When Charlotte and her husband, Ted, socialize with Wendy and Oliver, "We feel comfortable breaking up in any permutation," says Charlotte, 32, an editor in New York. "If I call their house and he answers, I'm not bummed, or if we go to a movie and I go with Wendy to get popcorn, Ted and Oliver will be fine talking. Most of the time, the person's OK, but you're not that psyched to be left with them."
The foursome became close when both Charlotte and Wendy were pregnant. "When we first started hanging out, every time they left our apartment, we'd be like, 'We love them.' They're there to sympathize about anything, whether it's financial difficulties or the fact that you have no time or even how much you fight with each other, and you'll never feel judged. They're right there with you, like, 'We fight all the time, too.'"
The pleasures of an ECC are pure; those pleasures feel a bit guiltier when you realize that you like your friend's significant other better than you like your original friend. Aaron, 27, a writer in New York, became friends with Suzanne when they worked together at a magazine. At first, says Aaron, "It was like Suzanne, who I sit next to and spend all day with, is my good friend and then there's her boyfriend Kevin. Now it's like I see Suzanne when I see Suzanne, but Kevin is one of my good friends." When the weekend's coming, Aaron says, "I call Kevin and figure out the plans with him, and Suzanne comes along."
This interloper dynamic also exists for Aaron with his friend Maggie, to whom he has remained close, and her boyfriend Andrew, with whom Aaron socializes independently. "There's always this slight touch of weirdness," Aaron says. "He's telling stories to his guy friends about stuff that's been happening in their life as a couple, and I already know about it from Maggie's point of view. I feel like I'm a spy."
Phillip, 32, a novelist in Los Angeles, is well acquainted with the ECC phenomenon -- from the inside. Of course, being cool enough to be part of an ECC requires self-effacing denials that you're cool at all, but Phillip does admit about himself and his wife, Anna, 31, "People say, 'You guys are so great together.' I just feel very, very lucky to be with her. I tend to express that and sometimes people say, 'Well, she's lucky, too.'"
But it wasn't always thus. Phillip and Anna met one afternoon, through a mutual friend, as teenagers. "She doesn't remember me and meanwhile I remember her being unattainably cool," Phillip says. "If we had gone out then, she would have just crushed me. I was a sensitive, romantic guy and I didn't understand how relationships were supposed to work. I would have written her a lot of poems until it became really irritating -- I'd have precipitated my own loserdom."
Fortunately for Phillip, he and Anna didn't see each other for almost 15 years -- giving Phillip plenty of time to cultivate his coolness. Yet even now, as an ECC themselves, Phillip and Anna know their share of UCCs. "With these two couples, one of each is married to someone we don't like," he says. "We want them to divorce, have the two we don't like marry each other and go away, and have the two we do like marry each other and hang out."
In extreme cases, the dud's influence can so poison the partner -- that is, your friend -- that you want nothing to do with either of them. This happens for one of two reasons, Phillip explains. "One type [of friend] has the potential to go either way and they get dragged down by their uncool partner. The other type doesn't necessarily have the potential to go either way -- they are who they are -- but they will happily, obliviously exist alongside their uncool partner who creates such a cloud of uncoolness that it's surrounding both of them."
It may not be for us to ask why, but in such cases, how can we help it? Why, why, why do appealing people become involved with total deadweights? "Within a relationship, you have no idea what people get from each other," says Charlotte. "Just because you think that you know your friend really well doesn't mean that you know all your friend's weird fucked-up neuroses. Maybe they have a daddy issue, or maybe this person is a dud to talk to but has a really stable job and is a really good family man, and that level of stability is worth not being able to have stimulating conversations."