The Coupons
There’s a particular kind of optimism that appears when someone believes love can be engineered.
Not controlled exactly, but designed. Encouraged. Gently nudged in the direction of joy.
At one point in my life I tried to do this with coupons.
Actual coupons. The kind you might give someone as a playful gift: redeemable experiences meant to create small moments of delight.
Some of them were romantic in the theatrical sense.
A midnight beach escape. A secret garden picnic. A sensual dance night.
Others were quieter.
Running errands together. Building something around the house. Spending an afternoon hunting through antique shops.
The idea wasn’t complicated. Life gets busy. Work expands to fill every available hour. Couples sometimes forget to create space for the things that originally made them feel close.
The coupons were my attempt to protect that space.
To say: here are little doorways back into connection.
I remember writing them carefully. Each one felt like an invitation into a shared future that still seemed possible at the time. The language was playful, but the intention underneath it was sincere.
I wasn’t trying to purchase affection.
I was trying to cultivate it.
Looking back now, I feel a mixture of tenderness and embarrassment toward that version of myself. Tenderness because the gesture came from a genuine desire to build something joyful. Embarrassment because I didn’t realize yet what the coupons were quietly acknowledging.
Spontaneity had already started disappearing.
When intimacy becomes something you schedule — something you redeem — it often means the system has begun drifting away from the place where affection once lived naturally.
I don’t regret writing them.
If anything, they remind me of something important.
Even when systems are quietly tilting out of balance, people often continue investing in them with extraordinary sincerity.
Sometimes the most revealing artifacts of a relationship aren’t the arguments.
They’re the hopeful things someone made while they still believed the structure could hold.