The New Hotness: Couples Dating Couples

By Dodai Stewart | October 15, 2007 | 5:00pm

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Sunday’s Telegraph ran a mind-boggling story about couples dating. As in, a young married couple hanging out with another young married couple. Whom they met online. There’s a site called (ugh!) Kupple.com, which 2,500 couples have joined so far. “It’s hard enough to meet individuals you get on with. When there are four in the mix, the dynamic gets complicated,” Jon Steinberg, co-founder of Kupple.com says. The argument is this: When a wife goes out with a hubby’s co-workers and their wives, she has nothing in common with the women; when a husband goes out with a wife’s friends from work or school, he becomes just one of the husbands. And though Steinberg claims it’s about finding people to do things with (not sex but karaoke, concerts, etc.) the usual stuff that comes up with singles online dating is there: For instance, what if the the couple is hot? Too hot?

“Looks are an issue,” says Sarah, 42, an administrator who joined Kupple.com with her husband, Pete, a managing director, after children, long hours and relocations for work affected their social life. “Neither of us goes for very obviously good-looking people, anyway – and I can tell from the photo that the husband we are meeting next is not my type – so it is not a problem for us. But I suppose if there were already holes in your relationship, it could make you vulnerable.”

Sarah mentions that she didn’t tell anyone about being interested in couples dating because “people might think it is weird.” And it is, sort of. Or is it? The author of the piece, Louise Millar, asks her friend Jane to set her up on a “blind date” with a couple of who have moved to her neighborhood recently. Things start off shakily but after some booze and a few hours, the couples are exchanging personal stories, finding out they like the same bands and making plans to play golf. We have to wonder if someday the idea of just talking to a stranger — meeting someone randomly and becoming that person’s friend — is going to seem old-fashioned. But ignoring for a moment the wince-inducing name Kupple, since we’re living in an age of making friends (Facebook, MySpace, LiveJournal), shopping and dating online — is it really so “weird” for couples to meet other couples on the Internet?