Best Friends For Life

We’re sorry we missed you last week, but we have a good excuse!

We were busy taking one of our favorite Meet Cutes NYC couples, Mike and Karen, on a date. If you don’t remember their story, you can check it out here (it recieved over 30 million views across social media). The full video will be released on Monday, Aug. 26 at 5pm ET. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to be the first to watch!

For this week’s Love Letter, we’re going behind-the-scenes of Sanya and Siddhant’s love story, which they first shared with us late last year. They sat back down with Meet Cutes NYC to tell us the full story of how their best friendship turned into a lifelong relationship.

Take a look.

How did you two meet? 

Sanya: We first met in school. It was the seventh grade and Siddhant had moved from another city. It was his first day, and everyone was looking very curiously at the new boy. My friends and I reached out to him and invited him to sit with us. 

Siddhant: They were very nice. I’m from an army background, so I used to move around a lot. It was tough adjusting because I changed schools so often. Having somebody reach out and be warm and welcoming was very nice. 

You talked in your video about how you started out as best friends. How did that friendship develop? 

Sanya: I’m not sure. Something just clicked really well with the two of us. After school he would call me on the landline and we would sit there and talk for two or three hours even though we had just spent practically the whole day together with our friend group. We’d talk about everything from school to home life to movies and our interests. It was so fun. I remember that, because he was in these army accommodations, the phone would get cut every hour and he’d call back again. He’d do that for hours on end every single day. 

Siddhant: Before we switched “statuses” we’d already been friends and in the same school for close to seven or eight years. 

When did you realize you had feelings for Sanya? 

Siddhant: That must have been maybe a year and a half to two years before we talked about it. From my side, it was a simple thing. We were very comfortable with each other. We could talk to each other about anything that we wanted, anything under the sun. So, yeah, that’s when I realized I was probably yearning and that I wanted something more and that she was the person instilling those feelings in me. 

Did you feel the same way about Siddhant? 

Sanya: I’m actually not sure! Because there’s things that we used to really enjoy, and small little quirks that just the two of us had. Like, he’d bring me a chocolate every other day. We had these small little rituals that we shared that felt like more than friendship. I would always wondered, but I never really thought about it until that night we talked about. That’s when it really hit me. 

Let’s hear the full story of how it happened. Siddhant, had you been planning on saying something? 

Siddhant: It definitely wasn’t planned, that’s for sure. Our friend group had a simple get together after school. We were heading into a long break so we all wanted to hang out. I distinctly remember walking to the place with another friend, and seeing Sanya and telling my friend “She’s looking really cute today.” 

So that night, we were chatting and having a really great conversation and feeling all these feelings and thinking that I had to do justice to this and be honest about how I was feeling. I think what I said was “I really, really like you. And I don’t just mean that as a friend.” And I told her I wanted to take this forward. 

Sanya: Actually, he didn’t say anything during the party! I could tell he was anxious about something that night, though. It was very visible to me, but I don’t think it was to our friends. Although the guy I was with called me out because I just kept talking about Siddhant worrying about what was wrong with him. 

When I came home I saw a missed call from him. I called him back and he told me “You’re a very beautiful person, and I don’t want to put you in a bad spot, but I just had to tell you that I really like you and I wish we could do something with this.”

And I think that is when it really hit me that this was exactly how I felt. I was in this very strange place because I was with someone else. And the next morning I had a conversation with that person who, by the way, is a really dear friend to both of us now and is married to our best friend!

After that, it took multiple conversations between Siddhant and I to get to a place where we would say that we were together. 

Was it hard to tell Sanya about your feelings? Both because she was your best friend and because she was with someone else? 

Siddhant: Absolutely. I had a lot of conflicting emotions at that point in time. For me, I had to be honest. It wasn’t right for our friendship and it wasn’t right for me to not say anything. In my mind, this was something that was really nice and deserved a shot. Whatever happens after, happens. 

What has the response been since you shared your story with Meet Cutes NYC? 

Siddhant: It’s been quite overwhelming, to be honest! There’s been a lot of love. We’ve heard from people who we haven’t talked to in a long time because the video has reached them. Even at my workplace I’ve had people coming up and telling me they saw it! The other day we were shopping at the grocery store and this gentleman came up to us to tell us he saw the video and that it was really nice. 

Sanya: We had a lot of people who knew about our long distance relationship reaching out and telling us how nice it is to see us together and making this work, because we’ve had to deal with so much time apart. It feels like they were silently on this journey with us, and through the video they were able to see the culmination of all that hard work coming together!

Wanna watch Sanya and Siddhant’s original Meet Cute video? Click here.

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Interviewed and transcribed by Nicolas Vega. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.