The Pair and the Third Persons

Each member of the pair usually carries into the period of the engagement one or more other pair relations. In an earlier day, characterized by a stable, sacred, primary society, an engaged person had broken off all companionate relations with eligible members of the opposite sex, usually well prior to the engagement. In our mobile, anonymous, touch-and-go society, it is not at all uncommon for people to carry along in some fashion or other these pair relationships which had been formed prior to the engagement.

Indeed it is often the case that pair relations with "outsiders" get started during the engagement. These "outside" affairs received a great deal of public attention during the war and were generally thought of as purely wartime aberrations, but like a good many social phenomena they seemed products of the war because they have been much more visible. In actuality these quasi-subsidiary pair relations have become a typical adjunct of the engaged pair relation.

It must not be imagined, however, that the only pair relations having important consequences for the engaged couple are those with other potential mates. Here again what are commonly supposed to be peculiar attributes of the (in this case, "disloyal") love affairs are for the most part attributes of the dyadic relation itself. A young man engaged to be married may have a strong pair relationship with his mother, his father, a brother or sister, a friend of his own age and sex.

While none of these possibilities represents in our society an appropriate heterosexual love object for him, yet pair relationships with one or more of these will have consequences for relations between his fiancée and himself -- consequences most often not essentially different from those engendered by an outside love affair. The pair relationship between any persons tends typically to have an exclusive, all-or-none quality with respect to the emotions and loyalties of the two people. Hence the coexistence of another pair relationship involving only one of the partners tends to constitute a threat to each relation unless and until some form of accommodation is evolved.

Friendships and Opportunities to Meet People

The term "friends" in the U. S. does not ordinarily mean great intimacy of relationship. When we speak of our circle of friends we do not necessarily imply that our "closest friend" is in that circle. We ordinarily mean that most of our visiting and our social engagements take place in that group. In some contexts and in some situations, there may be no real "group" of friends.

We may have several friends, for example, people with whom we have dinner or lunch somewhat frequently, with whom we gossip and exchange personal opinions; but these people in turn may, because of geographical location or time schedules, have only little to do with one another. This situation is more likely to occur in a metropolitan setting than in small cities or towns. Nevertheless we have to keep in mind the shifting meaning of the term "friends." Here it does not suggest great intimacy of relationship.


On the other hand, if one says that one is without friends, this statement has a much more definite meaning. It ordinarily suggests that the individual has no group of acquaintances with which he has much social intercourse.

Changing one's friends is not necessarily the result of being rejected by them, or even of having decided to reject them and to select a new group of friends. The change may come about merely because a change of residence makes it difficult to continue seeing them.

We would expect friends to be of more day-to-day utility in finding new acquaintances and in meeting eligible suitors, if only for the reason that the divorcee is in day-to-day social interaction with her friends. We should not, however, reason too easily from these facts to the picture of the urban environment as being a rootless one in which the elder generation disappears. Actually there is a close association between (a) the family helping the respondent to meet eligibles, and (b) friends helping the respondent to meet eligibles.