Cambridge students tell us their most Cambridge-y love stories

“I got with a vegan and I’m still ashamed.”

“…BNOC behaviour.”

There’s something so heartwarming about Cambridge relationships. Cycling frantically from your sneaky link’s accommodation before Mainsbury’s closes? Pretending not to know each other in the library because one of you is perpetually in an essay crisis? Love at Cambridge has its special quirks.

We asked you what your most Cambridge-y relationship experiences were, and here’s what you had to say:

1. A book in one hand and your SO’s in the other

What do you do when you don’t have time for a library sesh and a romantic evening? You multitask! Lily, a friend at Medwards who spends half her life singing and the other half cycling up the hill, doesn’t quite have time for date night.

Luckily, nobody else here does either, so she and her girlfriend Jasmine “spend most of [their] time in the library.” Want to mix it up a little? Maybe get some chores done too! Lily reports “a lot of library and laundry dates.”

Lily on her dreamy date (image credits: Jasmine Hearn)

2. It’s a small world with some big personalities

Many Cambridge love stories have happy endings, but others don’t work out too well. With the intensity of the student experience here, it’s no wonder that intense relationships (and their equally intense endings) add some excitement to the day.

Students have reported hiding in Itsu to avoid somebody looking suspiciously like their ex across the street, and others avoid Mainsbury’s altogether in case they see their lost love from a central college. Aldi anyone?

3. Playing Tinder roulette

It’s all fun and games swiping through Cambridge’s hottest undergrads until you see a slightly-too-familiar face. Sometimes it’s a cute library counterpart, other times it’s… a Michaelmas supervisor.

Less than ideal, especially if (like some of the students we talked to) you seem to not be able to distinguish your lefts and rights. Nightmare material! That’s one way of upping that 2.2 to a first.

4. The benefits of dating Etonians

Poshness is generally a grating characteristic, but sometimes it has its perks, as was discovered by one girl who reported turning up to her sneaky link’s accommodation one evening to find out that he had made her a chocolate mousse.

Apparently, though, the mousse was the highlight of the evening.

We may not have mousse but we have our own kind of cooking creativity (image credits: Adele Launay)

5. Taking “the plunge”

Maybe your new boo hasn’t met your parents yet, but they’ve made the all-important step of coming to a formal at your college. After all, there’s nothing more flattering than a gown.

One student claimed that “If you can survive three courses of being utterly grilled by your girlfriend’s friends over that much wine, you can survive anything.” What a warrior!

We singletons, however, enjoy a more relaxed and tipsy evening (image credits: Evie Hinchliffe)

6. Nerding out together <3

“We were watching Harry Potter…”

“Which one?”

“The last one. And I cried on his shoulder for an hour…and then he asked me to be his girlfriend!”

Featured image credits: Ruby Cline

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