Happy Loving Couples Have Problems, Too

You know those people that always seem to be in love? Annoying, right? But even more annoying, and frustrating, are those people that not only love freely but have their sentiments reciprocated. They bounce from one long-term, healthy relationship to another seamlessly, never regretting the past or even pausing for a good cry and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s.

And they make the rest of us look like emotionally immature, sexually frustrated, constantly single idiots.

But hey, you know what? Single’s not the worst thing. Because beneath the sun-touched, crystal-blue emotional coastline of those happy loving couples, there are gloomy storms. There are flashes of suspicious lightning and sudden tidal waves that crush the fishing canoes of stability on the rocks of impatience. There are the riptides of boredom that drown the surfers of passion. There is a dead seagull in the reeds, and it is gross and smelly.

Sexy and Stressed-out

One rather obvious downside of monogamy is that it isn’t polygamy. You can’t just go jumping every pile of bones in sight. And that might not a downside to some, since a sudden increase in sexual partners can turn your genitals into a giant bullseye for emotional instability, STDs and scary unwanted babies. But even if you aren’t planning on turning your dorm room into an all-hours Orgy 101 lab section, a monogamous relationship can turn even the most innocent girl-boy relationships into a nervous stressfest.

Maybe you’re visiting the guy you’ve been chums with since second grade, when you broke your hand launching your Big Wheel off of ramps you begged your dad to build. Maybe you’re going to catch a movie with an old friend who didn’t just bring his girlfriend — he brought the engagement ring to show off, too. Maybe he brought his boyfriend. The most physically intimate act you might commit is a badass fist-pound when you cut some guy off at a light. And yet, when you turn your cell phone back on, you’ve got four missed calls, a jittery text saying “were r youu!!!” and a voicemail that’s nothing but incoherent, angry sobs. And you’d say it’s paranoid and crazy, but at the same time, you know you’d be doing the same thing if he were having “a movie night with Katie” or whatever. People in relationships get protective, and it’s easy for that to damage long-standing — often longer-standing than the relationship — heterosexual friendships.

Love Handles

I’m sure that somewhere, probably in a different star system, there are high-energy, high-metabolism couples who love nothing better than going to the gym together. Their thighs, calves and glutes are wonderfully toned and a luscious emerald green, all sixteen of them. If these alien power couples ever decide to invade Earth, we’re screwed, especially if it’s during swimsuit season.

Because here on our lonely little planet, our primary reason for being in shape is to attract cuddle buddies. Once we’ve got that stable source of snuggles, there isn’t really any justification for sweating like a gorilla and coughing like a donkey while we pick up heavy things and put them down again. It also doesn’t help that most “couple” activities generally involve either sitting, eating or both: romantic five-course meals, double butter popcorn at the movies, enormous anniversary cakes. And while sometimes the constant, watchful eye of a lover can keep you honest (“You’re not really gonna eat that cake, are you?”), it’s more likely to be an excellent excuse for digging into those scalloped potatoes (“If this beautiful person can eat these and feel fine, so can I!”).

It’s true that when you love someone, they become a paragon of beauty, no matter how rancid they may look to everyone else. So a little thickening around the edges tends to go unnoticed, and may even be welcomed — just like a big, cuddly teddy bear! Aww, hey! But the rest of us think you’re disgusting.

The R-Unit

If you’re that person who always gets stuck planning the party, you know all about it: when you invite one half of a couple, you need to invite the other. They don’t come individually wrapped. And sometimes that’s kind of a pain, especially if you’re trying to avoid lots of he-did-she-did-what drama, or even if you just want to have a [girls/boys]-only night. It’s an old story: we can’t invite Kevin because he was doing that thing with Maura last week and she’ll be there and Kelly will not be able to handle that.. And so on, and eventually someone breaks your couch.

But it’s not only the people orbiting around the dynamic duo that get burned. Most of us are proud of who we are, and we don’t mind having a personal identity. In fact, you’re probably a little attached to it, and it sometimes it stings a little when people treat you and your significant other as a single human, with two heads and four legs and one bizarre, amorphous Frankenstein’s monster of a personality. Getting to know a new person is hard enough without having to battle your second head for dominance the whole time.

“What do you want to do today?”

If you’ve ever met that particular person, that one person whom you’re always comfortable with, with whom, you don’t even have to line up your thoughts before you speak them, who always gets exactly what you’re talking about, even when you aren’t saying anything — if you’ve met that person, you know how good it feels. You know how, when you’re with them, your life becomes a soft, pink, all-encompassing blanket of warmth. And you know how, eventually, even through your bucolic lovebird stupor, you will start to get really pissed off and hate them. What?

The problem with perfectly matched lovers is that they don’t have to try to entertain each other. Many people look at relationships as a sort of ‘chase’, similar to fox-hunting, except that nobody usually gets chased into a hole and torn apart by dogs. And there’s a measure of truth to that, though it’s not very romantic: a doubtlessly special part of any relationship is the shy beginning, where you’re gumming up your words and dropping things in awkward places and trying your best to be very funny all the damn time. And it’s fun because you’ve got something to gain; you need to impress someone, you need to change their mind, you’ve got a target. You’ve got something to achieve.

When you’re in a beautiful relationship that you wouldn’t change for anything, predictably, you don’t change. You become boring.. You don’t have to make an effort. When you’re so close that you don’t even need to speak to communicate, your relationship turns into two boring people sitting silently on a couch. At that point, it’s probably time for a breakup, just so you have something to raise your voice about.

So take your scant singleton joy where you can. Even the nicest relationships are still beset with problems, and while it might be small consolation on lonely nights, you can breathe easy knowing that you’re above all that nastiness. And if the solitude is just too much, get more stuffed animals.

[Photo of that happy couple courtesy of potterhauk.files.wordpress.com]