Love is, at its core, a feeling of strong affection. It’s a very strange concoction of emotions that makes us desire a certain person’s exclusive romantic attention. Very rarely is love this straightforward, though; problems typically arise once we consider that not only do you have to love the other person, but the other person has to love you back.
I recently took my best friend to my date night, tucked her into bed and then woke up in the middle of the night to find her gone. I didn’t have to check Find My Friends to know she was one block down the street at a fraternity annex in the bed of a guy who only texts her as the hour approaches midnight every Saturday — like clockwork. It’s officially November, so this next-level trifling behavior is becoming increasingly common among my female friends. Days grow shorter, seasonal depression sets in as the first waves of snow trample the ombre leaves and I find myself yelling at friends over text more and more to get their self-worth in check. These are the signifiers of cuffing season.
After a restless night, I finally decided to head to bed at 7 a.m. Generally, my insomniac tendencies show through after staying up multiple nights to complete the grueling problem sets that I should have started well before the day that they are due. However, this time around, I spent the night talking about life with one of my best friends at Cornell. There have been numerous nights where I have sacrificed sleep to better my relationship with this friend; I am rather abnormally extroverted, and my inability to stop talking has allowed me to cultivate relationships wherever I go. For some of us, we make friends by going out to party. For others, though, friends come through initially unintentional associations, whether that be through mutual friends, class partners or an accidental right swipe.