We're getting married!

Lauren and Aneet met in college and quickly became best friends. They spent almost every moment together, and while friends and family definitely suspected there was more going on, having brought it up more than once, they always insisted they were just friends. To this day, the start of their relationship sounds a little different depending on who tells it.

It all started on my 22nd birthday, after a night of bar-hopping in Pacific Beach. I found myself hanging out in my friend Andrew’s dorm, where I met all his randomly assigned roommates. One of them was Aneet, and that night I had no idea how important he’d become in my life. All of the guys in that room quickly became my family, making my time at UCSD unforgettable. But from the jump, Aneet stood out. We clicked right away and became fast friends. For the record, Aneet had a girlfriend when we first met. And during college, I was busy kissing a lot of frogs, as one does. Through every heartbreak, every drunk rant, every moment of jealousy or joy, Aneet was always there. He was the one hyping me up, calming me down, and reminding me of my worth. He became the person I talked to more than anyone else. In hindsight, it probably caused some tension in my other relationships—but none of them ever felt as important as my friendship with Aneet. When Aneet moved to LA for law school, things started to shift. We still talked every day, and I visited him often. But hearing about his new friends was tough. I tried to brush it off, but the jealousy gnawed at me. One night back in San Diego, after another night out, our mutual friends Amit and Marie brought up the question I’d been avoiding: why wasn’t I dating Aneet? Why wasn’t I giving us a chance? I laughed it off, vented to Aneet about how absurd they were being, but the truth is… I couldn’t stop thinking about it. He was already my best friend, the person I trusted most. What scared me was the possibility of losing him if we took a risk and it didn’t work out. By the end of Aneet’s first year in law school, my feelings were impossible to ignore. During one of my visits to LA, my jealousy got the better of me, and I decided to take the leap. That night, April 15, 2017, I told him how I felt—and, as it turns out, he felt the same way. We said “I love you” for the first time, and I’m 99% sure we agreed that we’d get married someday right then and there. Now, here we are, years later, about to take that next step. Looking back, we’ve learned that love doesn’t have to be as complicated as we make it out to be. Sometimes it’s as simple as finding your best friend and realizing they’ve been your person all along.

The very first interaction I had with Lauren was her kicking open the door to my apartment while holding a bottle of liquor, and screaming something I wish I could remember to this day. It was October 11, 2012, a rainy night at UCSD, and also Lauren’s 22nd birthday. She had been out drinking at a bar on campus with one of my roommates at the time, Andrew, and I was still a clear-eyed 20 year old who was not allowed in such establishments. The next few years in San Diego involved countless nights of drinking–whether in bars in PB (Pacific Beach) or at our dorms playing BP (Beer Pong)–and then hungover brunches the next day. While all our friends and the good times made those years some of the best of my life, it was the growing bond with Lauren that made me look forward to the end of vacation so I could get back to school–a reprehensible notion to a younger me. By the time I graduated from UCSD in 2015, Lauren was decidedly my best friend and favorite person in the entire world. Was I already in love with her, who can really say? Although, our friends were all too eager to seize any opportunity to comment on our relationship and how we should “just date already.” Please do not let us getting married all these years later make you think our friends were right. We simply cannot allow them to have the satisfaction. 2016 brought a plot twist–that was the year I moved to Los Angeles to attend law school at USC. I was meeting a lot of new people and making new friends. And many of them were even women. And of course I would tell my best friend about what was happening in my life and Lauren started driving up to LA to hang out with me for the weekend every once in a while. I naturally assumed it was my charming personality and general good-natured attitude, but little did I know the culprit was something far more potent…jealousy! And I could not be happier for it. While the thoughts of jumping into a real relationship were swimming around both our minds, we were being held back by the same concern: we did not want to lose or damage the friendship that we both cherished. But eventually the momentum of our relationship was so undeniable that on April 15, 2017 I plucked up the courage and professed my love to Lauren, a feeling she thankfully echoed, and in the same breath we decided that this relationship was for life and that we would be getting married someday. Somehow in that moment it was so obvious that you could really have both: the best friend and romantic love can be the same person. It’s one of those things that feel “too good to be true” but I never liked that saying anyways. It warms my heart that Lauren and I are now in the midst of planning our wedding, doing it our way, in our time, with the people that mean the most to us.