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Tuesday, March 11, 2008

The Un-Couple

An old friend of mine called me about two weeks ago and we yakked for about an hour. We started talking about old flames and I told my friend that I had come to believe that which Katharine Hepburn believed - two people in love need to live in separate abodes. The place can be near each other but the times I have been in love, I felt I still needed to live separately from my boyfriend.

"But you do live with someone," my friend countered. "You've shared an apartment for ages!"

Living with a lover and living with a best friend are two different things. There is also the fact that many friends don't necessarily feel they could actually live with each other in an apartment or house. We don't have the potentially explosive conversations lovers have such as -

"Please come with me to my reunion/event"

"We haven't had sex in months . . ."

"Why do we always have to go to your mother-in-law's house for the holiday?"

Okay, just some lame examples but you get the idea. When you are sexually involved with someone, when you are part of a couple, there are expectations from both sides (and society has certain expectations as well) and emotions tend to run hot.

The only possibly similar conversation I ever have with Kay (who feels the same way I do about living with a man) is "Do you want to go out and do something?" One or the other may be momentarily disappointed if the suggestion is declined but it's nothing compared to what happens when lovers respond they don't want to do something with the other.

Life for me is far less complicated. And I prefer it that way.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I could not agree more with you!

like you I have had a close friend for, well, forever.....we met when I was a freshman in college which was....a while ago : )

he truly is my soul-mate, not in a couple-y, romantic way, but as two friends who share so much in common, not the least of which is our view of the world.

As to romantic relationships? well, I've never been in one that didn't end at some point, and even when it's a mutual thing - the break-up I mean - it's still so hard and sort of awful.

So at this point in my life I couldn't imagine complicating my life with another romantic relationship. I might change my mind at some point, but right now?
cannot imagine getting on the relationship roller coaster again.

The expectations and subsequent conflicts that crop up when one is in an ongoing romantic relationship are just too exhausting!

Good friends are where it's at.

-Annie