Get your mind out of the gutter - I am talking about PLATONIC couples dating, and honestly, it has been one of the most interesting topics that I’ve considered over the last few years, especially since the birth of our daughter:
As a modern, urbane (and insane) family with one five-and-a-half-year-old girl, how do you find friends who:
(a) have a husband who your husband likes*
(b) have a wife who your wife likes*
(c) have a kid (or kids) who your kid(s) like and is of a similar age
*In some cases, both spouses need to like both of the other spouses, but frequently it’s okay if you do the gender split.
I would argue that in today’s hurly-burly world, it ain’t easy to do.
You could try kupple.com, but do you really want to visit a site that claims: “Every soul has a mate. Every couple has a match.”? (Apologies if you are a member, but not sure I could stomach that, especially because the photo on the homepage is a bunch of bologna - those 4 people are NOT friends, let’s just be honest, k?)
For us, we’ve been on many couple/family dates, and many of them just don’t work - usually the kids are compatible enough, but you do a nice brunch somewhere, the women talk, the men talk, you smile and say let’s definitely do this again - and then you never do.
The synergy just isn’t there.
No magic.
Sometimes you can point to a reason, but most times it’s just straight-up incompatibility…
Just like regular dating, you can’t force it - either it works, you have some chemistry or you don’t, and for so many of our play/couple dates, we were trying to force it.
And so, we have a few couple/family friends, but what really seems to work (for us) is having couple friends WITHOUT children, or even single friends. Because then, it’s not about the kids: holy cow, what a novel idea?!
It is sometimes so nice to not discuss children and their activities and their development and their ever-growing list of needs…instead - as we did this weekend with child in tow - we had a lovely brunch with an unmarried, childless couple, and we really didn’t do kid talk (even though she was right there the whole time, but not at the center of it all).
What we seem to have learned is that it is wildly refreshing to have different (and sometimes overlapping) sets of couple friends - those that are more for US and those that also benefit child; and if you can make it all work and find those magical people, kudos to you! (even if it’s on kupple.com).
Good luck out there - it’s not easy to find good couple/family friends!
