coffee date #57 with shiven kumar

software engineer by day, photographer by night (@stills.by.shiv), new yorker, UIUC alum, ex-california native

me: honey lavender latte | shiven: lincoln latte
location: jamesbrew café, jamesburg

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Picture this:

I had just finished my second date with who I, at the time, thought was the love of my life 🥺. The “loml” dropped me off at the location of coffee date #25 (aka Shivdaballer). Drunkenly and still very much in “love,” I followed Shivdaballer into her friend’s apartment. The door opened, and I was greeted by a group of nearly fifteen men and a grand total of four girls partying in a cute little New York apartment.

Now, in a normal situation, being in a room full of random men would’ve freaked me tf out. But this situation was different. All the boys ended up being the most wholesome and kindest humans ever, and I felt, surprisingly, calm and at ease.

The first person I spoke to at that housewarming party was Shiven. A few shots and more solo cups later, we all ended up at La Caverna, bopping to music and trying to set up the singles from the boy gang with girls from the club. Afterward, we walked our asses through the negative-degree weather to Taco Bell. It was during this ~20-minute walk that Shiven and I chatted some more.

Fresh off my second date with someone I felt deeply attracted to, I asked Shiven some super wild questions about romantic relationships—things I’d never normally ask a random man. Hoping to intellectualize my feelings for the “loml,” I asked, “What do you think love is? Have you ever been in love?” Oh, and my classic: “Is love a choice or a feeling?”

Shiven could’ve easily rolled his eyes and told me to stfu, but instead, he answered every single question as honestly as he could. I was surprised by both how easy it was to dive into such deep conversations with a man I’d literally just met AND how willing Shiven was to share and be open. Obviously, I knew then that he’d be the perfect person to answer many more of my existential questions.

Diving into the world of Shiven Kumar…

Epiphanies

• infatuation vs. love

Continuing our 4 a.m. Taco Bell conversation, I asked Shiven to differentiate between infatuation and love. He articulated it in the most eloquent way. I must share.

Shiven described infatuation as more of a physical, superficial feeling that fades over time. It’s that initial thrill, spark, and butterfly phase. Love, on the other hand, is a feeling that goes beyond the superficial layers; rather than fading, it changes over time, morphing along with the relationship. Love is stable, calm… and dare I say ordinary?

But don’t we need that initial infatuation to fall in love? Especially in today’s times, where people often meet on dating apps, don’t we need to feel a spark first to draw us in?

When I asked how we’d know the difference between the two when we’re actively seeing people, Shiven mentioned that it probably is just a test of time. Maybe we do have to wait until the spark dwindles and the butterflies settle to decide.

Maybe love is simply infatuation that chose to stay.

• older sisters and younger brothers

I will say I was biased for this part of the conversation LOL.

I’ve noticed a pattern amongst the men that I’ve met. Those with older sisters seem to be much more socially aware and emotionally mature compared to those with no sisters or even those with a younger sister. Shiven, a younger brother of an older sister, is an example of the former.

Obviously this assumption is a gross generalization and my opinion holds literally no scholarly value nor is it backed by research, so just take this with a grain of salt will ya?

He described his tight-knit relationship with his sister and how much she has influenced his life and upbringing. So I wonder: do us older sisters actually better our brothers? I mean, one research study showed that “having an older sister rather than an older brother improves younger siblings’ vocabulary and fine motor skills by more than 0.1 standard deviations” (Jakiela et al., 2020) 😎

• grief – how do we deal with it?

Death feels existential and it feels impossible to say the right thing to the people grieving. It also just feels impossible to know how to grieve.

Shiven described that there’s no way to completely finish grieving: the loved one’s memories will live on with us forever. What does happen, however, is our sadness may soften and our love for the person will either remain the same or even grow whenever we remember them.

“Grief feels like sadness and love at the same time. As time goes on, the sadness graph goes down and the love graph stays the same.” – Shiven Kumar, 2025

I was particularly drawn to Andrew Garfield’s take on grief when talking about the passing of his mother:

“This is all of the unexpressed love,” he continues. “The grief that will remain with us until we pass because we never get enough time with each other, no matter whether someone lives until 60 or 15 or 99. I hope this grief stays with me because it’s all of the unexpressed love that I didn’t get to tell her, and I told her every day, she was the best of us.”

Both Shiven and Andrew have somehow managed to turn something as heavy as grief into a positive form of love, a love that will stay with us for as long as we live.

• comfortable silence in a relationship

I touched on comfortable silence with coffee date #30, but I wasn’t necessarily thinking about it from a romantic relationship pov at that time. This time, though, when I asked Shiven what he looks for in a romantic relationship, he mentioned two things: 1) friendship as the foundation and 2) comfortable silence.

As someone who has just started dating again, my #1 fear before going on any date is dreading any moments of awkward silence. I always have to remind myself to chill out because silence is not always a bad thing, as Shiven articulated. In fact, comfortable silence feels like a sign of a healthy relationship. Not feeling anxious around the people we’re with and subsequently not feeling like we have to hurry to fill the space feels like a sign of something healthy and even sustainable.