I just got back from a meeting with my color theory professor, and half way through our conversation, her phone started to ring. She answered it quickly and tried to tell her husband that she was in a meeting and that she would call him back. She accidentally put him on speaker and I heard him say “Oh, sorry! No need to call back. I just wanted to hear your voice; I love you.” My professor started blushing and giggling. And she spent the next few minutes telling me about how much she loves her husband, “We’ve been married for 20 years and he can still make me feel like this.” She apologized for getting way off topic and I told her not to worry because I thought it was sweet.

It reminded me of an article I read in one of the English classes I took here. It claimed that research shows that couples can really only stay in love for 4 years and the years after that show that they chose someone who can satisfy their needs and they have learned how to live with that person, but most (if not all) of the romantic feelings should be gone by that 4th year. The only couple I could think of right away was my parents and I don’t think they’ve ever been in love. They really just settled for each other. And now they just stay in the same house and pretend to talk to each other when we have guests. So I kind of agreed with what we were reading. Everyone in our English class was really depressed after that and many students said that looking for love seems really pointless now. I asked the professor of that class if he was still in love with his wife since he mentioned just having a baby. He told me that they have been married for 7 years and they know how to live with each other.

So I told my color theory professor about the study and the only thing she had to say was, “The scientists who wrote that article haven’t found love yet.” And I reminded her that the research was based off of the couples they interviewed and not they’re own personal relationships, and to that she said, “Those people didn’t marry their best friend.”

I remember sitting in that English class being really depressed with the rest of the students, but that was before my sister and her boyfriend had their 5 year anniversary and it was before I saw my professor blushing and giggling like a school girl after just a 5 second phone call from the love of her life.