photo via WeHeartIt.
As all my friends have coupled up, life is dramatically different. In short, my girlfriends and I got a little boring, we rarely have girls’ nights anymore and worse yet, they went and chose partners that aren’t all that compatible with my boyfriend and I. Sometimes it’s awkward to hang out with other couples and Ryan and I have only found a few couples that we genuinely enjoy going on a night on the town with.
The dynamics are complicated. The females need to get along and the males need to get along so that even though you’re going out as a couple, you get in your girl and guy time accordingly. Also, the other female needs to be able to talk to your boyfriend and vice versa without being too painstakingly boring. In short, everyone needs to get along and like eachother whatever way you cross it. At least for a drink’s worth amount of time. The WSJ reports:
Take the experience of Ben Van Houten and his wife, who’ve “dated” an array of couples since moving to Grand Rapids, Mich., three years ago: “They had one ‘date’ where the woman was self-absorbed, another, Mr. Van Houten recalls, where the man was ‘a complete dud with no sense of humor,’ and a third that was ruined by politics. When Mr. Van Houten got up his nerve and asked a neighbor and his wife out to dinner, the man replied, ‘I don’t like people.’”
And the date, Elizabeth says, is merely where the stress begins. “Because what if they don’t call? Should you contact them? And if you do, and you still don’t hear back, what does that say about your relationship with your partner? Are you irritating? Insufferable? Uninteresting as a team?” …
“Research shows that couples who are friends with other couples have happier, longer-lasting relationships with each other,” Elizabeth writes. “The reasons are simple. If you have friends who enjoy you as a couple, you may feel better about your union. These other couples can be a support network. And the process of making new friends together may inject energy into your relationship and give you something to bond over.”
Did They Like Us? via The Wall Street Journal.
10 replies on ““Dating” Other Couples”
My girlfriend, Amne, and I have the same problem. Going out together is sometimes hard when the dynamics with other couples or groups is just off. Also, it seems that its so difficult just to get people to go out at all, let alone making it fun when we do. It seems that most people my age (23) want to go play beer pong in a garage or are too tired from life that they don’t want to go out on the town. What gives?
I agree completely with this post. It’s so important that you can get on with other couples completely (girls-girls, guys-guys, girls-guys) etc.
Personally, I am a foreigner living in Taiwan with a Taiwanese girlfriend, who, although she speaks fairly fluent English, is more comfortable in her mother tongue. For some mixed nationality couples this can result in an additional criteria for other couples to hang out with, making it more difficult to find suitable people.
Luckily I’ve been able to find several compatible couples for us and I’m also perfectly fine taking a back seat if we just go out with her friends where they can natter away in Chinese (I do understand a lot of what’s being said, but will let them typically talk about their girlie things without me).
Great post, and I echo the sentiment. For us, it’s doubly hard because we’re both Russian, meaning that we want to find other Russian couples as we get closer to having kids so that our kids can grow up with Russian as their first language when friends are over.
Part of the problem is not that couples are “too selfish” or “boring”, but just that they’re so for you. We know plenty of couples that we just don’t click with, but that could say more about us than it does for them. There are a couple of couples that we click with because all four of us interact well and our interests are similar, and we guard those friends with our lives.
Given that you’ve found these couples, how have you found them? It seems to be as hard as finding a date.
@ Vicki – We haven’t really found that many other couples… ha. For Ryan and I, it’s also difficult since we’re in such a different world than other couples. We both work for start-ups and are immersed in things that make other couples nod politely because they have no idea what we’re talking about. To that end, we spend a lot of time with our co-workers and their partners since those people “get it” more. Lately, we’ve also been talking about getting out to more public and networking events, which helps too.
Also, while I completely understand and relate to wanting to find like-minded couples, one of the things that I’ve tried to keep an open mind about is hanging out with couples that aren’t like us. My best friend recently got married to a neurosurgeon and I feel like our lives are very different. But she’s my best friend, so we hang out with them anyway : ).
This is actually such a funny post. I recently had a friend visit from college and she wanted us to go out to some bars and relive our college days. I was totally up for it, but she wound up spending most of the time in the bathroom talking to her new boyfriend of 5 months.
It’s definitely great to be out together as a couple with other couples- and I think also that we all should remember to nourish our friendships separately as well.
Great post!
Great topic for a blog post! In my past relationships, sometimes I found it hard to connect (truly connect and get it) with another couple. That’s a lot of chemistry and personalities to mix, which of course, isn’t always natural.
Nonetheless, some of my favorite nights are double dates or being with other couples. It’s good for each relationship. Sometimes we knew the other couple and us really had been a failure, but we learned to sort of laugh it off. It’s always fun when a friend starts dating someone new, you never know if everyone might hit it off.
I know what you mean about being immersed in the startup world and talking about things that others just don’t “get.” I was so there. But don’t you think it’s nice to step beyond work and talk just about life, interests, what’s happening in Madison, etc. versus just the workday, with other couples?
@ Grace – Yep, totally, I mentioned that in the comment above as well. Sometimes I get so tired of talking about work, it’s great – and invigorating to talk about something else!!
Great post. Things get even more difficult when children enter the picture. We don’t have any, and have ‘lost’ a few good couples to their kids and their other couples friends who have kids and can share their experiences.
My husband and I are both extroverts, so having other couples we enjoy spending time with is really important to us. About four years ago, we found the perfect couple for us—it worked in all of the best ways described in the article, and we spent time with them at least one or two evenings a week. It did make us closer as a couple, I think.
Then suddenly they became distant, and eventually told us they had invited a third person into their marriage and were very consumed with that (yes, true story). Needless to say, we were shocked and sad to lose their friendship. Even though we have plenty of friends, we’ve been sort of drifting in this particular department ever since.
(A funny aside: I went to college with the Ben Van Houten quoted in the WSJ article.)
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