i've rarely had dinners that encompassed three couples, much less five. i'm still getting used to hanging out in a flock of four all the time so anything couply is novel to me. it wasn't bad though.
in fact i kept smiling over this glimpse into the very probable future. some day (in hell) all of my friends will have a significant other. we'll all gather around a table and we'll have a big dinner reservation divisible by two -- discounting kids. this was a look into that some day.
hopefully that dinner will turn out just like this dinner. the food was wonderful, the couples were wonderful, and it was relaxed and a lot of fun. i felt like if we had to split up, all the girls would get along nicely, all the guys would get along nicely, and the mix of new and old friends was pretty good. all in all, an entirely delightful dinner that almost masked the fact that "holy shit, it's five complete couples all eating together! is the apocalypse (aka adulthood) here?"
it's hard finding your "perfect pair" to hang out with. if you're in a relationship, you know what i'm talking about. i think it's almost as difficult as finding an actual person to pair up with im the first place -- almost. some couples never achieve this type of inter-couple harmony because there are just too many factors involved.
in order to match up with your ideal pairing, everything has to mesh perfectly. boyfriend-a has to get along with boyfriend-b. girlfriend-a has to be comfortable with boyfriend-b, and be very close to girlfriend-b. they don't have to be the best of friends, but all combinations of the four should yield satisfying results 95% of the time.
on a side note, i think it's more important that the female halves of the partnership are comfortable with each other. the way most girls are, it's almost a miracle to find two females who are willing to hang out with each other for more than a few hours. girls like to hand select who they open up to; guys are more used to being socially mashed together with other guys. this is a broad generalization but you all know it's true.once you achieve this perfect pairing, any activity that involves the other pair then becomes easier to agree to, and the follow through on attendance is much more successful. however, just like a comet in the sky, a perfect pairing can also come and go swiftly. you hope against hope that neither couple breaks up, or that one of the couples don't move away. once one of those tragic events happen, you're left back at square one; albeit with the love of your life next to you -- unless you're the one who broke up the happy home(s). she always knew you were a bastard and they always knew you weren't good enough for her!
hoping for more than two perfect couples to hang out together is just outside the realm of my imagination. if noah didn't pay attention to inter-couple relationships when filling his ark, the damn thing would have turned into a floating mausoleum by the end of those forty days and forty nights. then again, if he did pay attention to how well the various pairings would get along, the ark would have never set sail in the first place and everyone would have died.
a quick quiz:
1. when getting into a car, can the couples be separately seated? boys in front, girls in back?
2. can the two girls go to the bathroom during dinner for ten minutes and return to find the boys still chatting unforced?
3. would any two of the four be able to hang out by themselves if they had to?
4. is the relationship between all four people more or less equitable? and not just best friend status for two of them while the other two are along for the ride?
5. do you sometimes prefer to hang out all together versus just as a romantic pair?
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