There’s an idea that floated around on social media for a while, the #orangepeeltheory. It’s the new test of true love. The deeply unscientific experiment is this, if your partner strips the rind off the citrus and serves it to you with kindness, then their love is for real.
I don’t believe in this theory, really, because I think love is not just made up of a solitary action, it’s many actions, thousands even, over the course of your lifetime. It is when I come home from work and B stands there with his arms wide and a big grin on his face. I never tire of that first moment arriving home. He’ll pull me into a tight hug, his arm looped behind my head, the type of hug where you can’t breathe but it doesn’t matter because no place on earth is better than that closed space between us.
I’ve now come to understand that love and romance isn’t exclusive of endless amounts of champagne and being whisked away to Paris at a moments notice. It’s when he buys coffee, he takes a sip, sucks through his teeth then says, “I like your coffee better.” It is when we’re walking on a narrow path with cars shuttling down the road and he’ll nudge me to the inside shoulder while we’re walking, holding my hand the entire time. It is when I pick up a packet of sweets and put them down and out of the corner of my eye, he puts them in the basket anyway. It is that one time he tried to create an at home spa experience for me with lit candles except the hot water wouldn’t heat, so we had a conversation over tepid water and bubbles that wouldn’t bubble.
This love is found in the tiny gestures, in cups of teas and splitting chores and cut fruit and holding hands and him putting socks on your feet because you’re always cold. Over the last few years, ever since I came home from College, my mother has started to yell “I love you” from across the room at random moments. I always thought it was odd, but perhaps that’s just her way of showing affection. Now I get it. I’m a pessimist for love and a romantic at the same time, not believing I’m deserving of such a good feeling. But when I shout I love you from another room, B will shout it back and it warms my heart and I know he really does.
There’s not a single, defining moment of when I knew he would be it for me. It was gradual. One day we were having a coffee date and the next we were drawing on a scrap piece of paper how we would build the perfect kitchen, there was no seams just a turning of the page. Somewhere along the way, in the hundreds of hours spent together, we moulded into each other’s life. As if we'd known each other in some other lifetime, like we have always known each other, this familiar love we’ve been chasing — like we had simply picked up right where we left off. This is the sort of love that you read about, that you hear from that elderly couple who has been together for sixty years, but you never fully understand it.
Until it’s yours.
In the middle of the monotonous and impossible, and the what’s going on and how did we get here, and will we be okay, will we last forever — there’s the two of us, drinking our cups of coffee in bed on a Sunday morning.
This is so beautiful and romantic, the little moments and gestures that are dripping with love 🥲 Such a pleasure to read 🤍
so in love with this