It’s a different view of a man we all think we know so well. In excerpts of a new biography of President Obama by David Maraniss, as published in Vanity Fair, then-student Barack Obama was painted as a man in love.

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The magazine describes the relationship between then-Columbia grad student Obama and Genevieve Cook in 1983—described as his most serious romance yet. The story was told through letters written between Obama and Cook.

The book describes Obama’s life in New York at the time, saying that though he felt no attachment to his post-graduation work, his “sense of destiny deepened.”

“He was conducting an intense debate with himself over his past, pres¬ent, and future, an internal struggle that he shared with only a few close friends, including his girlfriends, Alex McNear and Genevieve Cook, who kept a lasting rec¬ord, one in letters, the other in her journal,” according to an excerpt of the book.