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It's interesting because this also happens in other languages. In Dutch we only use couple (koppel) for people in a relationship.
If you are talking about other things we use "pair" if you have two. But over time people also started using pair wrong, so someone saying "ik heb een paar knikkers" I have a pair of marbles, can still mean he has 5 marbles.
In practice people usually just say I have two marbles when they mean exactly 2.
Funny that knikkers are marbles! Probably used to be the same in English with een paar, but with language change moving English away from its West Germanic roots we tend not to use 'pair' so often any more except when referring to specific things where it's important that there's two of them, like aces or... knickers.