I Fell in Love with a Hypothetical

When I met him, I fell in love with the idea of what could be. Hypothetically, we had everything: a future full of adventures, a love that transcended time, a bond that was unshakable. Hypothetically, he was the one—the person who would turn my life into the kind of story people write books about. But as I got to know him, my biggest fear crept in: what if all we ever had were the hypotheticals?

It felt like I was living in the movie Inception, caught in a dream of “what ifs,” unable to tell where reality ended and fantasy began. I fell in love with the possibility of someone who could love me deeply, completely, and without limits. The reality, though, was different—meek, constrained, and always limited by time, circumstances, or something else I couldn’t quite name.

For a year, I lived in this hypothetical world. He would ask me to “let him in,” to trust him, to be vulnerable. But how could I, when everything about us felt like it was on borrowed time? Our relationship existed in stolen moments—carefully scheduled, always brief, and confined to a space where no one else could see us. Outside of those moments, I had to keep us a secret, not because I wanted to, but because he said we had to.

I couldn’t tell people who I was with, afraid of how it might look, how others would react, or worse, how he would react. Every month, there was a new reason why we couldn’t go public, why we couldn’t make what we had real. And yet, I stayed. I put my life on hold, refusing to date anyone else, saving every second I could to be with him. I convinced myself that this was enough.

I thought I was living a love story, but it felt more like a nightmare. When I was with him, I felt like the truest version of myself, the one who could dream big and believe in forever. But when I wasn’t, I felt small, uncertain, and incomplete. I kept asking myself, Is this love? Is he my soulmate or just another lesson?

Every time I wanted to scream and run away, I stopped myself. I was too afraid of shattering the illusion, of losing the dream we had hypothetically built together.

Things began to shift when convenience took over. It became easier for him to stay with me overnight than to drive home every day. At first, I thought this was progress, a sign that we were moving forward. We began talking about hypothetical futures: living together, leaving Washington, building a life somewhere new. We talked about hypothetical weddings, even looked at rings. For the first time, I allowed myself to believe that maybe—just maybe—the hypothetical could become real.

But that’s the thing about hypotheticals—they’re only real if both people are willing to make them so. And he wasn’t.

As quickly as it all started, it ended. All of it dissolved back into the “what ifs” where it had always lived. I realized then that hypotheticals are fragile things, and if they don’t materialize, you’re left holding nothing but the weight of your own disappointment.

Letting go wasn’t easy. It meant dismantling the life I had imagined, piece by piece, and coming to terms with the truth; the reality was something I didnt want to accept.

Looking back, I’ve learned that love can’t live in a hypothetical. It has to exist in the present—messy, imperfect, and real. I thought I needed him to complete my story, but what I truly needed was to wake up from the dream and start writing a new one.

Sometimes, falling in love teaches you what love isn’t. And that’s okay.