later, my boyfriend would say that this was the moment he fell in love with me. For me, it was just one of hundreds of times I fell in love with him all over again.

Like the time he defended me against a critical friend. Or when he was waiting in my office one morning with a sly smile on his face and flowers in his hands. Or when he sneaked into my apartment to assemble a behemoth of an armchair. Or when he deferred to my expertise in conversations about education. Or when he fed my niece supper. Or when he capaciously took interest in my friends or childhood home, people and places to which he had no connection other than me. Or when he fearfully, but finally, said he loved me.

Every time I introduced him to friends, I felt proud. He was magnetic, interested, interesting and always warm.

To be fair, a month into our relationship, he said he was worried about the pressure my readiness for commitment might visit upon him. But I believed there was something between us that could not be replicated. I had a hunch, even then, that this union bore my sought-after truth — that we vibrated at the same frequency and would always grow in lock-step pace.

Several months later, after a painful fight, we parted at the subway — I in sadness and he in anger. But moments later, he came bounding down the stairwell just as my train arrived, followed me into the car and said he felt sick the instant he’d left me.