Everything I Know About Love

by Dolly Alderton

I smile and pretend with couples very well; it’s how I’ve spent most weekday evenings around a table in my twenties. I let them have fake arguments in front of me about whose turn it is to load or unload the dishwasher. I laugh along when they tell long stories about each other’s sleeping habits. I am silent as they discuss details of people’s lives I have never heard of in an overly animated way (“No WAY?! Priya didn’t end up buying those tiles! I don’t BELIEVE it! After all that! Oh God, sorry, explain to Dolly who Priya is and the whole story of the loft conversion from start to finish”) to prove they have a wildly interesting life that doesn’t involve me. And all the while I pretend I don’t know why I am third wheel; why I am doing all the laughing and the listening. But of course I know I am merely an aphrodisiac in their game of Domestic Bliss—I know when I leave they’ll rip each other’s clothes off, having got all revved up on an extended joint discourse about their holiday in the Philippines, particularly when they both said the same island when I asked them what their favorite bit was. I am just a reluctant audience member. But I sit and watch all these shows anyway because the alternative—losing my friends—is not an option.