Early to Bed, Early to Rise

"It's too late for me and Sally. I know her too well. That's why it didn't work out -- by the time I saw her naked, she was already a person." -- Steven Moffat, from Coupling

Usually, my Quotes of the Day are inspired by my blog entries, but today, I'm posting an entire entry inspired by the quote you've just read. Spurred by my Jack Davenport love, I re-watched Series Three of Coupling this weekend. For the uninitiated, Coupling is sort of the British combination of Friends and Seinfeld: a comedic, extraordinarily well-written foray into love, lust, friendship, the battle of the sexes, and how all four intertwine to make life interesting. I highly recommend it if you ever have the chance to watch a few episodes.

The third season of the show focuses on the relationship (or lack thereof) of Sally and Patrick. They start the series interested in each other, but by a combination of confusing circumstances, they remain trapped in friendship mode. They become such excellent friends, however, that they eventually end up in bed together. And the experience is so terrible that it ruins the amazing friendship they've built and screws over their social lives for the next thirteen episodes.

Of course, since this is happy sitcom land, both of them are able to get over themselves and they eventually get married and live a long wonderful life together. But does that sort of fairy-tale ending actually occur in the real world? I can only think of two friends-first couples who have enjoyed a similar fate.

I can't speak from personal experience, either; I've never had a friendship ruined by sex, so I've never had such a friendship miraculously repair itself. I've recently acquired a friendship that has the potential to turn into something worth ruining, though, so I'm giving myself license to wonder as a precaution.

Is Patrick on to something? Is intimacy early in a relationship -- revealing the biggest secret right away and saving all the little ones for later -- really more advantageous than withholding the biggest secret until you have no secrets left to tell? Is it better to constantly long for a walk-off home run, or is it better to hit one out of the park in the first inning and hope your pitching staff can keep the lead?

Sometimes you have no choice; you meet someone you desperately want to "Patrick" but you realize that doing so would be an incredibly bad idea right now. So you elect to become friends. You keep finding more crap in common with each other, you coexist with full knowledge that you'll probably end up in a closet together one day, you long for it to happen but you put it off in fear of wrecking the incredible connection you already possess. And maybe -- and I felt extraordinarily profound when I thought of this on my walk home today -- that's how you separate the wheat from the chaff. If you can share your mind, your body, and, of course, your heart with someone and still find more stuff to talk about at the end of the day, maybe you've got a relationship worth keeping.