It’s never just a couch for a young couple

My fiance and I are moving in together in a few weeks, so we’ve been powwowing about who has what furniture and do we really need this many pots and pans? (Yes, we do.)

We are both recent college graduates still trying to bulk up our personal savings. Buying new furniture is off the table. (That pun hits close to home, since we have no kitchen table.) Unfortunately, I will have to shelve my dream of a shopping spree at Pottery Barn. (Also pun intended, as shelves are a luxury to poor young people.)

At this point in time, our furniture inventory consists of a bed, two kitchen chairs and a decorative glass bowl with nothing to place it on. Don’t get me started on the mix and match of dishes in our cabinets, or I will get stressed out.

All was going well in our furniture planning process until my fiance rather coolly suggested that his current roommates have an “old couch” that they have “sitting in storage.”

(Ladies, this is when our warning flag goes off. )

Then, he says, “It might need a good scrub. It’s like a sort of green color.” (Cringe.)

But it gets worse. He wraps up the description of this high-quality couch with: “They’ll probably even give it to me for free, they’ve been trying to get rid of it.”

It’s at this point, early in the relationship, where we women have to consciously choose if we release some of the crazy inside of us, or keep it bottled up.

It’s just a couch, I tell myself. Just a couch. Just a couch.

But that sofa keeps me awake at night. I don’t think I’ll be able to sit on it wearing nice clothes. How will we match our living room decor to something described as “sort of green”?

I tried to be supportive, understanding and carefree. But this couch follows me to my nightmares. I’d rather forgo a month’s grocery budget, starve and invest in a Target or Walmart couch, where I know it’s clean and worth the value of some money.

But something happened in the middle of one of the seven recent green-couch conversations I initiated over three consecutive days since he broke the bad news of its existence. My belief that this guy, the guy who loves that green couch, is the one for me was happily confirmed.

During one of our discussions, I saw how excited he was about that couch, and then it dawned on me: He doesn’t care about the couch, he cares about where it’s going. It is being placed in our home.

Maybe one day, when we’ve saved up enough and determined that it is a sound purchase, we might buy a new couch. But the current couch will be one of many furniture pieces we have accumulated from the goodwill of friends and family who offer their support for a new couple starting out.

That couch is love, new beginnings and growth (possibly of bacteria, but still).

I don’t want it all together with him yet. I want us to be confused and unsure what the future holds.

One day, we’ll be settled and we’ll know what’s happening tomorrow and the next day. But today, it’s all about temporary couches and eating dinners with mismatched plates on our laps, admiring the decorative glass bowl sitting on the carpet in the middle of our living room.

When we’re ready, we’ll buy an adult couch that has a definitive color. But for now, our life will unfold in the rooms and town surrounding that couch.

I’ve quickly grown to find that piece of furniture to be my favorite.

This story was originally published February 5, 2017 at 2:03 PM with the headline "It’s never just a couch for a young couple."