London Love Stories: Ella Dove and George Singer

Jobs: Author and commissioning editor at Good Housekeeping, Prima and Red magazines; and technical programme manager at Tesco Technology

Ages: Ella is 28, George is 26

Live: Stratford and Haringey

Length of time together: 11 months

Status: Official

The meet-cute

George: We met on Hinge and quickly bonded over our love of animals.

The first date

Ella: We had a brunch at Bistrotheque in Bethnal Green. George was really early, I was five (he says 10) minutes late. I was wearing my realistic prosthetic leg because I never liked too much focus on my accident on a first date. We chatted non-stop, then went for a walk in Victoria Park, admiring the dogs and finishing with a drink at a nearby pub.

Opposites attract

Ella: As a writer, I always envisaged myself ending up with a tortured poet type. George is a physicist so his brain always favours logic over my natural dreaminess, but when you dig deeper we’re not so different at all.

Big talk

George: Authenticity is important to me so it put me at ease knowing I could talk to Ella about real things rather than just small-talk. I’m so proud of how Ella’s career is going and I’m convinced she’s going to be an incredibly successful author with her first book, Five Steps to Happy.

Meeting the friends

Ella: A school friend summed it up on a triple date: as George finished a particularly geeky story she turned to me and said: “Wow, you really are made for each other.”

Meeting the parents

George: My family keep joking about preferring to see Ella than me. Whether they’re joking or not, I think it’s a good sign.

Lightbulb moment

George: In nearly a year I don’t think we’ve argued once. Apart from when I ask her Alexa to play Foo Fighters when she asks it to turn off the lamp.

The London love story

George: We normally see each other a couple of times a week. Our favourite restaurant is Pie Crust Thai in Stratford and we love the board and video game bars around there.

Going offline

Ella: We deleted Hinge together on about date five at the cinema. We were sitting in the back row (romantic) and as the ads flickered, George showed me he was deleting Hinge. I followed suit of course.