Thursday, June 28, 2012

Dating Other Couples (AKA: Becoming Friends)

Good question from a reader. How do you go about "dating" other couples?

(This post is a follow-up from my last post found here).

It's not easy to meet others when you are married and move to a new city. Moving to a new city can cause lots of challenges within the marriage and that may take time away from making new friends. Once you are settled into your new home and can find your way to work, it may be time to think about how to make new couple-friends.

One of my suggestions from the last post is to join a club/organization/sport's rec team, etc. Once you have done this, it helps to get to know who the married folks are in the group. For us that was easy since we joined a "young, married couples" group at church.

At this point we were stuck, what comes next? In a normal dating relationship you would see each other by chance or scheming and then get to know each other at events. Well, we tried that. Week after week we went to this group hoping to talk and develop relationships. It didn't happen like I planned. Week after week we didn't grow closer to others at the same pace I did with girlfriends in college.

One likely reason for this is that now there are two of you. Where one set of wives may enjoy each others company, the husbands may not get along that well or vice verse. Generally though I found that once the 4 of us got to know each other, if one sex got along, so did the other.

Another reason is that some part of relationships might be a little forced. Remember those awkward conversations on your first few dates? That is something that our brains were wired to "handle" in the name of finding a mate. We were driven to get through those awkward (I don't know what to ask next) conversations so we could feel that high of romantic love. I think the drive to get through the first few rough "dates" may not be as strong when we are courting friends:)

One way to avoid or lessen those awkward times is by inviting more than one couple over. In my group someone had the brilliant idea to get together in groups of six (three couples). This allows different people to come up with conversation. It gave me time to think about what we could say next. It really took a lot of pressure and awkwardness away.

How do you manage to "date" other couples?

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