Coupling

Posted September 10th, 2004 by Sean Williams

My friends Deb and Steve got married a few weeks ago. They were staying in my house right before the day and Steve was trying to find his toothbrush. Instead of looking through their bags he asked Deb, who knew exactly where it was (it was in the toothbrush slot in their bag) and asked him why he didn’t just look for it. His defense was, “if I don’t ask you where my toothbrush is, comedians will have nothing to joke about.”

And it’s true. What are you supposed to do about the fact that a lot of cliches are correct? One of the more disturbing ones to me is the fact that every person who is coupled up wants their friends to be coupled up as well. And it’s not that we want our friends to find love, in fact that is *wildly* incidental. We want our friends to have a partner that they can bring to social events, and we want that partner to be awesome.

My friend Mac has a girlfriend that he loves and that Jordana and I adore, but he’s failing us. Because she’s busy. It just won’t do. What’s the point of my best friend having a girlfriend if she doesn’t *accompany* him to stuff? We like her, she likes us, but it still isn’t fulfilling our need to have *two goddam people at dinner*.

It isn’t natural, it isn’t right and it isn’t kind. We have many single friends and about 14% of what Jordana and I talk about when we’re alone is how to hook some of them up with the others. Would Scott like Amy? Or the other Amy? Wouldn’t it be great if Carrie fell in love with Aaron? I mean, it is patently *RETARDED* how much we want our friends to fall in love with each other.

I don’t know why. Have we ever suffered because Mac shows up without a date? I mean, totally the opposite. I am so jealous of the time I’m around Mac that no matter how many people are around I keep trying to find a way to slip off with him. Is it some kind of patriarchial thing? Absolutely not, our gay and lesbian friends are just as likely to get dive bombed with our coupling instincts (which has led to powerfully awkward “coffee dates” where Jordana and I stare across the table at two guys who are obviously here because we want them to date). Do we want to expand out group of friends? Jesus, no. I’ve got about six more friends than I have time to spend with them at any one time. I am constantly missing my friends because I never get to see them.

It’s too self congratulatory an answer to say that we want others to find the happiness we’ve found, I’m guessing that it’s more the opposite. Cult members must, at some point, want to ask someone not in the cult what they think of the cult, sure, but it’s much better to ask smart people *in the cult* what they think of the cult. That way, they know everything about the cult that you know and they’ve still decided to stay in it. Mormons may question the validity of the church in their private moments to each other, but they’ll never ask a Baptist.

There was a group of married or recently divorced men sitting on top of Ian’s hill around a fire and Ian asked how often everyone masturbated. The answers varied from essentially none to an impressive 14 times a week, but it was interesting because we were all in similar circumstances and we were all using the same barometric scale, as it were. I could ask my single friends who live alone, but that answer wouldn’t tell me anything about myself.

(I, of course, lied and yelled out “15!.. In fact I’m doin’ it right NOW!” and belched)

(Also, I’m lying in the above paragraph. No-one said “essentially none”.)

So, yes, the comedians are right. We’re trying to get you coupled up. But please understand, we’re doing it because we think you’re smarter than we are, and if you do it then a) it’ll seem like doing it is smart and b) we can ask you questions. Please know that we don’t want you dating because we feel like you are pathetic without a life partner, we want you dating because we’re scared that we are with one.