You couldn't have worded it any better. I completely agree! I genuinely feel like a lot of visual novels in the romance genre are nowadays too focused on making their individual plots unique and interactive, which ends up lacking the actual relationship/build up between the routes. This leads to it mostly feeling shallow and not giving me enough time to care about the characters.
When I first played I was bawling just because it gave validation that not a lot of people gave to me at my many dark points in life. Everyone supported me no matter what decision I wanted to make. Both friends and family both constantly communicated their own feelings and thoughts to avoid misunderstandings. There were a lot of times where they made a lot of effort to stay in touch like our favorite (and only I think) cousin!
I'm sad that it ended too, but I always end up playing again just because of how much I enjoy myself. I swear the first time I played Our Life it felt like I had so much content to explore, now on my many attempts later I feel like I go through it so fast! I'm always happy to "come back" and start a new life :)
To stop myself from continuing to ramble I'm happy you were able to experience it the same way I did.
Thank you GBPatch!!!