Peer pressure

We were drinking last night with young Mr D, recently split from his fiancée.

Working on the (fairly self-evident) assumption that you can't stay in the first flush of love on a permanent basis, when the going gets tough you either get going or work at it. When you decide it's not worth working at anymore, you leave, unless the other person decides that first and you get left. The timing of the point at which someone decides it's not worth working at can depend on many factors, including culture, religion, age, laziness, self esteem and... peer pressure.

Most of the time, if you're over 25, the world appears to be stuffed with couples. Once you're over 30, most of the couples seem to be getting married and having babies. If you're not doing that, even if you're perfectly happy not doing that, have perfectly good reasons for not doing that, actively don't want to be doing that, you start to feel a bit like a freak, simply because everyone else is.

And couples (many not all, I hasten to add, lest I piss any independent thinking yet coupled people off) like to hang out with other couples. It's comforting. It's comfortable. It reassures that we are all happily doing the right couply thing.

Nobody likes it when a couple splits, least of all a long-established couple. It can shine a very harsh light on that which is dysfunctional or co-dependent, and makes people see their own relationship along the scale of worth working at / not worth working at a bit more brutally than is the case if you are popping round to hold each other's babies and have a nice barbecue.

Because there are few coupled people as excitingly on the edge as the newly single person, who can smoke in bed, live on gin and pistachio nuts, take Class As on a schoolnight and go home with strangers, while others have the same old argument about which DVD to rent on Friday night and whether the living room should be yellow or green.

I was at one end of that experience exactly six years ago. I had a wild few months, but mostly without the people who had made up the majority of my pre-split social circle. This was fine in the end if painful at the time... some people are your friends, some people are friends with half a couple, and you certainly find out which is which.

And last night I was at the other end, watching someone reflecting all that freedom, all those possibilities, and feeling that light of scrutiny. It's amazing how different your own situation can look from two extreme perspectives... I am used to feeling relatively unfettered, but in fact here I am with a mortgage and a next of kin. I also like to think I don't give too much weight to the attitudes and behaviours of others, but in fact the pack mentality is frighteningly strong in all of us. I studied enough psychology to know that, so who am I kidding?

It's a funny old world.

Today it was sunny, warm and benign. Six years ago it was snowing... I remember driving my little 2cv up Boars Hill and running around on the hillside catching snow on my tongue and taking up as much space as possible.

joella