The weeks leading up to Halloween are always full of bone-chilling frights. There are vampires lurking in the dark waiting to suck the life from their next victim, oozing mummies rising up from their coffins with vengeance, and ominous black cats scampering across your path. Yet, when the days get shorter and the autumn breezes start to blow, there’s only one thing scarier than skulking creatures of the night: commitment.
Dressing up together is about as hard a hard launch as you can get, and proposing the idea means laying your intentions for the relationship bare. When you don’t have a crystal ball to read your partner’s mind, is there anything more awkward than asking them to be Santana to your Brittany? If you want to make things official, proposing they be the Ilya to your Shane can feel like putting your still-beating heart on a silver platter for the taking.
Nicole, 24, (whose name, like others in this story, has been changed to avoid an awkward conversation) has been in an on-and-off situationship for almost three years, and the pair is planning on doing a couples costume as Anora and Vanya from the movie Anora. When I call her, she’s outside looking for a place to sit. “Sorry, I was literally just at Brandy Melville looking for a shirt to buy him for this,” she says.
The idea was meant to be tongue in cheek. Two years ago, the two had an explosive public fight over the status of their relationship on the subway coming home from seeing the film. Now, several fights later and still non-exclusive, she thought it was a fun call-back. With some playful begging, he agreed.
When I ask if Anora and Vanya’s toxic and ultimately tragic relationship is an apt comparison to hers, she laughs. “It definitely fits him. The guy from Anora is very haphazard and kind of boyish and immature,” she says. “But he also goes through the phase of being obsessed with someone for a period of time and then moving on from it. And that's exactly who he is.”
She’s not worried about her friends’ reactions. “I think they'll just think it's funny.” According to Nicole, “You should be doing a couples costume with your situationship as soon as possible.”
Lauren, 25, just became exclusive with her partner a few weeks ago. Still, she was nervous to pop the question to her beau. “It’s just so awkward!” she says, laughing. “You just don’t want to be the one to have to do it first.”
Thankfully, he beat her to it. “I think I’m just traumatized. Back in college when you start ‘dating’ someone at the beginning of the year, you always think, ‘Obviously by the time Halloween comes around, this is going to be real serious,’ and then it's most definitely not,” she says. “So when he was like, ‘Should we do a couples costume?’ I was like, ‘Oh wait, I'm out of jail!’”
Though she’s starting to feel more confident about where they stand as an item, Lauren is looking at their Princess Buttercup and Westley outfits as an opportunity for the ultimate test of their status: telling the world. “If anybody happens to take a picture of us, will it go on Instagram? Probably.”
That said, even for couples in it for the long haul, couples costumes aren’t sacred. Sarah, 23, has been dating her boyfriend, John, for over two years. Recently he’s been blowing up her phone with inspiration pictures of Spider-Man and MJ, Mario and Princess Peach, and The Office’s Jim and Pam. She’s yet to break the news that she’d already been planning for weeks to dress up with her best friend as Nathan Fielder and Elizabeth Holmes. “I honestly don’t want to see you in a couples costume unless you’re married,” she says. “Halloween just feels like a girl holiday and it’s cringe to pick your boyfriend over your friends.”
So to couples costume or to not couples costume? If you’re on the same page and it’s fun, absolutely. If the getup is a substitute for an honest conversation about your future? Absolutely not. And if you’re worried that not showing up as Edward and Bella means they’re going home with Jacob, maybe it wasn’t meant to be after all.
