JJ’s Journal: like attracts like

A regular appointment with a girl’s best friend. Her gay boyfriend.

Scientists, psychologists – they all say the same thing: like attracts like.

A few weeks ago I was at a dinner party, the only singleton amidst a bevy of couples and I was able to observe the theory up-close. In some pairings it was more subtle than others, but in most cases, there were enough similarities (of face shape, or height or nose or just a sort of over-all-ishness) to support the hypothesis.

But you see it everywhere – the most reliable cliché is people and their dogs. The skinny jogger with the whippet… the jowly, almost entirely cube-shaped guy with the bull dog… and I swear this is true: a former neighbour, the lanky blonde girl with the not one but two (count ‘em) lanky blonde Afghan hounds. (It was over the top – too artificial, too obvious. Too much. Plus, when she wasn’t cruising around the neighbourhood with them on a double leash, acres of blonde hair flowing out behind them, she left them alone at home most days and wasn’t there when they howled to be let out. Come to think of it, that girl was altogether bad news. But I digress. As usual.

Anyway, I brought up the theory at the party and my dinner party-mates eagerly leaped upon the subject as a fascinating new direction for what had turned into a somewhat desultory conversation about politics. (Since everyone was of more or less the same ideological stripe, it was one of those circular conversations where everyone agrees with everyone else and ‘something must be done!’ You know the sort. Yawn.) But soon the topic moved from what was similar to what was most different about their coupledom and here’s where things got interesting.

“You’ll understand this because you’re gay and you have all those single girlfriends,” said the hostess (who loves a good theory and often sounds like a cultural anthropologist observing a fascinating new phenomenon in a tribe of savages, and who also usually refers to me as an expert on all things gay; I’d find it annoying if she wasn’t so smart – and so talented with a chicken.)

“I think the problem for women who are over 50 and single is that they’re looking too closely for similarities. I think all these dating websites like eharmony and so on are trying to match things too precisely; I think after a certain age, people should be grown up enough and confident enough to want to step outside the box and be with someone entirely different. Someone who will challenge them and show them something new.”

The other couples chewed this over, agreeing or disagreeing to the extent we could keep the debate lively. One woman was particularly fascinated with the hostess’s point of view (“But I could never be with a conservative” she cried) while her husband disagreed vehemently, saying she would be as likely to step outside of her middle class life of work and golf and kids and neighbours and gardening as fly to the moon.

I sensed a bit of tension building so I quickly turned the conversation to the Fido commercials they used to run all the time and each picked out their favourite human/dog couple. The sheepdog and the white-haired bearded guy won the most support and then it was time for thank-you’s and air kisses and we all went home.

I heard yesterday that the woman with the aversion to conservatives left her husband. Everyone’s agog; apparently her new man is ten years younger, lives in one of those trendy Queen Street bachelor pad lofts and wouldn’t know which end of a rake to pick up were he ever to venture outside of the downtown core.
Early reports have them deliriously happy and her all prepared to move in with him; her friends are shocked (but mostly supportive) but her husband refuses to believe she’s serious.

I don’t know. While it’s astonishing how remarkably similar some couples appear, I also think opposites can attract pretty strongly. And I have to agree with the hostess; after a certain point, being with someone entirely different would surely be utterly fascinating and draw a pretty significant line under the past, opening one up to a whole world of something new.

Then again it could be a fling that will burn itself out and she’ll be back in her regular routine and relieved to return.

But I sense this is serious; word is the guy is a conservative.

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