Coupling: Apart Together

Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Magazine / Valentines Day: "I once frowned through an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show featuring marriageable Alaskan males in search of wives. Every flannel-clad guy was hoping for a gal who shared his passions, i.e., fishing, hunting, and snowmobiling. Oprah did not challenge the basic thesis – that eligibles who dog-sled together, bed together – nor did she ask, "Why all this comradeship? Why not hunt and fish among yourselves, and meet the ladies for dinner?" I am not against hobbies, just the elevation of them to a relationship prerequisite. My bias springs from my own lack of intergender interests, and my conviction that togetherness is overrated. My parents were happily married for 45 years. Did my mother ever toss a football around with my father? Did he knit or sew or tend the tomatoes? He'd been a tennis player before he broke his ankles in the war; she never held a racket unless it was used to dislodge a cobweb from a chandelier.

Today's attenuated wedding announcements advance this modern theory, the one that says men and women find truest love in a raft or a lift line after the wasted years of dating sissies. Bridesmaids and siblings testify, too: how the featured bride and groom love the same obscure rock band, forage for the same mushrooms, ski telemark versus alpine, see only the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

I do understand that putting forth one's common interests for the sake of matchmaking is more polite than asking for a certain size breast or bank account. But in private, in the offi ce I would run were I a professional matchmaker, I'd base my decisions on better predictors of compatibility than shared leisure pursuits. My questionnaire would ask, "Do you have children?" "Do you want children?" "Are you religious or irreligious?" "How far ahead of your fl ight do you get to the airport?" "Are you willing to leave dirty dishes in the sink overnight?" What percentage of the bill do you tip?" "How close to the screen do you sit at the movies?" How often do you eat out/talk to Mom/pay bills?" "Can you fall asleep with the light on?" Coffee or tea?" "Red state or blue?"

This matchmaking impulse runs in my family, and our successes are an ode to randomness. My favorite stories celebrate love as accidents of luck and good timing. The best, last-man-standing, fix-up story belongs to my sister. Circa 1968, her then-fiance was driving from Cambridge to Amherst to visit her. Could you find someone for Pete?" he asked before setting out. "We're leaving here at midnight." My sister canvassed Patterson Hall until she found a night-owl friend, Linda, the only girl awake at 2 a.m. Linda said OK, sure, I'll meet him. One year later: wedding bells.

Closely related to accidental love is the time-honored hunch. Good instincts help here, and a willingness to let an aphorism, It's what's on the inside that counts," stand shoulder to shoulder with physical attraction. My friend Douglas indulged an excellent hunch when he was a bachelor of 35. As a graduate student at Boston College, he shared a big open office with five other teaching assistants, including Mary. One day her brother, a BC undergraduate, came by to visit and found her asleep at her desk. Douglas watched; he told me that he knew from the way Louis looked at his sleeping sister, with such fondness, that she had to be an extraordinarily good person. He asked Mary out that night and married her soon thereafter – almost 40 years ago.

I was fixed up with my husband on the basis of not much more than our being in the social viewfinder of his cousin Jill. If we had hobbies to discuss on that first blind date, they didn't come up. Our joint extracurricular activities – aside from the son that trumps them all – have waxed and waned over the years. We lost interest in the running, the tennis, the cross-country skiing. He hasn't urged me to do anything I consider dangerous since I cried on the back of a jet ski in 1994. I prefer going solo to the driving range so I can hit in peace, without the unsolicited coaching. Every few years we stack the half-cord of wood that a truck dumps on our driveway. And sometimes, when the right song comes on in our living room, we dance."

Elinor Lipman, 54, has written seven novels, including The Pursuit of Alice Thrift. Send e-mails to coupling@globe.com.