How We Fell in Love Without Ever Saying ‘I Love You’

When Maya matched with Akira on a global dating platform, she wasn’t expecting much. A literature PhD student in London, she was fascinated by Japanese poetry. Akira, a software engineer from Kyoto, had quoted Bashō in his bio. That alone made her curious.

Their first messages were thoughtful, almost formal. They bonded over books, favorite cafés, and a shared love for the quiet hours just before sunrise. But while Maya often expressed affection with words, Akira communicated differently.

“I used to think love meant saying it out loud,” Maya says. “But with him, love was how he showed up every single day.”

He sent her photos of cherry blossoms, handwrote haiku for her birthday, and once stayed awake through the night just to help her finish a stressful paper. He never said “I love you” outright. But he remembered the name of her childhood dog. He noticed when she seemed off. And when they finally met in person in Paris, he held her hand like it was something precious.

“That’s when I realized we’d been saying ‘I love you’ all along, just not with those words,” Maya reflects.

Their story isn’t about grand declarations. It’s about presence, patience, and learning to read each other’s hearts in a shared silence.