A Taxonomy of Brunches I: Relationships

The meeting of romantic relationships and brunch is a messy business. Consider the ugly implications of brunch for relationships at various stages of development:

One night stand brunch. O most accursed of brunches! I have never had the personal misfortune to experience this brunch, nor do I understand how others have willingly chosen to experience this brunch, yet I know that it exists. I have seen them, shells of their former selves, sidling listlessly into brunch with other, happier humans, the horror of recognition that their next 45 to 70 (god forbid 90) minutes will be spent awkwardly picking at their smoked salmon scrambles with sides of mesculun. Homework: consider the ways in which a one night stand can end in dignity: discretion, brevity, avoidance of confined spaces, and the ways in which the conventions of brunch systematically violate each.

Someone with whom you've done it once or twice brunch. So, it's not a one-night stand. It's someone you've done it with once or twice, and someone with whom you wish to do it again. "If we go out to brunch, we will feel all legitmate like" you say to yourself. But this is a lie. You will only see the person you wish to do it with again as your boring brunch partner. Why would you eat omelettes with someone you want to do it with again in public if you could just eat omelettes with them at home? Doesn't that sound better? You have the rest of your lives to eat awkward meals together, don't spend them in the first few weeks.

Nothing better to do brunch. This is a later brunch, after you're together and all, when there's no more game to play and doing it together is assumed. It's Sunday, maybe you went out last night, maybe you just watched Netflix and drank some wine and fell asleep. It doesn't matter. Now it's 11:30 AM. You're kind of bored, so you put all of your hope in brunch. But you've forgotten the brunch factor: 1 regular relationship year is worth approximately 1.25 relationship brunch years. Your 27 year old mildly lame but still kicking relationship is suddenly 34. 34 becomes 43. You get the picture. You can't even read the paper because you're in some really cramped little shmancy brunch place with no room for the Sunday times on the table. So you just have to talk about what kind of omelettes you're going to order. Why??? When you could be drinking coffee in bed?

Next up, the various types of group brunch, and how brunch works to subvert and destroy our interpersonal relationships.