Two months into seeing Priya, I decided to go big. I booked a tasting-menu restaurant, made a reservation at a rooftop bar afterward, and mapped out the whole evening down to the minute. I thought I was being romantic. What I was actually doing was building a night with zero room to breathe — and I could feel both of us performing instead of connecting.
The dinner was beautiful and stiff. We were dressed up, slightly nervous, and working so hard to make the expensive evening "worth it" that neither of us relaxed. Halfway through the rooftop bar, Priya laughed and said, "Can we just go get fries somewhere?" We did. And the fries place, with its terrible lighting and easy conversation, was where the night finally started.
After that I threw out the grand plans. In the early months, the best dates were the ones that gave us something to do and plenty of room to talk:
I also stopped interviewing her and started being curious — favorite childhood memory, what a perfect weekend looks like, what she was most excited about lately. Listening more than I talked did more than any reservation ever could.
Early on, I thought the size of the gesture proved how much I liked her. It didn't. The couples who last aren't the ones with the fanciest first dates — they're the ones who can have fun doing almost anything together. The fries taught me that.