We’re both weird, but not quite in the same ways. I was completely smitten from the first day I met him, only to discover he had married the love of his life the week earlier.

—Alaska

Postscript: We’ll never be lovers, but it’s been worth it just to know him.

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I discovered physical love with him. He was funny and original. We were married for 17 years. We had two children together. During our marriage, sourness began to overtake the sweetness, and I was relieved when it was over.

—Maria

Postscript: We’re forever bound by our children and remain friends.

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I saw a cute guy dressed in white pants, a black-and-white checkered shirt, and a white sailor’s cap. His smile melted me. I saw him every day about the same hour, usually at dusk. I was in love with him, but he had all sorts of girlfriends, and I just knew I would never be one of them.

He left our hometown three years later to go to boarding school in Portugal, and we started corresponding. In one of his letters, he told me he regretted not having really known me. I would occasionally return to Portugal to visit my family, but I never visited the bank where he was the president, fearing the old feelings of love would return.

—Lauri

Postscript: After he passed away, it was my turn to regret never having gone into the bank to see him.

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I broke up with my then-boyfriend, who wrote about his feelings on his LiveJournal. A guy I barely knew read it and sent me a message on instant messenger asking if I wanted to go out sometime. We went to see The Incredibles. I thought I was going on a rebound date, but he was so easy to love that just a few weeks later, I realized I was going to marry him.

—Alison

Postscript: We’ve been married two years now, and he’s become even easier to love.

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I was 13 at a summer camp in the woods. It was at the talent show in an amphitheater alight from a bonfire. Just 12, slim and comely, she sang “Send in the Clowns,” and I died for my longing. Somehow I met her that night. The whole week I tried to arrange it so we could be alone. And finally I got my first kiss. I’d see her one week a year until we grew too old for camp. There were other attempts to see her afterward, but she usually had a boyfriend.

—Max

Postscript: I never was right for her anyhow.

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He’d had a hopeless crush for many months on my best friend, who was not interested. When that friend went to New Zealand to meet up with her Internet boyfriend, the two of us were left behind and decided to form a “support group” for missing her. Somewhere between Star Wars Trivial Pursuit and red wine, we forgot all about her.

—Shelley

Postscript: We’ve been together ever since. That was more than six years ago!

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It was an unusually hot day in February, and we went to the lake to shoot photographs. Later while getting snacks at a corner store, she told me that people like the way we look together. And thus began her routine of saying exactly what I am thinking.

—Mario

Postscript: She still says exactly what’s on my mind.

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