Coup de Foudre by Pat McPeak

Coup de Foudre A Love Story Told by Nine Couples.

“Coup de Foudre”

Table of Contents Izzy and Sheeshan

4-5

Dani and Dana

6-7

Carmen and Emma

8-9

Daniel and Jennifer

10-11

Robin and Steve

12-13

Alisa and Alex

14-15

Bill and Millie

16-17

Chelsea and Carly Andrew and Lauren 4

18-19 22-23

Coup de foudre is a French expression meaning â&#x20AC;&#x153;love at first sight,â&#x20AC;? though the literal translation signifies a bolt of lightning. This phrase conveys the physical shock that can exist when two people first lock eyes. The French language is inherently romantic. Though it can hardly compete with the timelessness of love, the language has almost become synonymous with the idea of romance. From 12-year-old sweethearts to a couple enduring 60 years of marriage, the idea of love is shared among humans regardless of age, race and sexuality. The following nine stories embody vulnerability and capacity to trust. The various representations suggest there is not one way to be in love. Everyone has a different definition of the word, and these stories show only a fraction of what that could be. Like lightning, love never strikes the same way twice and is dependent on the conditions and environment it finds itself in one specific moment.

Izzy and Sheehan

by Abigail Reimold

Sheehan: We’ve been married six and a half months. Izzy: A lot of people wait to get married until they are out of college and they have more stability, but we decided that we want this relationship no matter what. I guess being married makes it a more intentional focus. Other people know that this is something that’s a constant in our lives and that’s really important. I guess we just got married because we wanted to be together. We don’t know what will come next, but it will definitely happen together, which is the cool part. Sheehan: In front of all our family and friends, we’re letting everyone know what our plans are and who we are together, and that wouldn’t have happened if we had just moved in together and had a private understanding of what would happen in the future. Honestly I think that a lot of stability has come from being married. When I lived in South Philly I didn’t used to make dinners. But my life has just become a lot simpler now that we live together. Maybe we don’t know exactly what we want to do and don’t have a lot of money, but it’s a lot more focused and a lot more stable. Now that we’re married we have a bigger family to fall back on if we fall into any trouble. It’s a lot more stable now that we are married. Izzy: We’re living together and sharing the expenses of everything. It’s OUR account. Having everything joined makes our financial stresses a shared concern. 6

Friends and peers think it’s kind of strange. Before being in this relationship, I thought that being married in college or even out of college would be insane. I would have thought that would be unreasonable. But things have obviously changed. People haven’t said any openly negative things about it, but you can tell when someone is disapproving. I definitely have gotten a lot of questions about why I was married so soon. It’s a valid question, and it’s a good thing to ask, but sometimes they’re not all that interested in knowing why. Too many people are like, “It’s so cute that you’re married!” and I’m like “THIS IS MY LIFE...” I don’t want it to be fantasized in that way. Izzy: I know that I’m trading off other friendships for our relationship. It’s weird to deal with at this stage of life because so many people are just focused on friends, which looks really appealing sometimes, but this is worth so much more to me, so it’s pointless to think about how it would be otherwise.

“To give and be given to in return is love at its fullest.”

Sheehan: For both of us... Izzy’s friends really love Izzy and they want to tell Izzy their secrets, and if I’m around that’s a problem. My friends are also like-- “this is Sheehan, this is how we hang out with Sheehan, and we will do the same things except that Sheehan has someone else with him”. My friends didn’t feel the need to get to know Izzy because I was around. It’s hard to force that on preexisting friendships. We think it would be cool to start making friends as a couple. Izzy: It would be nice to have friends as a couple, but it’s difficult at this point in life because we are at separate places. The things that we do in common are spending time with friends who have gotten to know us individually, so it’s cool to go to church together and have people there meet us and see us as a couple. Izzy: We study here together. It’s nice because if we learn something cool we can share it with each other and we will appreciate what we have to say. Sheehan: Living together helps us concentrate and stay accountable about getting our work done. Izzy: When you see somebody else working, it always seems like they are working harder than you are. Every time I look over at Sheehan, I figure he is working harder than me, but he is probably thinking the same thing. Sheehan: Love is the act of the will. It’s a choice. Love is a chance to give and to be given to without expectation of return, but that to give and to be given in return is love at its fullest. t Izzy: Love shouldn’t be something that’s reserved for a relationship like this. It extends to all of the people that you come into contact with: a way of being with others. In a relationship like this, it’s the most complete way that we can give and receive as humans.

