We're dating again

My husband and I are dating again, not each other or other people though. Huh you say? I mean we're dating another couple, as in forging a new friendship with a couple who just moved in across the street. I think finding a NEW couple friend whom you're compatible with and can stand to be around for longer than 15 minutes of idle chit chat is challenging. You see, I believe the process of becoming friends is similar to the process of a dating couple.

On your first "date", you ask the typical discovery type questions. Questions like: how many children do you have, where do you work, where did you go to college, what's your favorite alcoholic beverage (doesn't everyone ask that question?) and so on and so on. After these questions are answered you then have to decide if you liked them enough to come around again OR if they liked you enough to want to be around you again.

On your second, third, fourth dates, you begin to hear stories about them from their youth and early adulthood, some flattering and others not so flattering, but all along, getting to know their real selves a bit more. And whether or not these tales of lore either induce you to want to find out more about them or if they make you want to run towards the hills faster than Forrest Gump determines if you truly can become a couple friend.

It's when you become a couple friend that the really interesting situations arise. When do you become comfortable enough to have them see you in your jammies? In my case, I'm easy, it only took a few dates :-) Or when do you reveal how bitchy you really can be, again, in my case, I'm easy. When do you let your bodily functions come out to play without feeling humiliated? Or is this reserved for when you become the old married couple couple? For clarification, the old married couple couple are those friends who know EVERYTHING about you and then some AND yet they still hang out with you. You know who you are! :-)

It's funny, just when we thought we didn't have enough room or time in our lives for more friends, we find ourselves dating again. Will they replace our married couple couples we already have? Nah. Will we get past all the wooing and dating and become an old married couple with them? I'm thinking there's a real possibility.