We were out one night with a bunch of his friends when the conversation turned to various cooking techniques. Obviously I had to tap out of being an active participant pretty early on, when discussion moved beyond the cooking technique I’ve most mastered: microwaving.
Somehow the chat moved towards “braising.” (I know. Who are these people with these strange discussion topics?!)
Me, to myself: “Braising?! I don’t know how that even happens, but it’s definitely something that occurs only at restaurants and is delicious—at the restaurants, where all sorts of magic food preparation transpire.”
My boyfriend to his friends: “Yeah, I’ve wanted to experiment with braising myself.”
Me, again to myself: “Wait, what?! ‘Experiment with braising’ yourself?! Is that even safe?! Can you just do that in a home kitchen? There must be special equipment involved, right? Or skill? It seems hard. He’s bluffing.”
Boyfriend, to friends: “In fact, I’m having a few people over for dinner day after tomorrow. I’m going to make short ribs, and I think I’ll braise them.”
Me to myself: “I guess he’s not bluffing! And wait, he’s having a dinner party?”
Me to boyfriend after we had left the group: “So, you’re having a dinner party?”
Boyfriend: “Yes, I’m having Mr. and Mrs. Dinner-Party over on Sunday.”
Editor’s note: Of course, he used their first names, but I feel it’s important to highlight that they’re a married couple, that he was having a couple over for a dinner party with himself.
Me: “So, you’re having a dinner party, some might even call it a date, with a couple, just by yourself. You know you’re in a couple, right?”
He tried to back-peddle, telling me that he invited me (nope.) and then that he was going to invite me but it had just been arranged, and he hadn’t had a chance to mention it to me yet (in the four hours we had been hanging out before he found time to mention it to a bunch of other people who were also not invited). He really tried to cover himself when he let it slip that he had bought three short ribs that he was going to serve at the dinner by saying that he had been planning on making the short ribs for us and having extra left over. Suuuure…
So, while he went to the store to buy another short rib for me, his unexpected dinner guest, I tried hard not to think too much about why he didn’t seem to want me to meet particular friends of his (was he hiding something from me or hiding me from them?) and what it meant that he had forgotten he was in a relationship while making arrangements to do one of the most couply things there is with another couple. That’s like being a third wheel because you’ve slashed the remaining tire yourself!
I certainly appreciate more than many that people in relationships should enjoy time doing their own things, cultivating their own independent interests. Everyone needs time with the girls or time with the boys or time doing something the other has no interest in if it's something they, themselves, like. But, isn’t one of the beautiful things about being in a relationship the fact that you don’t have to be the only single person in the room anymore? That you can do couple-centric things and be included in the couple-centricity of them, revel in it, even? There was, unfortunately, very little couple-centricity in this particular relationship, except for the few times he “sacrificed” and went to something he was clear was for my benefit.
In the end, I did score an invite into the double-date dinner party, and boy did I learn some important lessons. As it turned out, the wife didn’t end up making it to dinner after all. We found out that night that she was pregnant and was in the pretty queasy stage. I had made such a stink about being included that I couldn’t then sit it out, of course (crow should probably have been on the menu!), so I went to dinner since the boyfriend had already told The Couple that I was coming. In deference to the evening being no longer about hanging out as couples but rather about the boys catching up, I turned off the sparkly, center-of-attention, bubbly-conversation-driving part of my personality—if you can imagine that—and let it be all about them.
And, here are the lessons I learned from the evening:
- Careful what you throw a fit to be a part of. (And, maybe date people who want you to actually be a part of things!)
- Boys are not the engaging conversationalists that women are when they get together! Did you know that when boys get together, sometimes there’s SILENCE between them?! There are so many strange, strange differences between men and women. I mean, silence! Times when no one is talking! If I hadn’t seen it for myself I’d never know that kind of thing happened!
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