I
have often found that being unmarried doesn’t preclude you from the intimacies of the domestic lives of your friends. Certainly if they can throw you a life jacket as you navigate the stormy waters of the single life, you are obliged to push their boat along the placid stream of domesticity. Couple friends in many ways mirror one’s view of parental relationships. To put it simply, you don’t really want to be sitting on their couch and thinking about their sex life. It’s just not very comfortable. And usually they spare you the details. However, it’s when they are not having sex that you are brought into the mix. So when my friend told me she wasn’t really into it, I reacted with rehearsed incredulity, which is now my artful defence when accosted by sexual forwardness—be it in adult or child. How can you have a good marriage and not be into it? Quite clearly, you can. She loves her husband, they have great conversation, they just don’t have great sex. Having perceived neither in sexual avatar, I am at odds with a suitable response. So I throw sexual platitudes favouring her partner. Wrong move! “You don’t think I’m sexy,” she looks at me with hurt. “No,” I clarify, “I think you’re very sexy; I was just doing the whole reverse psychology thing. It’s like a new hair cut, you like it better when others praise it.” No dice? I can tell that she is a whisker away from asking for specifics. So I decide to bring on the blanket statement: “I think you’re both amazingly sexy, I just can’t figure out why you’re not having sex!”