This special issue takes an ontological approach to the question of the couple, asking what it means to be in two?that is, to have one’s experience bound up for some duration with another. Contributors cut across binaries that have divided the field of queer studies, such as normativity versus antinormativity, future versus non-future, negativity versus optimism, relationality versus anti-relationality, and West versus non-West. In doing so, they refuse to choose between such camps and instead identify the persistence of such binaries within the couple form itself.