"I love beer....er... I mean you. I love you."

It’s pretty obvious that couples who share interests get along better. But what about vices? Does a love of trashy reality TV or boozing it up on the weekends make for a stronger pair? Yes, according to a study done by the University of Buffalo. In fact, the happiest couples of all are those with a shared love of hitting the bottle.

Basically, the couple who boozes together, cruises together.

That’s great news to us college students who love drinking almost as much as dating (okay, maybe we love it a little more). But now combining the two is a good thing? This is heaven to our horny, drunk ears. And, when you think about it, it all makes perfect sense:

Alcohol eases tension. What do we all do when we’re having a bad day/fuming mad? Yes, we pour ourselves a drink (then eat a brownie) and suddenly everything feels better. So obviously fights go away quicker in relationships when both couples love a little booze. You start fighting, you start drinking and soon no one remembers what you were fighting about in the first place.

Alcohol makes us tolerant. People are 50 times less annoying when we have a buzz on. The way he chomps on his food may drive you up the wall normally, but with some alcohol in our systems, those little pet peeves aren’t nearly as annoying. They might even be kinda cute (see #5 below). Read More »

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. Read More »

My future and I collided last night at the grocery store.

It wasn’t one of those gentle brushes with fate, like when you see someone who kind of resembles the person you think you might age into, someone who’s thinner and more fashionable than you’d imagined a fifty-year-old self to be. There was no pleasant “Huh. Could be worse,” moment. This was more like getting backed into by a cement truck, with my past changing lanes to rear-end me just as I got out to check the damage.

Just before getting in line to pay for my groceries, I popped back over to the produce aisle on an organic avocado search. There were two left — how ironic for an emporium of food — two little green rocks which probably were made fun of by all the other avocados before they were sold. Disappointed, I turned back on my heels, fruitless, only forced to bob and weave around a disgustingly happy twenty-something couple who had just come in off the street.

They were hanging all over each other in front of the fresh strawberries and grapes, kissing and laughing when they weren’t content with just hanging. It was too perfect, the sex in their near future, the fruit… it was like Freud had set the scene up himself. I threw my shoulders back and carried my groceries for one to the checkout and got in line, and there she was. Read More »