Quintuple Penultamour

[dougo]

Congrats to dictator555 on her recent engagement! This gives me an occasion to use a word recently coined on the Freakonomics blog:

The other night at a party, a conversation arose that required a word that didn’t seem to exist. Taking part in this conversation were several people who had each been the last person to date another person before that other person took up with his/her eventual spouse. Surely there is a word for this? We couldn’t think of one, so after some trial (and plenty of error), we made one up: “penultamour.”

According to Mr. Google, this word has never been uttered by humankind. It remained open to debate whether a penultamour should feel pride or shame at having served that role.

This is actually the fifth time that a woman I dated got engaged to the next man they dated. Even though that's less than a third of all the women I've dated, five still seems kind of high (and there are a handful of exes that I didn't keep in touch with, so in theory the number could be higher). I don't think it's a bad thing, it's just a curious statistic, but maybe I have a blind spot and there's some lesson I should learn from this? I dunno. I will also note that in four of the five cases, the eventual spouses were men I was friends with before I started dating the women, so maybe the lesson is that I am a good source of marriage-worthy friends?

Comments

[feoh.livejournal.com]

Can you just talk to your exes about this? Given that they're now married and of course depending on your current relationship with them, they might be willing to engage in some healthy co-introspection.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Hm, that sounds a little too High Fidelity! None of those relationships were particularly serious (and one of them probably doesn't even really count as "dated", but I'm using the purity test "technicalities count" rule of thumb), so I'm not heartbroken about it—I'm happy for all of them. (Actually, one later got divorced, but she's now in another happier long-term relationship.)

[feoh.livejournal.com]

Heh. Sorry, I guess I was mis-reading the implication that you were unhappy with this trend, but a re-read tells me I was probably projecting. I don't know if I would be quite so sanguine about it :)

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I should also say that at least three of them read my LiveJournal, so they're welcome to chime in. :)

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure it's just a coincidence, although I suspect your idea about reversed causality (i.e. selection bias) is more likely than anything about what happened in my relationships. But it's probably more complicated than attraction, too.

And yes, you're right that your meeting Nate had nothing to do with me; only in one case could it be reasonably said that I was (indirectly) responsible for them meeting. But I thought it was an interesting statistic that the husbands were mostly people I already knew. Perhaps that's just generally likely, that one's friends marry one's other friends.

[wrog]

only in one case could it be reasonably said that I was (indirectly) responsible for them meeting

hm.

Guess I never actually did get around to thanking you for that...

Ironically, it's possible I may have a couple of these myself, though that depends heavily on whether one can count oneself a penultamour for being someone's last pre-marriage-relationship fuck (though in neither case am I actually certain of this) even if it occurred strictly after the period of The Actual Dating and there was at least one intervening relationship. Of course, there's also the small matter that in one of the cases, strictly speaking, she never Actually Got Married, though one tends to think of committed-relationship-raising-kids as being close enough as makes no difference. Buh.

I think I will just have to resign myself to having relationships for which it will be quite a while before anybody gets around to coining terminology for them. Which actually suits me pretty well, now that I think about it.

[mshonle.livejournal.com]

I for one was pleased to find out I was a penultamour. Just think of the alternative: The more people an ex dates after you, the less likely you were one of their important relationships.

[lordjulius.livejournal.com]

Kaine says "Okay, if I leave Sidaria out of it, cause we only dated like a month or so, long distance, then of the remaining 8 ex-gf, all are married or engaged, and ALL of them got engaged to the next guy they dated."

[queue.livejournal.com]

In case you're interested in data points, as far as I know, I'm only a single penultamour.

[amphibolous.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly impressed that I'm a triple penultamour. It's certainly nothing I ever expected. As they say, always leave them wanting more.

triple

[askesis.livejournal.com]

All three of my serious adult relationships, and the last two left me for friends.

I suppose it means something, but let's not think about it, OK?

[laurenhat.livejournal.com]

I don't believe any of my exes have ever gotten married after dating me -- at all, not just limiting to penultamour cases. One of my exes got engaged after dating me, but didn't end up marrying.

I think a fair amount of that has to do with the fact that I date many people who are already married or in stable long-term primary relationships (with no plans to marry) when I start dating them. But it's still kind of impressive, I guess, given that I've dated a bunch of people.