On Dating....

My husband and I have started doing something new lately: dating other people.

Come back in off the ledge, folks; we don’t have one of those kinds of marriages. What I mean is that we’re dating other couples. Hang on, that doesn’t sound quite right, either. Let me be blunt: we are looking for other couples to hang out with.

Within the past two years or so, one of our favorite couples moved over ninety minutes away and another divorced. (You know who you are.) While the argument might be made that the only commonality among these situations is us (Scott and me), I don’t think we are the ones who drove these people away. I mean, that would have necessitated a lot of energy and reallocation of finances if that were true, just to be rid of us. Besides, we all still hang out together, albeit less often.

Initially, our loss of couple contact wasn’t so bad because we were dealing with some ill family members, a difficult pregnancy, and the ensuing year of solitude parents endure during a child’s infancy. Now, however, we have pulled through our “underground years,” as I like to call them, and have emerged to find ourselves alone on the beach of couple friendship.

Sure, we each have friends of our own--there are people I hang out with and people Scott hangs out with—but we miss that couple camaraderie we used to have: the impromptu barbeques in the backyard, the last-minute Saturday dinners while watching a newly released rental movie, the uproarious board games where we mixed competition with wine and chocolate. So, we’ve been looking for a couple that meets both of our friendship needs at the same time. And it has been harder than I thought.

Couple dating is much, much harder than regular dating, I have found. The more people involved, the more complex the relationship, and the more potential for trouble.

Example 1: There was one couple introduced to us through our recently divorced friends. Let’s call this couple John and Sally. John and Sally seemed very nice…until they dropped the bomb on us part way through dessert: they were obsessed with Cabbage Patch Kids. Both of them. Obsessed. Once they started talking about the dolls, they couldn’t stop. It was like a dam broke, and Xavier Roberts’ brain spilled out. Their last vacation had been to a place that makes the dolls. Apparently, this place looks like a hospital, and an employee in a white lab coat brings you your doll wrapped in a blanket, like a newborn. John built special shelves in their bedroom to house some of their collection, which was way in excess of 200. Sally spent a great deal of time shopping for baby clothes to fit their dolls and lamented that the six-month-sized outfits that usually fit often look too childish on the Cabbage Kids, which she felt had the personality of three year olds.

Dude, they are dolls. They don’t have personalities. Strike one.


Example 2: There was another couple with actual real children, which we took to be an improvement. This friendship seemed promising, so we went on a mini-vacation with them. Our kids liked each other. We liked each other’s kids. The husband was really, really nice. The wife? Issues. Lots of issues. She would go on and on about her issues. And she was right about them. She told me how she has a tendency to be very controlling. She was. She told me how she has a tendency to be judgmental. She was. She told me she was OCD. She was. She told me she was easily offended. She was. She told me she had a phobia about driving to new places. She did. She told me she was clingy. She was. She told me that her parents were very messed up. They were. It was like she wanted me to take her on as a project and fix her, and there was no way that was going to happen. Even if I had the wherewithal to help her, her identity was completely consumed with her emotional problems. She didn’t want help; she wanted attention. And there wasn’t enough attention in the world to make her happy.

Strike two.


Luckily, we’ve had some good experiences, too. We’ve hung out with a few couples who were absolute pleasures to be around. And we hope those relationships continue and grow. (God, I hope they haven’t put Scott and me into their own “weird, doll-loving, emotionally-fragile” categories! I would probably be “shoe/interior design girl,” and Scott would be “technology-freak boy.”) But being put in this position has made us realize that dating, and friendship, can be hard. When you are looking for it, it is no where to be found.

Couple-match.com, anyone? Perhaps e-couple-harmony.com?