This column won’t always be about romance, but it will always be about connection.
I used to think love stories had clear beginnings. Boy meets girl, swipes right, or says something devastatingly charming over cocktails and a finely selected charcuterie board.
But in real life, love doesn’t always knock. Sometimes it circles the block, texts at odd hours, shows up inconveniently late, forgets your birthday, answers with a thumbs-up emoji, or—worse—disguises itself as a friendship, a missed opportunity, a six-week fling, or a three-month situationship that leaves you questioning your life choices, your standards, your last therapist, and your skincare routine.
Welcome to The POST’s Almost Romantic, a column in our Relationships section—about love and everything that tries to pass for it.
Here, I’ll write about the glorious mess of modern relationships: the close calls, the too-late confessions, the “it’s complicated” and all that deserve more than a social media status. The near misses that felt like soulmates. The perfect men we left at the wrong time. The wrong men we stayed with for the right reasons. The brunches with girlfriends where the postmortem of a second date is more exciting than the date itself.
I’m writing this while in the process of uncoupling myself from an almost-12-year marriage. I was a diplomat’s wife who moved countries for my husband, adjusted, adapted, and did everything a partner is supposed to do—until I found out the rug had already been pulled from under me.
But let me be clear—this isn’t coming from a place of cynicism. If anything, it’s coming from someone who believed wholeheartedly in love. Who showed up for it, fought for it, and once mistook endurance for intimacy.
I’m writing this while in the process of uncoupling myself from an almost-12-year marriage. I was a diplomat’s wife who moved countries for my husband, adjusted, adapted, and did everything a partner is supposed to do—until I found out the rug had already been pulled from under me.
After two years of being made to feel like I was everything wrong in the relationship—I began to question whether the cracks I felt were imagined or deliberate. And then, as it often happens in our very specific corner of the world, what was once a quiet unease began to take shape. There’s no elegant way to come to terms with something you sensed long before you could prove it. But there is a way to write about it. Just not all of it. Not yet.
The irony? I was busy managing our lives, rebuilding my career, nurturing his public image, and doing my part to make everything as seamless and easy as it’s expected to be. It was easier—safer, even—to believe we were simply “growing apart” or going through a rough patch, rather than confront the persistent unease I’d tucked away. Especially when all I had were instincts, silences, and a sense that the story being told to me wasn’t the full version.
Until one day, it all landed in my inbox. Photos making everything undeniable and rather devastating for me. Proof of everything I had hoped not to be true.
And so here we are. Here I am, in my healing era or so the kids on TikTok call it these days.
I currently live in Tokyo and travel often to Osaka and Manila for work. My passport carries emotional baggage along with stamps these days, but I’m figuring it out—one story, one suitcase, one anxiety attack, one sharp red lipstick at a time. Oh, and a whole lot of help from my friends who have had to sit through sessions of me processing my feelings over and over again.
This column won’t always be about romance, but it will always be about connection. Sometimes it’s the kind you find in someone’s arms. Sometimes it’s the friend who helps you delete his number. A conversation with a stranger you’ll never meet again. Or the version of yourself you meet when you finally walk away.
One day, it all landed in my inbox. Photos making everything undeniable and rather devastating for me. Proof of everything I had hoped not to be true. And so here we are. Here I am, in my healing era.
I’ll also write about the stories people share with me. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that people love to tell me things—over coffee or something stronger, in corners of events whispered like gossip confessions, during five-hour brunches filled with cackling, or in long texts that arrive just past midnight.
I’ve always been that friend. The one you ask for advice. The one who actually replies and remembers the details. The one who listens to the most sordid confessions and responds with the appropriate gasp, follow-up question, or well-timed glass of wine. I’m the friend who asks things like, “Wait—what exactly is a golden shower?” and will try to keep a straight face while you explain or “Where does gravity take effect in this whole scenario?”
And I’m definitely not the one who’ll judge you for circling back to a man you swore off three crises ago—because I’ve done that too. Or tolerated something far worse, dressed up as “adjustment” or “compromise.” We can search for our lost dignity in the bushes together, all while insisting—quite loudly—that we’re still card-carrying feminists.
So no, this won’t be a fairy tale. But it will be sincere. It might be funny, thanks to all the trauma. And hopefully, it’ll remind you that even if it’s not love yet—it might be something worth writing about.
