'I didn't think anything could top hearing "I love you." Then two words proved me wrong.'

This article originally appeared on Sophie Gamboa's Substack. Sign up here .

From the ages of 15 to 20, I experienced a beautiful first love.

He loved me in all the ways I was supposed to be loved. He said all the right things. He had the motivation, the patience, the consistency.

But he lacked fluency.​

Remembering things about me didn't come naturally, but he was diligent. He asked me what was important and kept lists — but I always had to explain why. He still had to work to understand why it was important to me, why I didn't want to have to ask him to remember.

I felt memorised rather than understood. I was constantly translating my own interiority.​ And translation is an exhausting and imperfect science.

Translation misses nuance; it erases complexity for the sake of clarity. My interiority needed to be made digestible to be heard, which inevitably edited out my own complexities and paradoxes. The constant translation missed the unexceptional but fundamental aspects of who I am.

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I felt unheard, unseen, and incredibly guilty — he was trying so hard. He was trying his best, but fluency is different from effort. Effort can exist without finding its mark. Fluency is the subtle adjustments and choices tailored to another person.

It is anticipating rather than reacting. It's remembering his favourite mouthwash brand and never putting oranges in anything because he hates them. Fluency is the little things that need no reminder. Fluency is loving someone specifically. Fluency is the accumulation of care that transforms intention into instinct.

Despite his best efforts, he was not a native speaker of my love language. And love without fluency can feel like love that doesn't belong to you entirely — sometimes nonspecific, and at times downright impersonal. I convinced myself that I could live with it. I could spend the rest of my life accepting a love that did not quite fit.

And then, in his greatest act of kindness, he broke up with me. And I got to learn how much I needed that fluency reciprocated.

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Recently, I reconnected with someone after nearly a year apart. He offered to cook me dinner, and I agreed. Then I reminded him that I was coeliac — I can't eat gluten.

All he said was: "I know, I already got your favourite chickpea pasta."

We were not in love with each other; we never were. We are profoundly incompatible individuals. But in that moment, I felt strangely seen and loved in a way that I hadn't in years.

It was unsettling how much that moment meant to me. We were not building a foundation for a relationship — there was no reward for remembering that about me. We had no future to invest in or intimacy to protect. It was care without obligation or incentive. To him, it was a random, insignificant moment. To me, it was evidence that I am not illegible. I don't have to work for or earn being known. Because despite our year of silence, there were details about me worth holding on to.

And that felt more intimate than a partner saying "I love you" because declarations of love are just words, but remembering is the action of it.

I talked about the intimacy of remembering during an interview with Preston Rakovsky. Image: TikTok/ @prestonrack

This is not to say that declarations of love are meaningless — but actions will always speak louder than words. Declarations are easy. There are scripts that can be followed or replicated. They are easy to say, to repeat until they are divorced from their true meaning. Declarations can be rehearsed and performed. Remembering cannot. You can fake loving someone, but you cannot fake remembering. You cannot remember what you did not care enough to absorb.

Remembering is both intentional and instinctive.

"I remember," says: I think of you in your absence. I think of you when it is inconvenient. It means I hear you. I know you. "I remember" means that in the finite, crowded capacity of my mind, I have made space for you. I carry you and your details with me everywhere I go. You have changed the way I move through the world. I find you in spaces you are not. I find you in the mouthwash aisle. I find you in the fruit bowl. I find you in all the seemingly inconsequential choices I make without thinking.

And if remembering is the action of love, then memory is its evidence. Unlike chemistry — which can be intoxicating but flippant — memory is lasting and rooted in true intimacy. Chemistry can exist without intimacy, but memory cannot. Memory is built slowly, often unconsciously, through repetition and attention. It accumulates not through intention alone, but through care that is consistent enough to become intuitive. Memory is evidence of embodying love as an action.​

And when things end, or circumstances change, memory becomes the last shared act of love. Long after a relationship is no longer tangible, after routines dissolve and lives disentangle, memory keeps a version of someone alive. A precise, imperfect record of intimacy remains in your shared memory and nowhere else.

What I remember about you will never be exactly what someone else remembers — and that, too, is a form of intimacy. To be remembered is to be seen in a specific way, at a specific time. "I remember" is evidence of alignment. It preserves a version of you that can never be returned to, but can never be left behind either. It is proof that at one point in time, I saw you and I knew which parts were most important.

I remember details about everyone I've ever loved.

Fluency is my love language. Fluency is remembering all the little things that should need no reminder. Image: Supplied.

Birthdays and favourite colours. Their favourite sweatshirt. The outfit they feel most confident in. The childhood Halloween costumes. The worst thing anyone has ever said to them. The stories they repeat without realising. The ones they never tell at all.

But memory, in all its glorious contradictions, can become a burden too. Memory keeps love alive, long after circumstance has signed its death certificate. When things end, the line between memory being evidence and consequence becomes blurred. Without the context of a relationship, memory loses its place in your world. When relationships end, there is no sudden amnesia — what once felt like proof has become sticky, stubborn residue. Memory becomes the inconvenient echo of heartbreak when the Uber is a silver RAV4.

Long after you forget home addresses and phone numbers, memory will rear its head in the middle of the grocery store, and the oranges will somehow say, "I used to love you."

Memory affirms: "Yes, that intimacy was real and that is why it is so difficult to be rid of me."

Unlike relationships, circumstances, and people, memory is unflinching. It does not concern itself with heartbreak or frustration. It is indifferent to circumstance. It does not matter that it is no longer useful or productive; memory remains. It preserves what was once true, even if it no longer exists. That preservation can be painful and even feel like a betrayal, because we often mistake remembering for stagnation. Carrying the evidence of love does not mean that we have failed to move on. Remembering is not attachment. It simply means that once love is experienced, it is folded into the very essence of who you are.

Memory and love exist in tandem, but they are not strictly concurrent. They occupy the same contradictions. Intentional and innate. Subjective and undeniable. They are different to everyone but still retain their universality. But that does not mean that they are the same.

Memory alone cannot sustain a relationship, just as love without fluency cannot sustain memory. For lasting love, remembering cannot be the last stop in your action. It informs how you show up, not whether you do. Memory does not promise a future or demand forgiveness. It does not stand in for care. It is simply a testament to the intimacy that has occurred.

Memory is both the lifeblood and swansong of love. It is the necessary cost of loving someone else. So even though I don't want to, for the rest of my life, I will remember that my ex hated oranges.

This article originally appeared on Sophie Gamboa's Substack. Sign up here . You can also follow her on Instagram, here.

Feature image: Instagram/@sophie.gamboa.