A woman’s breakup taught her why 'I remember' always hits deeper than 'I love you'

Preston Rakovsky (@prestonrack), a content creator from New York, spent 2025 asking over 1000 strangers about love. However, it was his interaction with one woman in particular that ended up breaking the internet. Sophie Gamboa, a 23-year-old NYU graduate, said her painful breakup made her realize that "I remember" is much more romantic than saying "I love you." She matched with her ex-boyfriend on a dating app. Sharing a conversation in Midtown Manhattan, her video, posted on December 21, has been viewed over 5 million times on Instagram.

Gamboa was dating a man, but soon broke up because the pair realized that they weren't meant for each other. However, a year later, fate brought them back together. "We re-matched on Hinge," Gamboa told Rakovsky. The couple wanted to give their relationship another chance and decided to meet up. Next, the man invited her to his apartment and insisted on making her dinner. "I was like, 'Just reminding you, like, I am celiac,'" Gamboa recalled. Surprisingly, he hadn't forgotten it. Although time had rolled on, this small detail remained etched in his mind. "I already got your favorite chickpea pasta," he said.

Gamboa confessed that she had never truly been in love with this man, but in that moment, she felt loved and seen. "I think memory is a really interesting analogy for love, because I think you can occupy the same nuance spaces that love can," she offered, explaining how love and remembering things are often correlated with or without intention. You can watch the video here.

It's obviously special when your partner assures you that they know you well. In fact, it's not the grand gifts but these small gestures of remembrance that lead to relationship satisfaction. This isn't a random notion but is backed by scientific research. "Feeling known (by your partner)" and "knowing (your partner)," usually go together, and both influence the overall relationship positively. 

A study on newlyweds revealed that couples perceive happy relationships as those where they feel they understand their partner and feel understood by them. It posits the ‘Fast Friends’ paradigm as “one of the quickest validated routes” to relationship satisfaction, where partners offer nuggets of intimate knowledge alternatively, thereby swiftly building their knowledge of each other’s likes and dislikes. 

Meanwhile, people were left overwhelmed with how the girl's beautiful explanation of why remembering small details about your partner is much more impactful than confessing love itself; for instance, @khushi_ramani15 commented, "Remembering the small details is not about memory; it’s about care. It’s a quiet way of saying, 'I see you. I hold you in my mind.'"

Similarly, @nikki.ann.x shared, "My ex brought me a meal of something I was going to order for myself that day, and I haven't seen him in a long time. I didn't think he even cared about me, but he picked this meal so perfectly that I wish he loved me in the relationship before I left, because that felt special — he did that all on his own. Knowing me for all those years, he finally knew me after I was gone." @so_onieczka wrote, "It hits home so much. I had been with someone 10 years... you share life together and think it's forever... and he couldn't remember that I hate the color red...or what size shoes I wear. When we broke up, it made me realize that I never felt loved and seen in that relationship. Heartbreaking..." @gargi_bharadwaj said, "True, because the person who loves you, who cares for you, remembers more about you and your things; if it is not, then you should think."

You can follow Preston Rakovsky (@prestonrack) on Instagram for more relationship-related content.

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