Did Jesus ever fall in love or almost marry?

The short answer

The Gospels never mention a wife, and they never tell of a romance. Whether he ever loved someone or came close to marrying, the record does not say.

What the record says

When his neighbors in Nazareth named his family, they listed his mother, his brothers and his sisters, and no wife:

“Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James, Joses, Judah, and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?”

Mark 6:3

The Gospel writers did not avoid mentioning wives. Mark tells us Peter had one:

Now Simon’s wife’s mother lay sick with a fever, and immediately they told him about her.

Mark 1:30

So most readers take it seriously that the Gospels say nothing about a wife for Jesus. Some modern books and films have claimed he married, often naming Mary Magdalene. No early record says he married anyone.

The Gospels say nothing about his heart as a young man. Those years are blank.

How Son of Man tells it

Son of Man is a novel. It imagines the years the Gospels skip. In the novel he goes by Yeshua, the name his family would have called him. In chapter twelve, Rebecca, a girl named Rebecca has loved him since she was fifteen, when she first saw him at the village well. Two years later she asks him to marry her. Her father, Ezra, offers to provide for Yeshua’s mother and the younger children. Yeshua is nineteen. He tells her his brothers and sisters still need him, and that he cannot promise what his life will be. He offers her his friendship and promises nothing he cannot keep.

“I cannot ask you to wait for a life I cannot promise you.”

The novel never says outright what he felt. The next morning his mother tells him, “I know what it cost you.”