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]

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.

This is not me being cute and metaphorical. The she in question was an actual she, an early thirty-something woman, kind of frumpy with her hair tossed up carelessly and her work pants a little too tight. She was setting down her basket, and had placed approximately three items on the conveyer: cat food, a Lean Cuisine, and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s.

My heart sank, and a little voice in the back of my head muttered something about how in ten years, this would be all mine. The track record isn’t looking so good up through this point, and lately, male attention is nowhere to be found. It feels as though I could walk out on the street in my bra and underwear without so much as a catcall to signal that I was anything but ordinary. And nobody likes feeling ordinary when words like “extraordinary” exist just to take away its importance.

As I watched the cat lady swipe her Visa and decline cash back (at least she has good credit?), I tried not to give in to self-pity. Maybe like me, the cat lady has amazing friends and family, and maybe she’s a better person than I am because that’s enough for her. Maybe along with that, she’s got a fulfilling career. Maybe she lives in a one-bedroom that feels like home with just her and her cat. But my eyes threaten to water when I wonder if she actually wants to be loved by someone who can say it and mean it, and if it’s just as selfish to want that as to buy yourself a pet that has no choice.

I also have to stifle a groan, because it occurs to me that I passionately, vehemently hate cats, and only have ten years to find a substitution.