By Kerry Steinhofer
Social Media Specialist
Asbury couples. We’ve all experienced them. They follow you around everywhere. You can’t help running into them. You can’t avoid them.
So, what do the average cliché Asbury couples look like? For those of you who may not be aware of them, I will gladly tell you what I have witnessed while being at Asbury.
There are the student center couples. These are the couples that will basically sit on each other’s laps and cuddle a little too much. You may also find them lying down sleeping.
Next, you have the ones that stand in front of doors. This could be any door around campus, like the Glide-Crawford side entrance. These are the couples that will stand in front of a door and say good night as though five years will pass until their next meeting.
What is even better is when you make eye contact with one of them while walking up to the door, and they still decide that they are more important and will not move. Awkward. Let’s avoid that.
If you do not run into a couple in the student center or at the doors, you will probably run into one just walking around campus. I find that there is a little bit more control if you are just walking around. Holding hands is fine; that’s normal, and you pretty much cannot avoid that.
The problem I see is that some couples like to take up more space than they should. If you are walking and holding hands, please do not stretch as far away from each other as possible. It makes it extremely awkward if you are walking on the sidewalk and you have to end up getting in the middle of the grass because a couple is taking up the entire sidewalk. Really? Again, less awkwardness, please.
Let’s talk about the lobbies. These are the couples that you see, similar to the ones in the student center, laying across each other and constantly in each others faces. Affection is cute, I suppose, but there are many people who walk through the lobby. The last thing people want to see, especially later at night, is a couple in the middle of extreme PDA on a couch. Super awkward.
With Asbury being a smaller campus, it is virtually impossible to not experience one of these situations daily. But, this is a Christian community, right? As Christians we are called to beware of unnecessarily offending those around us. Your actions out in public, Asbury couples, should be carefully measured as they can easily make people around you uncomfortable.
Remember also that God wants us to be respectful and honorable when it comes to our relationships, and we are called to live in holiness.
None of this is to say that couples at Asbury are bad. It is wonderful that so many people have been able to find their perfect matches here. Coming from someone who is in a relationship, yes, I do find myself in these situations on the other side (being the couple). I try to be aware of those around me and know what is appropriate and what is not, and when something is appropriate and when it isn’t.
So, whether you’re a student center couple, a front-door couple, a lobby couple, a take-up-the-entire-sidewalk couple or a combination thereof, by all means enjoy your relationship. Be careful, however, not to offend others and to honor God with all that you do. Stay classy, Asbury.