Every teenage couple you’ll meet in Colchester

To those of us who are single, couples are an enigma. From an outside perspective it doesn’t seem like any of it makes sense – even those in couples probably have no idea what’s going on most of the time.

However there are certain traits which can be seen and are consistent throughout – especially in Colchester. This article will take us on a journey through the people and the places our stereotypes are so famed for.

The materialistic ones

At Christmas, Alex took Chloe to Winter Wonderland after only a week together. They shared an awkward and open-mouthed kiss by a carousel. Bystanders averted their gaze.

By Valentine’s Day they’re exchanging Michael Kors for Hugo Boss, and engaging in hideously polite missionary upstairs after an episode of Gossip Girl that Alex pretended to enjoy.

Later: he will message his group chat to say how good the sex was. She will laugh with her girls over his small penis, and perhaps Snapchat a Col U player.

By the time Summer comes around, Chloe will have found out about his long-term affair with Grace from college, and the girl he fingered in the underpass on Crouch Street. She takes him back anyway because it’s too late to cancel their holiday to Corfu, and maybe he really is the one.

Chloe goes away at the end of Summer on a girls holiday to Zante and shags a boat party rep who looked like he was straight out of TOWIE.

Months go by and Christmas rolls around again – Chloe tweets that she is “so hapy” to have spent the last 12 months with her best friend, ignoring the multiple adulteries, and the tweet is liked solely by guys who want to have sex with Chloe and girls that have already slept with Alex.

The druggy ones

In the summer after GCSEs, Alice went to Reading festival and was peer-pressured into taking an embarrassingly small amount of MDMA.

She daubed herself in henna and ended up getting with Reece from RHS (who was punching well above his weight) in front of a crowd of 1000s during Disclosure’s set. They returned to his pop-up tent for a nanosecond of penetration before they both passed out from exhaustion.

After only two weeks into the Autumn term, Alice, now obsessed with going out on a Thursday and getting on it, drops out of the Grammar school and heads to college.

Fortunately Reece is at college too and they can spend their days together in smokers’, sharing a packet of Golden Virginia which his brother bought him from One Stop. Weekends that would have been spent studying for A Levels are now filled with getting pilly at FreQKlash or smoking very average weed in James’ garage.

The relationship doesn’t last long. They keep their distance from each other now, their only contact coming when offering the other gum/water at Atik, or, when totally free of inhibitions, they have a surprisingly athletic threesome with a dealer after a particularly heavy session at Molloy’s.

The young parents

Parties in Year 9 were either shit, at a bowling alley, or contained far too much vomit for polite society. Molly met Keiran at one of the latter – they shared the shitmix of his parents’ spirits that he’d snuck into the party in an Oasis bottle.

By the end of Year 10 their relationship had moved beyond the occasional clash of tongues at a party. Two babies followed shortly.

At 18, Molly was living on her own, the kids growing up nicely. Nights that should perhaps have been spent breastfeeding and researching better value nappies turn into three bottles of rosé at Qube.

The fringe ones

Amy and Chris met at the school disco in Year 8. He wore a death metal T-shirt and her her mother’s maxi-skirt. They slow-danced to Michael Jackson’s You Are Not Alone, and parted ways when her Dad came to collect her.

They both remained on the fringes of the social hierarchy for years, occasionally meeting at parties but maintaining a purely platonic relationship at all other times. GCSEs came and went, and at Sixth Form they were thrown together once again.

The flames of passion were ignited in registration with a fiery exchange of eye contact. What followed was 2 years of aggressive PDA in the computer room at college, and all kinds of fantastical stories about their sordid sexual exploits. He experimented a little with tobacco and weed, her with a vibrator and Voltaire’s classics. The inevitability of the university breakup eventually became too much, and the fallout of the split lasted all summer.

Once again they slipped into obscurity, and the subject of the group chats of their peers could finally return to the latest tweet from Lewishyouwereme or just how much MD they could get away with taking in Ibiza.

The conventional ones

This couple follows all the rules. They met at a mutual friend’s party in Year 10 – the gentle numbing of the WKD and the lure of an illicit rendezvous led George to Sophie.

They kissed, with tongues, in the host’s bedroom. An immediate Facebook friend request was followed weeks later by the classic “Hey, wuut?”, and months of disastrously embarrassing flirting eventually led to a date at Chiquitos and an official relationship on all social media platforms.

They exchanged thoughtful gifts at birthdays and Christmas. Sophie’s mum is smitten and her Dad calls George son. Her parents have even let him sleep over now. Sophie joins George on his family holiday to the South of France and posts an Instagram of the two of them kissing on the sea wall. The caption reads: “My Everything <3”.

George finds a passion for the gym in year 13, the puppy fat melting away to reveal a jaw that could cut glass. Sophie meanwhile becomes jealous at his new-found female attention and starts tweeting that she is in fact NOT a psycho girlfriend. Regardless, she insists on accompanying him on nights out with his boys.

Eventually the stifling pressure of the relationship leads George to an ill-advised blow job from the girl he had told Sophie not to worry about. She ignores the rumours at first: after all, this is real love, why would he do that to her? They go away for a weekend spa break together, paid for of course by George out of guilt, and he has the money seeing as his car is only on finance anyway.

Months pass and the guilt gets too much. George breaks up with Sophie, citing differences in personality. Sophie and her mum are distraught. She deletes all the pictures of the two of them on Instagram, burns his favourite T-shirt and falls into the welcoming arms of a squaddie in Atik.

The places:

Smokers/The Common Room

This is where many relationships can blossom. Free from the intellectual shackles of the classroom, the heroes of our story can be themselves and flirt outrageously with the opposite sex, be it rolling them a cigarette or sharing a pot of curly fries with them.

The PDAs are unwanted and inappropriate, but you enjoy yourself too much to care.

Zizzi’s

A classic first-date location for nervous teens. The cuisine and location are safe. You’re not old enough to order wine, so why go somewhere fancy?

He orders pizza, her pasta. A sharing dessert would be in order here but both aren’t quite ballsy enough to suggest it. Instead both get their own rather sad looking brownie. He pays, of course, but she protests a little too much. He walks her to the bus stop and they share an awkward embrace.

Colchester Zoo

A favourite third or fourth date location. She spent the whole winter begging for a boyfriend to go to Winter Wonderland with, and as summer rolls around she is a little too conveniently coupled-up as zoo season approaches.

The highlight of the day is feeding the elephants, and many minutes are spent trying to capture the perfect hand-holding moment.

The local drive-thru

This is for those comfortable enough in their relationship that they no longer need to impress with fancy food. Estate agents and local apprentices, in their financed Corsas flock here in droves, hoping that they’ll get lucky if they buy their partner chicken nuggets.

A Chicken Select meal or nugget sharing box and large coke is the order of the day. Sometimes an ice cream, but who really has the time?

Le Talbooth

Nestled in a gentle meander of the River Stour in sleepy Dedham, this is a location reserved for only the the most special of anniversaries.

Either our couple is attending with one or others parents, or 18 months seems significant enough a commitment to drop £100 on a fancy meal. At least her Fiat 500 (bought by Daddy, of course) doesn’t look out of place in the car park, and both understood that to roll a cigarette inside would be tantamount to treason.

So there we have it, the couples of our Colchester can be explained (almost) down to a tee in only five stereotypes and five date locations.

(All likenesses to persons living or dead are purely coincidental. If you feel the shoe fits and you have been personally victimised then do feel free to slide into my Facebook messages, but let’s face it you really should have been better behaved, shouldn’t you.)