Guide to Couples Doing Couple Things

People get twice as stupid when you put them together and send them out into the world.

I have no information to back this up, but I’m pretty sure it’s true. That’s why huge mobs of people are so stupid. They’ve had their intelligence halved by a factor of however many people there are and now they’re dumb enough to stand in the rain in order to see a big screen version of Kanye West singing his robot songs (the real Kanye West is too far away to see). One person is usually smart enough to know that it’s better to sit somewhere that’s not raining and not watch anything that involves Kanye West.

So couples out doing couple things maybe aren’t all that stupid in the scheme of things, but they certainly are half as stupid as just a dude.

Think about how you do things when you’re alone. Let’s say you’re going for a walk. You walk and you stop to look at things that you find interesting, and you see a street you’ve never been down before and you choose to take a turn and go down it, and then maybe you get hungry and decide to go get something to eat, and then you get tired and go home. All of those decisions just happened in your brain. You didn’t have to run them by this whole other person. When you’re walking alone, it’s easy.

When you’re with somebody else it’s, “hey doyouwanna go forawalk? Hey lookatthat. Nevermind. I thoughtit wasabird butit’snot. What? Yeah, yeah that ad on thebus does lookphotoshopped. Ohyeah totally. Jennifer Anniston is way tooskinny. Hey you wanna go downthisway? I dunno, just never been downthatway. No? Okcool, yeah I’m hungrytoo. Whaddya want? Sultan’s? No? Sushi? You want sushi? Ok, I guess we can get sushi. Hey can I just go into this comicbookstore real quick? I’ll be real quick. I promise I’ll be real quick. I will take as little time as I possibly can hanging out in this comicbookstore even though I really just want to hang out in this comicbookstore for like an hour. Uh… yeah. No. No thanks. I mean, why don’t you go over to the shoestore and I’ll stay here in this comicbookstore, and then when one of us is done, we’ll go get the other one because I want to hang out in the shoestore about as much as you want to hang out in the comicbookstore, which is to say zero minutes ever.”

You get half as much done, it takes twice as much work, and you were only really happy when you finally get left alone in the comic book store. And it’s a walk. You had no goals for this walk. And yet all of your walk-based interesting thingdoing opportunities have been thwarted. All except one: to spend time with this person. So in that way, it’s a successful walk. It’s even more successful if by the end of it you’re not feeling totally bitchy about how you didn’t get to walk down that one street or how you paid like 15 bucks for sushi instead of a 4 dollar falafel at Sultan’s and you ended up hanging out at the shoestore for like 30 minutes because the comicbookstore really didn’t take you that long because you blew your potential comicbookstore budget on sushi you didn’t really want even though it was pretty good. And she’s probably too tired and dehydrated from all that shoe shopping and Miso soup to have sex with you. But still: quality time.

If it sounds like I’m resentful of this, I’m not. Sushi and a little shoe shopping is a fine way to spend a day. Especially if it’s with somebody you like being around. So it’s actually a positive. A huge positive. And also: you're so precious that you have to get what you want all the time? Really? You can just go for a self-walk later when you feel like walking down a new street to get to Sultan's and then read some comic books without a girlfriend in sight (there's a defacto "no girlfriends allowed" policy at the comicbookstore). A couplewalk is great too for different reasons. There was probably some good joking and goofaroonie time in there, some nice affection, and even if she is exhausted from the shoe shopping, at the end of your walk you still have a better chance of having sex than you would have if you were just out walking alone. That’s a nice day.

But: stupid. Right? I mean look at the amount of discussion you have to partake in just to walk around casually and eat sushi and look at shoes in some place that’s playing downtempo house. Look at the number of opinions you’re sharing, and notice how little you care about those opinions. Watch in horror as the simple problem of “I’m hungry” turns into what seems to you to be a logistical nightmare. Observe yourself groping for discussion topics over sushi instead of just reading a newspaper. See how careful you are to take her feelings into account when working your way around such existential quandaries as “should we get ice cream,” when she probably doesn’t give a shit either (except she sometimes does seem to get really emotional about ice cream—so you can’t be too careful, maybe it really is the powderkeg you think it is). Yes, it’s true: you’re behaving like a stupid person. And so is she, probably. Because: there are two of you.

Take this and multiply whenever there’s a couple-y gathering. Double dates are fine, but once you add that third couple in, it turns into a freeforall. I think there’s some mathematical rule that says three or more of any one gender in one place makes it hard for members of the other gender to enjoy themselves. That’s why you sit around for an awkward half hour as the girlfriends talk to each other with increasing fervor, and the dudes gradually get fewer words in edgewise due to not caring about what’s being discussed enough to want to, until some dude mentions he’s got a sports thing to show you and you and the other dudes, and you get out of there and talk about the sports thing or else just stand around the grill drinking beers and goofing around while the ladies excitedly talk about Michelle Obama, and you’re like “how’d I end up in 1958?”

That’s what couple-y gatherings always feel like to me. It’s like some agreed upon level of banality which gradually relaxes away enough to allow for gender stereotypes to affirm themselves, and the whole pattern resets itself and the banality becomes gender-based until you run out of dude things to talk about, and then you wait out the rest of it by moving from the cooler to the buffet to the bathroom to the couch to wherever your girlfriend is, and along the way you get to drink beer and eat somebody’s homemade cole slaw that your girlfriend wants the recipe to. And then in the card ride home you have to agree to the rundown of who’s doing what and who’s got a lot of nerve, and you agree that you should probably try something like that yoga class that Wendy and Steve are doing (fuck off, Steve, I can’t believe you caved on that yoga thing, now I’ve got to do it). Call me Johnny Nofun, but I’d rather stay home and watch History channel. Except it’s good to get out of the house every once in a while, if only to reaffirm why you never feel like leaving it in the first place.

Oh: also there’s babies. It’s always spooky when your girlfriend is excited about babies.

Again, I’m sounding more harsh than I want to about this. Couple-y gatherings (as opposed to just a regular “party”—which is always more fun because nobody’s trying to be too adult about things and it’s ok to puke) are good because they show you what being in a relationship essentially means as far as your interactions with the world at large. You’re essentially saying to the rest of the world, “I’m good. I’ve got this person to hang out with. So, you know, that’s what I’m up to these days.” Right? And good for you, by the way. You’ve found the person you like hanging out with so much you don’t mind being stupid about where to eat or standing around a grill awkwardly discussing sports with some dudes you don’t know all that well. I think it’s a good thing. Congratulations.

If you're single and things get couple-y, then you should shove as much food and booze into your mouth as you possibly can without seeming like you're being a dickhead about it, and get out of there. You've got other, better things to do with your time than share banalities while holding a baby, like reading comicbooks alone and partying until you puke. Hell, even if you've got a girlfriend you can still take yourself out for a self-date and do those things if you want. They're always available. Make sure you do that stuff enough that you're actually relieved when it's time to be adult-y "just two microbrews and a conversation about the stimulus package" about social gatherings. They're designed to be painless. The avoidance of pain is the main motivating factor of a healthy(?) relationship. I don't know this for a fact, but I feel its truth whenever I find myself complimenting a stranger on their endive hors d'oeuvres.