Three months in, Mr. Fitzpatrick felt it was time to make it official. “I was starting to, as they say, catch some feelings,” he said. He didn’t want their relationship to “fall apart into nothing.”
They met at Court Square Diner in Long Island City in late August, and he was so nervous that he went to the bar next door and took a shot to loosen up. He sparked a conversation with the bartender, who told him, “You look nervous. What, are you going to ask a girl to be your girlfriend?”
That, he did, and Ms. Hanlon wanted the same thing. Over Labor Day weekend, she went to Coventry, Conn., where he grew up, to meet his parents for the first time. Later that month, he visited her hometown, Key Biscayne, Fla., to meet hers.
Together, they often enjoyed breakfast on weekends, strolled around Central Park and frequented new bookstores and farmers markets. Though things were going great, in August 2021, Mr. Fitzpatrick made the decision to put their relationship on pause.
“The pandemic in general made me think, ‘What are you doing with your life?,’” he said. He was second-guessing his career in finance and wanted to pursue his passion for winemaking. He quit his corporate job in finance and went to Sonoma County, Calif., for three months, where he was a harvest worker for DuMOL Winery in Windsor, Calif.
“I was like, ‘What do you mean?,’” Ms. Hanlon recalled thinking when he first broke the news to her. “‘You still want to be with me? But you also expect me to hang on and wait around?’”