Dani and Dana

by Andrew Thayer

Dani and Dana met on the online dating site, Plenty of Fish. They weren’t even initially matched up but Dana was browsing through profiles and decided to contact Dani without expecting anything to come of it. They started exchanging messages and eventually moved to texting and then finally meeting. According to Dana they hit it off instantly. “So we like hung out, she drove to me and the minute she came in to my house and we were hanging out. It wasn’t awkward at all. We just hit it off right away”. A year and two months later, they are still together. One challenging aspect of their relationship is that Dani lives about two hours away from Dana, which means that they are only able to see each other on the weekends. To compensate for the distance between them, they constantly text and talk at least once on the phone daily. While some might have trouble dealing with a relationship with someone who doesn’t live close by, Dana says that it makes their relationship better in some ways. “It’s a two hour drive. It sucks, but we look at it in a good way because couples who are together all the time...not that they get sick of each other but it’s just not new every time you see each other. It’s exciting for us because we went a week or two weeks without seeing each other.” During the week Dani works as a subcontractor cleaning out newly built development houses. Dana studies criminal justice at Gloucester County College and is a part-time server at a Bertucci’s restaurant. Dana also participates in roller derby as a hobby. Dana’s parents were accepting of her when she came out, as were Dani’s. However, Dani grew up and currently resides in Lancaster where homosexuality is not looked kindly upon. When Dani came out, she was the first one to do it in her entire high school and it was not looked upon favorably. Dana’s school was far more accepting and even has a Gay Alliance group for gay students. Dana : We’ve probably been “out” for the same amount of time, like I came “out” when I was 16 and immediately my family accepted me. I’ve had previous girlfriends but my family HATED them. Well not hated them but they just… 8

Dani: They tolerated them… Dana: Yeah they knew that they weren’t right for me. From the moment I brought Dani around my Mom, my dad, my stepmom, my family…everybody loved her, which is odd because how often does your family just love the person with your with? So it’s nice. Dana: We bicker like every relationship but we know that no matter how much we bicker and how much we hate each other for those five minutes and just want to bash each others face in, we know that we don’t want to be with anyone else.”

“We want to be the crazy lesbian couple who has awesome parties all the time.”

Dani: “With her I feel like I can do anything like I don’t feel uncomfortable, I can be completely 100 percent myself. I don’t have to think that I’m weird for certain things that I do. In past relationships I would be like ‘okay now I have to act this way, because if I do this thing I’m going to get yelled at.’” we know that we don’t want to be with anyone else. Dani: With her I feel like I can do anything. I don’t feel uncomfortable. I can be completely 100 percent myself. I don’t have to think that I’m weird for certain things that I do. In past relationships I would be like, ‘okay now I have to act this way, because if I do this thing I’m going to get yelled at.’ Dana: I would love to just be like ‘alright lets just move in together’...anybody would. But I want to have already graduated college and hopefully have some kind of job. I don’t want to worry about paying for things. Dana: If we could pick like our ideal future, I would want to have my degree in criminal justice and have a job that I’m happy with. I want to still be playing roller derby hopefully… Dani: I want to be able to go back to school and get my vet tech license so that I can open up my own kennel. Dana: One day I guess get married. Dana: We want to be like the crazy lesbian couple who have the awesome parties all the time and the crazy dinner parties on Sundays… Dani: Yeah, even though I don’t go to school for culinary, I still love cooking and want to have dinner parties, when we have our own place. I want to go hard and do it right.

