The Problem of Couples
Am I the only one who thinks couples are problematic? You take two unique individuals, stir well, half bake, and presto-changeo you have-- a couple. A matched set. Like that awful Spice Girls song, 'two become one' and the half that used to be your favorite drinking buddy is no where to be found on Friday night, or Saturday night, or anytime

This sounds a little forced, but there is the point that I'm a bit less so social of a creature now than I was before Mo and were going out. To be fair, it's difficult to know if that's because I've become more of a homebody, or because of the great number of friends who have moved to other cities. Mo and I are very good at not having any problem at doing things socially but seperately.

People look to romance to patch up the cracks in their life (I almost said to 'fill the holes,' but that's a different part of it.) The thing is, those cracks are part of us. Even if they can be patched (and sometimes that's a long shot at best) maybe they shouldn't be. More importantly, it's too easy to let the romantic plaster-of-paris slop over onto other aspects of life; your creative outlets, your other friends, many of the things that made you fascinating and charming to begin with.

This paragraph, on the other hand, completely misses the mark. If anything, it gives romance too much credit. I think that people look to love for companionship, and sex, and comfort, and beauty, and security, and for love itself. Few people see a relationship as some kind of Do-It-Yourself psychotherapy. I hope.

I know I might be a little bitter in my cyclic singledom. (in the sine wave of romance, right now I'm at sin(3pi/2) (hi to all you math geeks out there)) That doesn't explain it all, though; a very coupled friend of mine expressed the same frustration, though she hadn't put it into words before. Once you've setup house with someone, you have to beware of feeling responsible for your partner's constant entertainment.

A "little" bitter? Any more bitter and I could Anyway, Mo and I spend many nights providing little more than company for each other. We're usually on some little personal project (The Blender for me this evening, stuff about the wedding for her- though that's not such a little project) or other every night. We do go out fairly often. And I'm not responsible for her constant entertainment; in fact she has to be tolerant of my attempts at entertaining...

So what's left to do? Nothing new. Don't throw away your old life when embarking on your new. Always be willing to compromise, but never be willing to give yourself away. There's a beautiful story about how angels/ souls/ whatever were divided in two at creation, and how romance is those two halves trying to come together to make a whole-- Don't believe it for a second.

You know, I still believe this. It sounds cold and cynical and Mo has to put up with this surprisingly unromantic side of me, accept that I don't believe the eyes are the gateway to the soul, or even that we really have a soul- at least one that can be detached from the electrochemical functioning of our brains- but if I was convinced that my first love and I were destined for each other and that any other relationship would be a sham, I would have missed a big part of my life.