For the long first act of my life, as a painfully shy kid growing up in Culver City – steps away from the Sony Pictures studio lot, the iconic Gone With The Wind mansion, which was right by the movie theater downtown, and down the street from the liquor store where they filmed the infamous McLovin scene in Superbad – dating and romance was something I experienced entirely through the silver screen.

I’ve always loved movies and TV, ever since I can remember. One of my favorite parts of family vacations was getting to watch cartoons on the big hotel room televisions in the early mornings with my siblings, before our parents woke up. I used to download episodes of my favorite shows onto my cherished iPod Video, wrapped in a bulky faux-leather black case, and watch them late at night in the bunk bed I shared with my twin sister, over and over again until I knew them by heart. I dreamed of actors speaking my words one day, directors reading through my screenplay pages and making notes about wardrobe, blocking, and subtext.

I especially remember being entranced by the big, star-crossed relationships at the center of my favorite movies – heroic Neo & Trinity of The Matrix, poetic Aragorn & Arwen of The Lord of the Rings, doomed Christian & Satine of Moulin Rouge!, a Smiths-loving Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in 500 Days of Summer, and the haunting romantic tragedy at the center of Never Let Me Go, which stuck in my imagination like glue.

I wondered what my dating life montage would look like, and which archetype I would inhabit – would I be a Guy’s Girl, a Cool Girl, a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, or a Girl Next Door? Would I date in coffee shops, bars, ice cream stores, or movie theaters? Would I have a big crushing romance that would shape the rest of my life and creative outlook? A love triangle, even? I couldn’t quite place myself into a romantic world in my young imagination, but I assumed this would all begin in high school – when dating usually began in movies – and I would magically step into those Leading Lady heels and stumble gracefully into the arms of my Leading Man, and we’d live happily-ever-after.

High school passed uneventfully, and then college – I went to USC’s film school with the hopes of turning my obsession with movies and television into a career. I studied and interned a lot, but did little else, avoiding parties and intimidating social events like the plague. This was fine, I told myself – I was just keeping my eyes on the prize. I graduated a semester early and began working at an entertainment agency, my first step into the professional life of my dreams. By all metrics, I was succeeding at doing the adult thing.

All of a sudden, I was 23 years old, and beginning to feel incredibly lopsided. I loved my work, but was waiting on pins and needles for my romantic life to begin, waiting for the dating sphere to become less scary so I could enter it, and watching others pass me by. I was allowing myself to remain a spectator, safe in a dark theater with popcorn, instead of pushing through the doors out into the life I really wanted. I decided in the summer of 2019 that enough was enough. If I didn’t force myself to walk the plank into the dating pool, I would wind up a spinster with hundreds of cats.

I decided to download Bumble, and stayed up until three a.m. crafting my profile, a little giddy at finally participating in the cultural experience of making one.

The next few months were a blur of swiping and messaging, trying to figure out exactly who “my type” was. Did I like Bad Boys, like Christian Slater in Heathers? Best Friend types, like Mark Ruffalo in 13 Going on 30? Boombox-toting romantics, like John Cusack in Say Anything? Ultimately, from a few good conversations and dozens of terrible ones, it seemed to boil down to: easy to talk to, kind, made me laugh, and had good opinions about movies.

When I finally settled on my type, I procrastinated and made excuses to myself about setting up actual, real-life dates. What if they were weird in person? What if they thought I was weird in person? What if they were a serial killer? What if the cute painter in the office realizes that I’m cute and wants to ask me out? Better to wait, I told myself – just in case that pans out.

By February 2020, I was living in my own apartment (with two cats, but no one’s counting), and out of excuses. This was my time, I told myself. The only one standing in my way was myself. I vividly remembered being a little kid and climbing up the wet rungs to the high dive at my local pool, where I stood on the edge of the diving board, looking down at the water far below, frozen with fear. I stood up there for so long that people in the free swim area started noticing, and cheering for me to jump. The sound rose all around me – it was like a scene out of a movie. I didn’t jump. I was too scared. I shamefully climbed back down those rungs to the safety of solid ground, and thought, what is wrong with me?

I forced myself to set up a date at a local bar with a match on Hinge, and – to my eternal surprise – I survived. I set up a movie night date with another. I felt like I was actually, finally, starting to get the hang of this dating thing, after all this time.

In mid-March that year, we got sent home from work, and didn’t come back to the office for many months. The entire world closed down. It was just me in my small studio (and my cats!) for weeks of high-intensity quarantine. My dating apps took on a new, vibrant importance as a source of connection in a newly isolated world. I spent most of my days with my phone, and new messages felt like hanging out with new friends.

In May, I came across a Hinge profile of a brown-haired guy with a kind smile. His name was Ben – just like Leslie’s Ben from Parks and Rec, which I took as a sign from the universe. He’d also grown up in Los Angeles and gone to USC, for acting – a Leading Man, just like I always planned! Our paths had somehow never crossed at school. We watched Ready Or Not on our first date, a blood-splattered horror comedy that will now forever hold a special place in my heart. He was easy to talk to, extraordinarily kind, made me laugh a lot, and had great opinions about movies.

Our love story was unprecedented – I’d never seen anything like it in any movie or TV show. We figured out what dating inside looked like – we spent evenings and mornings together and worked from home, laptops side by side, trading off between my apartment and his. Our first “outside” date was eleven months after we first started talking, when the world opened back up again. One of the first big things we tackled together as a couple was figuring out how to get COVID-19 vaccines and stay safe. Most of all, dating Ben, I realized I didn’t have to figure out which romantic archetype to inhabit in a relationship – I could just be myself. We’ve been together for three amazing years and counting, and live in Venice, with just one cat. We’re writing our own unique love story, together – maybe it’ll be a movie one day.

-Allison Kelly

Allison Kelly is a writer who's spent her whole life in Los Angeles and plans to never leave. She's been published in Maudlin House, and is currently working on her first novel, which is about the end of the world.