Pairwise

Note: this is a very old series of thoughts, and NOT inspired by any recent encounters or particular individuals.

One of the weirder things to discover about myself is my total inability to deal with couples. Even when two people I really like get together, the combined entity they represent baffles me utterly. Some sort of gestalt personality forms, and even if it's perfectly pleasant, I can't seem to deal with it.

So I find myself instinctively encountering people separately, trying to pry them apart from their partner. As if one-on-one is the only workable social configuration for me, the only way I actually have something to say. Three people is totally unstable, and four is too static - double dates usually feel terribly forced to me.

You think that being part of a couple myself - for the first time in a long time, I might add - might have changed things a bit. Particularly since I'm encountering other couples a lot more often than I did in, say, a place like Kauffman. But no. It might even have gotten worse. Theories as to what the heck is going on in my head are welcome.