Why do couples like hanging out with couples?

[perimenofertility]

As the title says, why do couples enjoy hanging out with other couples so much?
I am single now, but when I've been in a couple I have never particularly sought to spend time with other couples so I just don't get this. I always spend time with people (single, couple, group) who are my friends.
I am in a friendship group of six people. We periodically meet all six of us for dinner. But the four who are two couples regularly arrange "couples drinks" and don't invite me and other single friend. This really irritates me and makes me sad.
Similarly, I have a good friend at work, we have lunch or drinks together often. But she regularly has dinner parties I'm not invited to because it's for couples.
So I'm wondering, what is it you couples get from hanging out together that I can't join in with?

Well I'm married, 49 and going to a music gig with a
SINGLE
MAN
aged
50

I've never felt so scandalously exciting before. DH is staying home with our kids mwahahaha

Fuck, I'm 40. FORTY.

My DH would also deem it inappropriate to spend a long time with a single person as he is married.

He's dining out with a party of people and one of the women he's sat next to is single and he'd think chatting to her was inappropriate because he's married! When was he born? 1722. Does he ask for a chaperone? Oh the social impropriety!

I have never considered for even a minute any of my single friends would be making a beeline for the married men?! It wouldn’t even cross my mind.

It might not have crossed your mind, but it's obviously crossed your husband's. Otherwise he wouldn't be scared if talking to them for any length of time.

As for talking about sport, it might be that another person, man or woman, isn't interested. Surely you haven't married such a boring man that he only has one topic of conversation? I'm a vegetarian and sometimes like asking for recipes or restaurant recommendations. I don't ask a carnivore. They wouldn't know or be interested. We all tailor our topics of conversation for our audience. We're not just blurters of streams of consciousness.

I don't have a problem with people being in friendships with couples. If you get on as a 4 or a six. Great. Single people shouldn't be invited out of pity. But when single people are excluded purely because they're single, that seems cruel.

So say there are 4 women friends that hang out for coffee, go to the cinema, away for a spa day, go rally driving, etc, and three are married and one is single. The three couples go out to eat together but decide not to invite the single person. Do the married friends really believe they are doing her a favour by not inviting her on the grounds that: it makes the table look unbalanced, she might be upset if one of them gets pregnant, she'd never get a joke about women being late, she'd feel like a third wheel, she can't talk about sport, the men are married so it's inappropriate to talk to a single woman...etc.?

I mean do couples seriously think they're doing a favour to a widow or widower to suddenly drop them from meals out when they are at their very lowest and need friendship the most? When their spouse dies, do they suddenly become an embarrassing third wheel who loses the ability to remember how marriages work, get jokes, make conversation on different topics and whom men think it's inappropriate to talk to?

Couples night, boys and girls talk, chatting partner, men and women talking separately, inappropriateness of married people talking to single people... Seriously, what century are we living in?

And for those who go to Couples Night where they only talk to people of the same sex cos what WOULD one talk to a man about?? How did you meet your DH/P? What did you talk about l? Surely from the first date it wasn't all wedding colours and who sleeps on what side of the bed, there must have been a pint when you were just mates or you got to know each other and had human chat? Some politics and ethics to see if you align yes, but also lots of other chat which might be superficial but is still interesting and it's an insight into the other person? You must have had something in common BEFORE you had a house and a family, not just "oh I'm dating someone who likes Rugby whilst I like Emotions so we're just hanging out until the wedding so we can hang out with other couples?"

Also, I have noticed that after couples go on to have children, single people are often thankful to not be included in all these family parties.

Single people can speak, can't they? Or is that another ability they're bereft of, like not being able to understand jokes about wives being late or husband's being messy? They're capable of declining an invite politely. And you know something else they're capable of, feeling hurt at being excluded.
Just because someone doesnt have children, doesn't mean they don't like children. I don't have a private plane and I don't want to buy one. But I'd love to spend time on one.

I assume with a single friend, one of the three would usually feel a bit left out - either the single friend or the partner who is just tagging along its clear to me the issue is poor social skills. DHs best friend used to come and stop over. They initially bonded over Marvel and they both artists. I was quite capable of going along, joining in the conversation and getting to know him. Turns out we worked in similar areas. So we could talk about that. We also all existed in the same wider society so saw other movies, listened to music, had lives, holidays etc. And we had the social skills to navigate that.
I even have MEN friends of my own. We talk about all sorts of stuff, for hours, without him needing to talk about U Bends or me talk about the newest hair style.

My single friends are living a completely different lifestyle to me, and we don’t have much in common anymore - so the friendships are very quickly fading. I know this isn’t the case for all single people, but, the girls I am thinking of have very chaotic lives, party hard, shag around and move in and out of flatshares more quickly than I care to keep up with. Just not my cup of tea at all.

It doesn't matter if that's what you're happy with. That's what will happen.

This thread makes me so sad. I love cycling, bikes, climbing, hiking and am doing up a house. I’d love to talk to your husbands! But unfortunately because I don’t fix the box you’ve put me in as a single woman and because I obviously am out to steal your husband, I can’t.

My late mum told me that the best approach to friendships was to make friends with people of all ages, classes and sexes, because it widened your (and their) outlook on life and humanity. That’s what I’ve done and it’s brilliant. Some posters on here would do well to follow her example.

Some groups mix well, some groups splinter.

