What’s your definition of romantic?

What Is Your Definition of Romance?

If you had asked me this question a decade ago, I might have offered a different answer—something about handwritten letters, long walks under the stars, or stolen kisses at traffic lights. I might have quoted a favorite line from a movie or romanticized a memory that never quite lived up to its promise. But ask me today, and I’ll tell you this: romance, to me, is being witnessed. Truly seen, in all my moods, mess, and moments of magic.

It’s not just about grand gestures, though I’d be lying if I said I don’t swoon a little at flowers sent without occasion. It’s about someone remembering how I like my tea when I’m too tired to speak. It’s the gentleness in someone’s voice when they say, You don’t have to explain. It’s the space to just be, without performance or pretense.

Romance, I’ve come to learn, is deeply ordinary in the most extraordinary way. It’s in the quiet check-ins, the soft honesty of I’m thinking of you, and the rare magic of someone who listens without needing to fix. It’s in the way someone makes you feel safe in your own skin.

That journey—of arriving at this understanding—wasn’t smooth. In fact, it was paved with more questions than answers, more flings than fairytales, and more potholes than I care to admit. I write about this in Diary of Clichés, where I unpack the comedy and chaos of dating with intention. It’s a book about finding love in the most awkward, sometimes painful places—and learning that choosing yourself is the most radical romance of all.

But real life doesn’t always fit neatly into a romantic subplot. That’s where my upcoming memoir, About Life Choices and Potholes, comes in. It’s about the things we don’t always talk about: the betrayals we didn’t see coming, the jobs we lost, the cities we outgrew, and the people we let go of—sometimes even ourselves. It’s a reflection on how life rarely gives you what you planned for, but often gives you exactly what you need.

If Diary of Clichés is about falling in love—with people and with yourself—About Life Choices and Potholes is about navigating the aftermath. It’s about the romance that shows up not in a candlelit dinner, but in the quiet decision to keep going. To heal. To choose again, differently.

So, when I think about romance now, I think of resilience. I think of the long, tender journey of coming home to yourself. I think of the courage to love again after disappointment, the strength to forgive what hurt you, and the wisdom to see beauty in the in-between.

And perhaps that’s the greatest love story of all.