So Bad

Himself and I were talking tonight about the couple we had over to dinner a few weeks ago.  The woman of the couple is a newish friend of mine but is rapidly becoming a good friend; the two men had met for the first time that evening, but hit it off unusually well.  Most of the time Himself gets along fine with the husbands of my friends, but he only really clicks with a few of them, and this guy was one of those.  For which reason, as Himself wryly observed just now, this couple was far more likely than average to implode messily!  Not that he would wish that on them, don't get me wrong, but that was what happened to the last two couple-friends of ours where he particularly liked the husband involved.

Most stories have two sides, and in each case, I only heard the wife's side after the fact.  That said, in both of those cases there seemed to be a lot of midlife crisis going on for the husband, complicated by a great deal of childhood baggage and probably some clinical issues as well.  (Blessedly, Himself has no baggage I'm aware of, but after the second couple filed for divorce I told him to buy a sports car if he ever felt the urge since it would be cheaper than a divorce and easier on the kids!)  The really sad thing is that both of these guys did the stereotypical  midlife-crisis woman swap--one his wife for his bimbo secretary, the other for a girl he worked with.  Both much younger.  Actually, in thinking about this, I'm wondering if I should be worried that Himself picked these two guys to particularly like out of all the husbands in our social circle???  If he has anything in common with them, I have a problem, but so far, he has been reassuringly adamant that he thinks both of them went off the deep end too.   In fairness to the guys involved, I also liked them a lot until they suddenly became people that I didn't recognize anymore, who did things that I couldn't believe I was seeing them do.

Anyway, this other couple has invited us over to their house for dinner next month.  Before we go, I'm wondering if I need to ask my friend about her husband's family history and mental health status!  This is not an area in which I want to go 3-for-3.