28 Little Things That Are Perfect About New Love

1. That giddy feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you receive a text from them. May it never, ever go away.

2. Catching a whiff of their cologne or perfume on the street when they’re not around.

3. You don’t know anything about them, so you’re constantly learning new things about who they are as a person.

4. But you also know that they’re probably trying to hide their flaws. Let them for now. Bask in that blissful ignorance of thinking they’re perfect because it will all come crashing down soon enough.

5. Listening to a song or watching a show or a movie you know they like makes you immediately think of them. This is equal parts creepy and devoted. Okay, maybe 60/40, but it’s still cute.

6. That moment when you convince them to watch your favorite movie or read your favorite book when they’ve never experienced it before. You’re opening them up to entirely new worlds! You’re teaching them something!

7. Few Instagram filters can mess up the glowing aura of puppy love. Not even Hefe.

8. No matter how personally against little signs of PDA you normally are, a new relationship deserves a get-out-of-jail-free card for hand holding and little hugs and pecks.

9. Learning how your body fits in the nooks of theirs, like puzzle pieces or keys and locks.

10. The first inside joke will never be dethroned. It will always be the first and therefore the best.

11. Face it, one of your friends is going to string together your names for you (either in one of those weird celebrity couple names circa 2004 or the dreaded combination of your first name and their last name, or their first name and your last name) and you’re going to breathe a sigh of relief that you’re not the one who has to throw it out there into the universe.

12. Rehashing the minor details of all of the first few dates with your roommates and friends. It might be agonizing to question the gray area, but there’s a small part deep down that wants to relive every last confusing, wonderful second.

13. You find them genuinely interesting. Really interesting. Like, they could recite Socrates in the original ancient Greek to you and you’d listen to every word.

14. You don’t care if you disagree, because you honestly want to hear their side of things. May this too never wear off. Disagreeing is good for you.

15. You’re still agonizing over what you’ll wear the next time you see them, but it’s the good agony. Sometimes it’s nice to want to dress up for someone else.

16. You make mental notes of the things they say they like about your appearance and try to subtly play them up as much as possible, because it’s fun to see their appreciation.

17. You’re excited about the prospect of seeing them again because it’s still new and exciting and you want to spend as much time as you can with them without being overbearing.

18. Finding out you two have some of the same things in common. I mean, you can’t really chalk it up to fate if you had each other in common to begin with, but it’s still a pretty nice feeling that each other isn’t the ONLY thing you have in common.

19. You will forgive them any number of gross little habits you do happen to see peek through the edges of their shiny veneer. Weird sounds and quirks and allergies seem extra endearing to you at this time and you just want to take care of them.

20. If you’re still in the very, very early, budding stages of your relationship, wondering what it’s like to kiss them or sleep with them is a world of anticipation and butterflies you’ll never get back once you know.

21. Finding out which side of the bed they prefer, and how you’ll sleep next to them, and what it’s like to wake up and see that they’re still there.

22. The first time you use the equally reviled and revered “we,” or your friends use “they” to describe you, as if you come in a set now. You’re still very much your own people, but sometimes mismatched things work well in pairs.

23. Finding that one thing that makes you both retch beyond comparison. Uniting over a similar dislike is the ultimate in bonding experiences.

24. Learning what their favorite snacks and drinks are, and making a conscious effort in storing all of the little details and stories away in a part of your brain to surprise them with something nice later.

25. Claiming that one restaurant that you both call yours, together. You order take out together, you eat in together, and often it’s the same dish every time.

26. Creating little routines to complement the others’ habits. What you do at your place and what you do at theirs somehow mirrors what they do at their place and what they do at yours.

27. Cleaning your apartment before they come over doesn’t feel like a chore, because you really don’t want them to think you’re a slob.

28. How each new moment is a chance for a new memory, and truly, may that feeling of infinite possibility never go away.