Carmen and Emma

By Courtney Marabella

The love story between these two 12-year-olds, Carmen and Emma, is definitely an interesting one. Both New Jersey natives, Carmen and Emma live in different towns, but were brought together by a co-ed baseball team. While on the team together, the two bonded and developed a close friendship. Funnily enough, Emma dated a friend of Carmen’s first, after Carmen set the two up together when the group attended a local fair together. Fortunately for the two of them that relationship did not work out. After months of friendship, baseball practices, late night phone calls, Skype dates, and Friday night school dances, Carmen and Emma began dating in October of 2012. It’s easy to scoff at this young couple; what could 12-year-olds possibly know about love? But listening to what they have to say could make even the biggest skeptics root for these two. They claim to know that love takes time, despite how some of their peers throw the word around after mere hours of dating, and they believe that they have what it takes to make it through the rest of their middle and high school days. Will these two stay together? We’ll have to see about that. But as of right now, they are definitely enjoying the time that they get to spend together. Maybe they’re too idealistic, as young kids tend to be, but listening to them tell their story makes one wonder, “Is young love really that doomed?” Carmen: Okay. Well we met at baseball and I had this clingy ass, bitch girlfriend and then I didn’t like her. Then I met Emma at baseball and we started talking on Facebook. Then we went to this fair in our town and shit got really real. She met my best friend at the fair and she started going out with him. Then the next day, or a couple of days later, she started liking me. And then in October10

Emma: I didn’t have a choice. Carmen: Okay. Yeah she likeEmma: He trapped me on a ride and was like, “so are we going out?” And I’m like, “I don’t even know your last name.” Carmen: …so in October, we went out on Friday. I went to one of her dances and then the next day we went out. We just started going out. Carmen: Oh...so, before we dated, we were on the phone from 10 pm until 8 in the morning and then a couple of weeks later we started going out but if we didn’t have that call, we wouldn’t be going out. Carmen: It was just like we knew everything about each other. We said everything...and then...we got really close.

“You can’t fall in love with someone right away.”

Carmen: We only see each other on the weekends, so it makes us miss each other more, and then we want to see each other. And then other realtionships...people...you see them at school and you’re like, “oh my God I’m sick of you, get away from me.” But this one...between me and Emma...is so much easier because we see each other as much as we can on the weekends and you get the best out of that weekend, instead of seeing each other at school and then you get sick of them…seeing them in every class and stuff...but talking on the phone is fine during the week day, but on the weekend it’s just between those two people. I think it’s better to have a relationship that’s far apart. Emma: A lot of people…if they start dating at this age…the first day they start going out they’re like, “oh my God, I love you so much,” and stuff...but we both know that it takes time to love somebody. You can’t fall in love with someone right away.

Daniel and Jenn

by Hua Zong

Jennifer and Daniel Klein are co-owners of Cake and the Beanstalk, located at 1112 Locust Street in Center City. The small establishment serves coffee, tea, homemade desserts as well as lunch items. They opened the business in March 2011, just three months before they got married. Together, the couple faces the challenge of owning a business as well as sustaining a healthy marriage. Daniel and Jennifer see the stress and hard work of business ownership with newlywed’s eyes, both giving the credit for their success to the other. Daniel: We opened the shop three months before we got married. That wasn’t the best plan but it worked out. Since we met, I had talked about opening a shop. The way I look at it, we eat food to live, but we eat dessert to live happily and that’s why we run the business… to make people happy.

“I couldn’t have made this buisness without my wife.”

Jennifer: It is stressful, which makes our marriage more stressful but we also have accomplished something together that not a lot people do in their marriage. Daniel: What is love? Love is a lot of things. It’s knowing how to make the other person happy and just being around for them and being willing to do anything necessary for that person. 12

Jennifer: We like make people happy. One thing I forgot to mention is that almost every chair in the shop is hand painted by Jenn. Part of her love comes through in her art. Her artistic ability of painting the chairs and decorate the cakes…Being artsy is something she loves to do. I love to bake and that’s my art. Sometimes it could be a part of my love. Daniel: We finally went on our honeymoon weeks ago. We never got to go away because of the business we own here. We waited for two years to take a honeymoon, as we just did…so love is good right now. Daniel: I couldn’t have made this business without my wife. No way would there be a cake business without her. She is in charge of decorating. She does all the design, like all the signs and the menu boards. She makes little signs for the desserts. She paints the chairs and tables. She decorates the cakes and that’s a huge part of what our business is about. Jennifer: My husband does everything here. He is the baker. He is here far more than he is home. He works incredible hard and it’s awesome to see what we have accomplished two years later.

