I’m getting married in a little over two months, and though this is a happy, exciting time in my life, there’s a bittersweetness. It started when I moved to New York a year and a half ago to be with my boyfriend. Up until then, our relationship had been long-distance; he was in Manhattan, and I was in Chicago. Through daily phone calls and frequent trips back and forth, we fell in love while still maintaining solo lives in our respective cities. It was a unique experience to be in a fully committed relationship, but continue living the same single-girl life I’d known since my last serious relationship (minus all the unsuccessful dating, of course). When I wasn’t in New York or hosting my boyfriend in Chicago, my weekends were filled cultivating other relationships — those with my closest friends. Life was filled with wine-drenched, late-night talks, long bike rides along the lake, picnics in the park, afternoon shopping frenzies, potlucks, brunches, and impromptu sleep-overs — all with my single friends. Now that I’m fully immersed in “coupled life,” I realize I’ll probably never have friendships like those again.
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