That Helpful Third Wheel

Your friend Susan B. does not date a lot. It's not that I'm a sad sack sitting around moaning for a boyfriend*, and I've dated nicely this year, but usually I am not in a relationship, and don't have many serious ones under my belt.

And yet.

I have always found this really funny, but my becoupled friends love to ask me for relationship advice. I don't understand why. Sometimes there's a clear reason--like, there's a specific issue and they know I have knowledge or experience in that area--but much of the time there is not. One pair in college simply tried to make me into their couples therapist. And I wonder about the impulse. Is it because I was a psych major? Because I seem generally wise? Or is it partially--and I've long suspected this--that they think my chronic singledom means I know something they don't? A lot of people in relationships romanticize being single to a degree, but I wonder if some of my friends (especially ones who are younger or don't know me THAT well) view me as somehow above the fray. There was a Times article after the Dumbledore outing about how "[t]he master wizard is not a sexual being; he has shelved personal cares and embraced a higher mission." So maybe I'm some kind of paladinic guru! (On the other hand, no one that I recall asked Gandalf for relationship advice.)

But seriously folks. I guess it's that people want an outside perspective, and a single person is more outside than someone in a different relationship that comes with its own problems and biases. But why a PERPETUALLY single person? Eh, I dunno. I don't dislike it --except in situations where I feel like people ONLY want to hang out so they can tell me about their romantic problems--and I love being there for my friends and being trusted to help, or at least sympathize, with their important issues. But I don't really understand it. One of my friends posited, mostly joking, that I was single BECAUSE of all the relationship tsuris I'd ingested over the years. She envisioned me meeting the man of my dreams, getting flooded with the memory of every bad story I'd been told, and running in the opposite direction. Which is a convenient excuse--I'm not a dateless loser, I've just been scared straight!

But, yknow, probably the Loser Hypothesis is a little more accurate :)


*That would be what we call "four years of college."