Robin and Steve

by Kate McCann

Steve: For our first date, we went on was to a cave. It was the middle of winter and we went into the cave and just kind of hung in the dark. It was kind of wild. We hung in the darkness as far as into the cave that we could go without flashlights. And then, that winter then we also went to a canal on the river, the Susquehanna River. And it was frozen so we were like dancing around on the canal. Robin: It seems that we had so much in common, I just could feel it coming off him. There were just odd things about ourselves, how we had both kind of grown up atheist in a really religious area for one thing. We both worked on the same independent press newspaper, an underground newspaper. We knew some of the same people, which no one my age, or that I had just run into on my own before, knew that set of people. He’s eight years older than I am, and when I first met him I was only 17. I guess he told you he was with somebody else at that time. But when I had that conversation with him, and was I saw him, just some vibe abut him, it as like I could remember our future together. Even though I knew he was already taken…it had been my plan to, after one year of college, move out to California, and I just stuck around this area for a while to see what happened, to see how it all played out. I remember I went to work in a little health food restaurant and some woman asked me if I was interested in somebody and I talked about Steve and she laughed and said, “forget that he’s already taken.” And I stuck around and the next thing I knew, he was hanging out when my band would play, and he had broken up with that women, and the rest is history.

“Love can just end up being that quiet center of who you are. They are your home.”

Steve: We allow ourselves a lot of leeway. Every marriage is different. People are always different. For us we need to allow each other room to make mistakes and to do our own thing, to be with other people…to give each other space, and still be supportive of each other and our projects and still maintain our own identities, our individual identities. Robin: I don’t think we have trouble sharing things. It’s a joy to share the things like the bed, like our space, like our time. That’s easy to do. I think the trouble comes when we’re not sharing it with each other. We aren’t everything to each other. We both have very rich lives outside of the little circle of our relationship. That sometimes it can get a little tricky if you feel if you’re being cheated of your time with the other one. Robin: Well, the things that really make our marriage work so well that I think is unique from others is that we allow ourselves that breathing space. With our vows we had with our wedding, the minister spoke of how there will always be other things happening in our lives. We will have a family and friends and maybe even lovers, you never know what life is going to throw at you, but through it all, we are committed to just maintaining. We are comrades through this adventure together. I think a lot of people don’t have the trust that they will always be loved by the other. So it makes them a bit more grasping to just hang on to the other person and let them have the breathing room that both of us really crave. Robin: Let’s see. I had a very romantic view of love. I totally wanted to marry for true love and it very well could be a poverty-stricken person, but we would just be joyful with our love and actually, that vision has really held through this love. When I got together with Steve, he was not really a motivated person as far as job or career. He was just into experiencing life and traveling and communing with friends and I agreed with all those things. So I entered our relationship with that sense of adventure, that this is just an adventure. We bought our things at Goodwill and we buy our food in dented cans that are cheap. We still do that but I feel as though the quality of life we have is very rich because we’re just about the experience of that love and shared sense of adventure. Robin: Don’t believe that one person can be your everything. That is just too much for one person to be. To me, the person you chose as your life partner, that love can just end up being that quiet center of who you are. They are your home, where you can feel free to be your ugliest, and trust that they will still love you through that. Also not be afraid of expressing that love that you feel as well. Everybody needs affirmation and so just remind yourself of how important that person is. Through time it can be quieter, but keep on reminding yourself of the home they truly are. What’s really real in your life? It’s not bringing home the big paycheck or buying all the fancy toys, but what essentially just makes you comfortable to be in this world. 15

Alisa and Alex

by Rachel DelSordo

Alisa: A friend of mine and I hitchhiked for Barcelona to Granada, Spain for a festival. When I was there, I was walking around with my friend Aurora and I saw this guy. Alex and I looked at each other and I sort of felt this feeling… it was the only time I ever felt time slow down, everything happened in slow motion. Supposedly both of our friends turned around like “woah what was that?” but everyone kept walking their ways. Later on I saw him again. He was about to perform a routine with a tar and feather cannon so I stopped and I watched and just found it hilarious like “Man, that boy seems pretty amazing”. So I ended up leaving and going to another festival. It was completely by chance I was supposed to go home but I couldn’t get a ride so I went to the next festival. We ran into each other there within the first hour. We got along pretty well but we split up and went our own ways. Later on that night, I was lost completely and a bit drunk. I couldn’t find my way to our tent or anything. I decided to try one more time to find my tent and go to sleep. I ended up walking right smack into Alex. Without even thing about it at all, I just said to him “Oh I think I was looking for you” and he said to me “Yeah, yeah I think so”. We were insupportable from that moment on.

