I knew he was the one as soon as I met him. I had broken up with my ex-boyfriend a few months previously and was ready to meet someone new. So I signed up to the dating app Bumble, and that was how I found Jelle. A Dutch software engineer working for Google in London, he was kind, quirky and funny. I was a school physics teacher, so we were both quite nerdy, science types, and I loved how active he was, always going running or climbing in his spare time.
We were both so sure the relationship was right, we told each other during our second date: “This is it.” We had got together during the pandemic, in summer 2020, me aged 30, him 34, and when the second lockdown was announced I asked him to move in.