Amit Kumar

We used to spend a lot of time together.

And, you know, those late night conversations, sometimes they're about work, sometimes they're about life.

When you're a social psychologist, those conversations kind of blend together.

I also knew her partner quite well.

You know, the graduate school was at Cornell in Ithaca, New York, which is a pretty small college town.

And so you end up running into the same people when you go to restaurants there.

You see each other

And so at this stage in our lives, we were quite, quite close indeed.

I mean, I think the thing that's amazing about weddings in particular is that you have all of these people from these different parts of your life come together.

And it's just so nice to see how much everybody cares for each other and how happy they are that these two people found each other and decided to try to make this work.

And so it is a thrilling experience, I think, to be a part of those festivities.

I had learned that she had recently gotten separated from her partner.

She was about to go through divorce.

They had actually recently had a child as well.

So I didn't know that they were having any trouble with their relationship.

I learned this through a mutual friend.

And so it was one of those situations where I kind of was a third party that knew what was going on in her life, but hadn't heard it from her myself.

Well, when I found out was actually particularly interesting.

I think this was actually during a period of the pandemic.

You know, maybe other people have experienced this.