“It’s important to be complete on your own and then together, the two of you create something beautiful.”

Alex is also a squatter. He lives in a squat and that’s very important for both of use because it’s really a lifestyle. We sort of have the same network for friends already, which we realized once we started dating. We know so many of the same people and we enjoy the same sorts of things. It would have worked even if we had our own scenes, I guess, but it helped a lot that we had the same reasons for going out. t When you squat a house in Europe, you don’t do it secretly. You do it and you inform your neighbors, you inform the 16

police, and a lot of times you just put up a big pirate flag outside symbolizing “this is our house now”. The place I lived in Barcelona was an anarchist social center and Alex’s house is just a bunch of artists living together in an old tech school.

so then it became long distance.

Before I met Alex, I had already decided that I was going to go back to school because I had finished two years of Temple. My father works at the University so I can only get free college till I am 26 so it was now or never. Once Alex and I got together, I couldn’t take back what I had already promised. We had started dating at the end of March and I had to leave in August

Living together was amazing. We spent every moment of the day together and we had a really good rhythm with each other. I would say we would do things at the same rhythm but that’s not true. Alex is crazy and always doing seventeen things at the same time and I sort of keep him on pace and remind him what he was working on cause he is really ADD. First it was completely difficult and very shocking to come here (the United States). When I left the airport, I felt like I was being ripped in half. It left me feeling super hollow. Nothing seemed interesting to me when I first arrived. I would just look forward so much to when I could Skype with him and unload my mind because I just felt lonely without him. It didn’t get any easier the second time he came to visit over the winter break. It was definitely more difficult saying goodbye that time because we knew what to expect that time. I think there are all different kinds of ways to love people. I’m the kind of person who really has a lot of love for my friends. They are the most important people to me, as are my family and animals. My love for Alex…he fits into all those categories. I love him like I would my best friend and I love him like the man I want to spend my whole life with. I don’t really know so much about love. I just know it’s a feeling. You look at that person and you feel warm inside. I think it’s important for a relationship to be a reflection of each other. You know normally people say “oh, he completes me”. I think it’s important to be complete already on your own and then the two of you create something extremely beautiful together through your differences and your similarities. Never mind, I don’t know what I’m saying anymore. I don’t know what love is.

Bill & Millie

by Patrick McPeak

Millie: Oh jeeze. Bill: You can go ahead with that one Millie: Well we met in 1950. I grew up in Glenside but we moved to Germantown and Mr. Bill was still in the service. I knew his sister before I knew him, I was still in high school. He came home from the service in 1949, december of 1949, right? Bill: Christmas Eve Millie: And I come home from school in the afternoon, and my father had a barbershop on the ground floor of my house, and I sit and do my homework and sit by the window. He was across the street in his window and he’d be pulling up and down the shade and I didn’t know who he was. So I would close the blinds and my Dad would come up from the barbershop and say “how can you see what you’re doing” and he would open the blinds and he (Bill) would start again. Waving. Bill: Doing all this, Charlie stuff Millie: And I wanted to be a barber, my dad was teaching me to be a barber and he would go upstairs to eat his dinner and I would sit in the barber chair and watch the shop. He came over one day and asked if 18

if I was the new barber. Bill: That was my opening line. Boy! I was a little bit nervous to walk in that shop and even say anything to her Millie: That’s how we met Millie: We’ll be married 60 years in May Bill: That was a long time ago. Bill: I used to take her out every Saturday night, dining and dancing, didn’t I? Millie: No... Millie: We lived in Germantown, he had some relatives there. His mom died when he was 8 years old so he used to hang out at his aunt’s house so he would take me there every Saturday night. Billie: Once and a while I would take you to the old Ogontz movie.

“ That was my opening line. Boy! I was a little bit nervous to walk in that shop and even say anything to her.”