I and my friends have known each other since our toddler yrs so tend to go off in our little private meetings taking the piss.😂😂

My DP's Eastern bloc friends mix, men and women separate, then later mix again. I do talk to all the groups now I've been accepted. Once the shot glasses and spirits come out it's survival of the fittest.😂😂

Week it won't because I don't do these "Couples Things". I see virtually all my friends without passengers, we just always have. We're all different, our partners are all even more different

I do find all this faux surprise that men very often just want to hang out with men at dinner parties! Women with women.

This just isn't my experience at all. Both me and DH enjoy talking to both men and women. When we socialise we don't split off into single sex groups because we all enjoy talking to each other about a range of subjects.

Most dhs talk to their wives friends out of necessity and to be polite not because it’s fun or because they have so much in common. It’s an endurance until they can go back to speaking about their bathroom installation, formula one or whatever.
How many stereotypes can you fit in one paragraph?!
I know my DH finds talking and spending time with my friends and his friends wives enjoyable just like I socialising and talking to the husbands of my friends or the male friends I have.

That’s why a group of four doesn’t work that well with one single person bolted on, and dramatically changes with two extras.
Only if you let it. I regularly socialise and go on holiday with another couple and two single people. We all get on well.

The length of polite chitchat is onerous if there are only two men and four women which is why ops friends sometimes get together alone.
Why is polite chitchat if you're all friends??

The men prob prefer it, and the women can talk about their relationships together without feeling they are excluding you. It’s not because they don’t like you op 💐

What exactly are you talking about when you're talking about relationships in groups of couples? What sort of conversations are you having which excludes single people?

So much bitterness and derision here from single people which makes me feel as if they are angry about something - what? You slag off married couples and stereotypes yet you seem to want to be part of it all with your museum and politics talk that marrieds seem incapable of doing ...? You tend to make friends who have something in common so other parents when kids are at nursery, school etc. Of course you will meet friends at other places - work, gym etc but there are different levels of friendships too from the ones you see regularly to the ones you see only in those contexts. Perhaps single people do not realise the amount of time and effort that is required when there is a family - it's not just about you and your own self , it's about many of you and juggling a life , finances, work and play. I have been in both scenarios as a busy mother and as a single person after divorce.I have known it from both sides. I would never slag anyone off for their single life. I don't know why there is so much animosity towards couples.

I don't know why there is so much animosity towards couples

I think you’ve misread the thread.

there is no animosity towards couples, only those that say they deliberately leave their single friends out of social events for ridiculous reasons like singles will be a spare wheel, men want to talk about football and diy, you need a “sex balance” so the girls can chat and the boys can smoke cigars.

it’s the married couples that are invoking stereotypes as a reason to exclude single people.

I also got this impression from this thread eg It's because the couple's are in relationships so fragile that they think the single women will waltz off with their untrusted prize male! Now that's a stereotype if ever there was surely? There are many more too on this thread.

Here's another They can also talk about couply things without worrying about making any singletons feel jealous or excluded from the conversation" bored to death

Key ring party?

But the women (who are in charge of the social calendar usually) probably feel threatened by other single women around their OH so they engineer it this way etc etc etc

Can’t pretend to have read all 10 pages of the thread, but fwiw:

I’m married and me and my DH (married 20 years) don’t have a ‘couple social life’. I hate dinner parties or any social situation where it’s expected I’ll talk to ‘the wife’ and DH talks to ‘the husband’. Cringe. No!

I socialise independently with mostly female friends. I have one close, old male friend who is married with young children, so see him rarely these days, but that’s more the young kids thing than anything to do with his wife. DH knows my male friend and they get on well, but I’m much closer to him. Never been any issue.

DH has lots of friends through football, male and female, single, married, gay/straight. I couldn’t give a monkeys who he socialises with if he has fun.

When we socialise together it tends to be alone or in big groups at music events, festivals, parties etc and I don’t give a second thought to whether people are single or not. Most of my female friends are single or divorced in their 40s, to be honest!

Ive honestly never seen a single woman as a threat. If DH is going to cheat, he’ll do it and it could be with anyone. My jealousy or restrictions on our social life won’t stop him.

What sort of "couply things" could they talk about?

Kids and family - many single people have that
Running a house - same
Work, holidays, travel, pets, cars - same

I truly am baffled.

I'm also baffled at the "couply things" concept. I can't think of a single thing the my husband and I would only discuss when with other couples (as a result of this thread I'm starting to loathe the word "couple")

Theres no animosityvtowards couples. Most single people have been in a couple. It's not about stopping or criticising couples enjoying company of other couples. It's about couples deliberately leaving single friends out of social gatherings purely because they're single. If the husband of one of your friends died, would you then start excluding her from your social get-togethers? Would you scout for a other couple to fill their place so your husband had a "chatting partner" to talk about "boy things"? If you had three girlfriends, 2 married, 1 single, and you all did a lot together, would you invite the two married ones for a meal but leave the single out? Because it made the table uneven, because they didn't like football, because they might be crushed if someone talked about getting pregnant, because they didn't get crazy 'couple jokes about men leaving the toilet seat up.
No ones mocking anyone for having a joke about the wife being always late. Posters have said that single people wouldn't get that joke because it's a couples joke. That's what people mock.

This has always been my approach to making friends. I always think the more diverse friends the better, it enriches life.
Since I started this thread I'm quite surprised at how narrow minded a lot of people seem to be (some of my own friends included).