The quiet moment when someone becomes part of how you experience everything.
Friends ask me all the time when someone starts to realize they might be in love. There are a thousand answers out there, but I usually give them something simpler—a quick test. If something happens during your day—funny, frustrating, random, even completely pointless—and your first instinct is, “I need to tell them this,” pay attention. That’s not nothing.
That’s imprinting. That person has started to wire themselves into your thinking. They’re no longer just in your life—they’re part of how you experience it. And early on, that’s often the first signal.
Now, people like my young friend Bruce will push back. “Well, I love my mom, but I don’t think of her like that.” I quickly followed, "Right. That’s because not all love is the same. You can care deeply about someone without wanting to narrate your inner world to them in real time. But when you trust someone enough that even your most trivial thoughts feel worth sharing? That’s different. That’s closeness turning into attachment."
I’ve lived this. For years, I had a bad habit—or a great one, depending on your tolerance—of waking up at 2:00 a.m. with completely unnecessary but urgent thoughts. And I’d share them. One night, I woke up next to Allie, a surgeon I dated in Boston for over four years, and said: “Hey… did you know this? Chickens go to the bathroom like 23 to 25 times a day… but a sloth only goes once a week?" Silence. Regret should have entered here. It did not.
Then I followed it up with the real question: “What do you think that’s like? Is it incredibly painful from holding it in…or is it euphoric with relief when it finally happens?”
Allie, half-asleep and far more mature than I was at that moment, gave me a gentle kiss and said: “I have two complicated surgeries tomorrow. Let me get back to you on that." And she rolled over and went back to sleep—like a professional. I, meanwhile, stayed awake… committed to the research.
The next day, she told me something that mattered more than the answer. In the middle of planning surgeries, she stepped away for coffee and caught herself thinking: “I wonder if it’s actually an incredible experience for a sloth to go to the... bathroom…”Then she paused and thought: “Why the hell am I thinking about this? That strange mother-fucker, I’m gonna kill him.”
That’s what this looks like in real life—not poetry, not violins… just two people quietly occupying each other’s thoughts in the middle of ordinary days. That’s proof right there of my original statement.
Oh... for the record? If you look quickly at the sloth's face in the attached GIF, I think we can all agree that relieving themselves once a week is an incredibly memorable and enjoyable (maybe even stimulating) experience.
And in full disclosure, six years later the same controlled expertience didn't go so well with Kim. I woke her up in a slightly different manner, rolling over and lightly bouncing up and down. Back to me in a groggy baritone voice, Kim uttered, "What?"
I said, "Hey, you can't sleep either-huh?" She responded, "Not now. Why are we awake, Fred?" I said I was sorting through a few things I researched that day and was putting them in perspective." Kim, still facing away, responded, "Like what?"
I seized the invitation to share and said, "Well, since you asked. Did you know there are no fewer than 24 species of frogs that exhibit a spontaneous “dancing” behavior? Like, out of nowhere, the little bastards just... dance! They all belong to a single genus called Micrixalus, commonly known as Indian dancing frogs. Here's the question for you: With what I imagine is a pretty limited existence, living in some desolate swamp, I can only imagine they get depressed. So WHAT makes those frogs want to dance? It's a real conundrum for me. Maybe there's something we humans can learn from them. A remedy for mild depression by inserting dancing-frog genes? Hey, I'm just asking questions."
Kim finally rolled over, looking directly at me she said, "Should I worry about you? No? Well, your premise is flawed, so are whatever researchers you got that from. Those frogs don't spontaneously dance? They dance to celebrate happy lives, because they are without fuckin' partners waking them up at whatever godforsaken time in the early morning this is. Oh, that I knew that pleasure and could dance along with them. She laughs, gives me a kiss and says, "If you need sex for us to both go back to sleep? Let's get it over with?"
I say, "Always the romantic one in the relation. Was that offer something I should consider foreplay? No thanks, I am going to keep pondering why those frogs dance like that and are the only species that do. Maybe there is something in their water that should be bottled and sold."
Kim said, "Good night... Fred." I stuck in her head, I believe, only in the moment, unlike Allie, I doubt it caeried over to the next day!
My point once more.
The first sign that someone might be becoming more than a friend isn't necessarily that you think about them constantly. Or, in Allie's case, that you share something with someone that, even in an intense work environment, still lingers in the other person's mind. It's that they're the person you instinctively want to tell when something—anything—happens.
I'd love to hear anyone else's story!