Chelsea and Carly

By Randi Fair

Chelsea: What attracted me to Carly in the first place was extraordinarily good cheekbones. She also has a really good energy about her. People like being around her. She’s got a very magnetic energy. And dimples. The dimples help, too. Carly: Oh, that. Whatever! What attracted me to Chelsea was her ability to use grammar correctly and call me out on it. Her witty sense of humor. She had a fabulous smile. What can I say? She’s a very pretty lady! Chelsea: Our first official first date, we went to dinner at the Baltan Café, got veggie burgers, and went to concert at the North Star Bar. On our first non-date, we just hung out, just the two of us, which was also really fun. We got beers at Taphouse and that was fun because I expected it to be like, just meet up for happy hour and get one beer but we ended up talking for like 4 or 5 hours. Carly: Yeah. And I had been insinuating many times that I wanted to hang out and get a beer. I never had the chutzpah to actually ask and then Chelsea finally made the executive decision. Carly: The most difficult thing to share would be crosswords! Chelsea is a puzzle hog. She is the only one allowed to do crosswords if they are around. Chelsea: No, I’m, not! That’s not true. Carly: I’m not allowed to play. 20

Chelsea: If we had two copies of the crossword, you could also play. Carly: Okay! Right. So the original copy belongs solely to Chelsea who will do them right in front of me and not let me play. Chelsea: That’s not true, I ask you all the sports questions. Carly: Okay, right. Because that’s fair. Chelsea: I just don’t want you writing them in. Carly: I’ve sacrificed men for this relationship…my undying love for men. It’s a sacrifice. Just kidding! I’ve sacrificed bed space. Chelsea: Yeah I do hog space. I like to sleep diagonally. Carly: We like to be adventurous together and that’s something I really love about this relationship and I haven’t necessarily had that in other relationships so, that for me, defines it against other ones in a particular way. Chelsea: Carly is a lot more fun than I am. Carly: That’s definitely not true! I’m totally not fun. Chelsea: She’s less prone to just sit and analyze something over and over again in a good way. We balance each other out.

“What attracted me to Chelsea was her ability to use grammar correctly.”

Carly: The idea of love for me was a very naïve idea. I thought if you wanted it, or if you just went through the motions, then it was and you could just fulfill it in that way. But love, as I’ve come to know it with Chelsea, is a partnership and a commitment that requires work but the outcome is even greater than you’d think. Love is about honesty and openness and kind of really letting your guard down instead of just going into it as a solely independent enterprise, and so that for me is what has changed and what I’ve come to know about love from Chelsea. Chelsea: I think that it’s easier than I thought. People always talk about working at relationships, and that’s definitely true and I’ve always firmly believed in that, but I’ve realized that doesn’t mean you have to work at loving your partner all the time. it just means you work at the relationship. Chelsea: Everyday, I wake up and I know, intuitively, how much I love Carly and how good we are together. Even if we still have fights and stuff.

Andrew and Lauren

By Cara Anderson

Lauren: What do I like about Andrew? He makes me laugh, a lot, and I don’t have to hide the fact that I’m a fucking weirdo around him, and he loves it. I can be so strange and goofy and he’s right there with me, being just as strange and goofy too. Cara: Yeah, he’s weird as shit. Lauren: Yeah. He’s rad. He always knows how to make me feel great, too, about my work, which is really important, and just like about myself in general. Cara: Do you guys have similar styles? Lauren: With our art? I don’t think so. I mean, he likes to make stuff that’s very silly, but really technically awesome. Mine, I wouldn’t say is as silly, but I feel like mine has a lot of a darker tone . We can talk about our work just the same, which is also really important. L: We feed off of eachother for inspiration and criticism, it’s really rad. Cara: Is it hard to work with somebody that you’re involved with? Lauren: The first time we blew together it was kind of weird because he was gaffing and he was kind of telling me what to do. It was weird to take our relationship into a serious, like ‘Alright, now it’s time to do this’ kind of thing. But 22

after that, after I got past him telling me what to do, I realized it’s like that for everybody, no matter who you’re blowing with. After that it turned into something fun and silly… and awesome. Cara: It was cool to see the dynamic of them working because I’ve always heard it’s hard to professionally worked with that you’re involved with, but they were doing it in a very fluid way. Lauren: Yeah, Andrew and I talked about them all of the time. They have the best life I could ever imagine. They live in a little tiny house with an amazing studio and get to travel the world together and teach together. People are paying to what they have to say. Everything I could ever want, it’s what they have. Like goddamn, that’s what I want. .

“He makes me laugh, a lot, and I don’t have to hide the fact that I’m a weirdo around him, and he loves it.”

Photo Seminar 2013 Temple University