Feminist Underwear

Not a Threesome, But Kinda.

If ever there’s a time I am in a relationship, start stocking up on your non-perishables because the apocalypse is surely upon us.

I don’t say that as a weird false modesty thing, or in an effort to get people to respond to me with comments like “BUT YOU’RE SO BEAUTIFUL LIKE STARSHINE AND YOU JUST NEED TO HOLD OUT FOR THE RIGHT QURL” or whatever. Like, I’ve seen myself and I know I don’t look like a can of soup with a wig on, and I’ve heard myself talk so I’m aware that there are rare moments when I can be charming in a “she is deluded and weird” kind of way.

I say that because my absolute favorite thing about relationships is other people’s relationships.

Sure, I’ve been in love. It’s mostly been unrequited and shameful and consists of me sitting on my friends’ laps while crying. But, you know, I’ve been in love. I get it. I get why it’s special and unique for every special snowflake person, and I get that you don’t truly understand love until you’ve felt it yourself.

And that’s just it. You don’t truly understand love until you’re right there in it. And the problem is, when you’re right there in it you also understand everything that’s terrible about it: the horrifying post-modern poems you’d sooner saw off your arm than show to anyone, the eating of Nutella directly from the jar at 3 AM and crying during Princess Mononoke, the fact that someone out there owns an entire part of your heart and they’re probably stabbing it with a two-by-four as we speak and there’s nothing you can do about it, the endless drinking and smoking and eating and sleeping in an effort to somehow diminish the constant pounding in your brain.

That’s the part of being in love that is shitty and full of nonsense and heartbreak and also the part we all apparently forget about, because we go and seek out love anyway like true morons. Or else love falls into our laps and instead of realizing that there are better things to do in life, like alphabetizing our ironic CD collections, we go ahead and say “yeah I’ll definitely just keep spending a ton of time with this attractive person who understands me and seems to like me despite my unabashed love for kim possible la la la WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG.” Stupid.

So I’m kind of over love insofar as I’m over love as it pertains to me. I want to be romantic…about other people. I want to see the part of love that is fun and sweet and sexy and interesting without the disaster clean up afterwards. I want to watch love on TV. I want to read about it. And most importantly, I want to watch my friends in love.

The thing is, I’ve always been good at spending time with couples. Even if it’s just three of us in a room, I somehow have an innate ability to judge the appropriate amount of sex jokes to make, the exact position to sit in so that nobody feels awkward about cuddling but nobody is making out on my face either, the exact number of minutes or hours that are appropriate to remain in the room before it’s clear that everybody does in fact, want to have real sex and that I am not invited.

So, yeah: I spend a lot of time with couples. A lot of my friends are couples. Two of my best friends are a couple, in fact. And a lot of people think it’s super weird and sad that I spend a lot of time with them (and with my other coupley friends), as just the three of us, that they must feel sorry for me or else why would they be comfortable with this arrangement?

But guess what? If they weren’t comfortable, they would ask me to leave. Or I would know to leave because everybody would get shifty-eyed and silent. I’m not an idiot about these sorts of things, I get it. And the couples get it too. That’s why they generally keep inviting me places, even if it is sometimes just three of us.

The other reason couples seem to like spending time with me is because I am big fans of most of them. I ship my friends like I ship fictional couples. I like when things are going well for them. I think it’s cute when they give each other presents and I fucking love watching people hold hands. If I could make a career out of watching people hold hands, I would probably do it. I don’t even mind listening to the problems my friends have in their relationships as long as they’re not like, dramatic Lifetime moments that cause me to hold a sobfest on their behalf.

I love watching couples because I love knowing that I don’t have to actually feel their messy and complicated feelings. I can just be happy, with and for them.

And I’m not saying I’m not capable of messiness or complicated experiences, and I’m not saying I’m not going to be fine—maybe better than fine— when the right woman or women or people or whoever come along and I actually do end up in a relationship.

But it’s nice to avoid all the messiness sometimes and just love being in love without…actually being in love. There’s nothing wrong with being a fan of other people’s lives, especially if yours seems to be permanently stuck in the “WARNING: MAJOR TRAFFIC DELAYS AHEAD” zone.

So I’ll keep on being friends with couples, until someday in the near future, somebody gently reminds me to get a life.