The Week of Love: The Couple {A Guest Post}

2/12/2014 The Entrancer 1 Comments

We're all thinking about love during this love week, and I have a love for something. I'd like to declare here: I have a love for couples.

I really do. I like them. I like watching them. Is that creepy? Yes. I try to have it not be, though. I try to subtly and slyly observe couples in their world of couple-y oblivion. I try to telepathically convey my excitement that they're a couple and that I totally approve and that I'm just trying to join in the joy.

Without being creepy.

When I was at junior college in a small town, I thought I knew all the couples around. They were gossiped about in the girls' apartment complex, they were not-so-subtly observed in church, (sidestory: I became companions with a gal on my mission, of whom I knew purely because I'd creeped on her and a very attractive young man while at a devotional in college) they were literally the talk of the town. When the town is small, you know it all.

Imagine my surprise when I started a new class and observed an entirely brand-new, hitherto unknown couple!

What caught my eye about these two was their comfortableness with one another. This wasn't a recent development for them.

As I continued to observe them throughout the semester, I became more impressed. They were adorable! She had brown hair that was wavy and wore this pair of Converse sneakers that were well-loved. He had glasses and was slight of build and always seemed to be wearing a flannel plaid shirt. They had matching binders for the class we were in, which anywhere else would have been just too gaggingly sweet. But they magically pulled it off!

They drove around in his beat-up old pick-up truck. They walked to class holding hands and just talking. They were comfortable with each other, so much so that you would never notice them. They didn't stand out except to a couple-phile like me.

I pointed them out to my roommate, and since we were both creepers, we never introduced ourselves. We just noticed them when we saw them around campus. We dubbed them simply The Couple, so we could be sure to know of whom we were speaking.

I think there was a little magic in that distance we had. Seeing someone from afar, you can imagine the details of their life, without getting caught up in them.

Watching The Couple was almost like watching a movie. To me, they remain that happy and comfortable pair that I saw briefly on campus a few times a week. I don't know where they are now. I don't know their names, so I couldn't possibly look them up on any social media site.

I just know that they were an example for me of a quiet, unassuming pair, who'd found love and were happy with it.

For me, that's enough.

I like couples. My cynicism sometimes leads me to disparaging remarks about stupid things couples do. I mean, we all know it: love makes you stupid sometimes.

But despite that, I maintain in my heart a soft spot for couples. Pairs of people that exhibit signs of respect and love and joy in being together. People that you look at and just know that for them, the air is glittering with the magic of their love.

-The Entrancer