"Hi, how are you doing?"
"Hey, I hope you are well."

That’s how the conversations went in my DMs. I never responded. He would reply anytime I posted a photo, but I ignored him. I had no idea who he was—just a guy chatting with himself in my DMs. And even though I was single, I never bothered to reply.

I don’t like chatting with people on the internet if I don’t have any form of relationship with them in real life. To me, the internet is not a real place, so the people there aren’t real either. I don’t know why, but that’s what I think.

One day, he sent me a video of a place. It was lively, with a live band and lots of people dancing. I liked the vibe.

He said, "Let’s go to this place next week. It’s Valentine’s. I don’t want to celebrate it alone. Bills on me," he added.

I smiled from ear to ear, and for the first time in about two years, I replied.

We started texting in our DMs to discuss the meeting point. I chose a supermarket close to my place. He showed up in an Uber to pick me up; he got out and opened the door for me. He was tall, and he was handsome.

I started wondering why he was single and had been in my DMs for more than a year. Men like that don’t struggle to find girls. But when I tried to have a conversation with him, I started to understand why he was single.

He had a problem with speech—he was a stammerer, and it was hard for him to finish a sentence quickly.

"Fred," I said, "you don’t need to reply fast when I talk to you. Take your time, organize your answer, and then reply."

So he did just that. He would wait, organize his answer, and then reply to my questions. Slowly, we danced all night and sang along to the live band.

When we parted ways that night, I said, "You have a nice singing voice. On days you can’t speak, why don’t you sing your answer to me?"

And that’s how we became friends. That night, we texted most of the time, and when he couldn’t form a sentence, he would sing it.

We never stopped talking. We spoke every day and enjoyed each other’s company. His family wondered how we were able to communicate, but we had our own way—nobody else needed to understand it.

He never officially asked me to be his girlfriend, but nine months later, he asked me to marry him. He sang it so he wouldn’t stammer.

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"Since when did we date?" I asked.

"We’ve always been dating," he replied.

He didn’t stammer this time. I was impressed, so I smiled.

"Sounds like you don’t stammer when you mean business," I remarked.

He nodded with a smile.

Well, I didn’t let him talk too much—I said yes.

And before the next Valentine’s Day, we were married.

On our wedding day, he sang our vows. People thought he was being romantic. Yes, he was—but more than that, it was our way of communicating.

Only we understood the way we talked.