Square Like Me

Here in Northampton, we are lifestyle-friendly. When The National Enquirer called us "Lesbianville, USA" some time back, we said, Sure, OK. Not every burg can be "the Athens of America" or "the City That Never Sleeps." I drink my morning coffee from a mug that reads, "Northampton: Where the coffee is strong and so are the women," and I liked the ring of "heterosexual ally" when I was introduced at a domestic-partnership ordinance fund-raiser here 10 years ago.

It is a lovely place to live for all kinds of reasons. Last fall, my husband and I were at a dinner party. After the meal, our hosts (two women) rolled up the figurative rug and played a CD of oldies that had been the wedding music for two other guests (two more women). As Bob and I danced, I looked around and felt a wave of something like utopian bliss: Here in a happy social melting pot were two lesbian couples, two married guys, my husband and me, and a second heterosexual couple who provided another kind of magic - the husband hadn't said a word at dinner, but when he took the floor, executed the moves of a ballroom coach.

So how do I explain my puritanical shock - I of the I'm OK-You're OK lifestyle outlook - when I hear about the extramarital shenanigans of straight couples? For example: As I was drumming up business for a friend's reading at my local bookshop, I asked the woman weeding my perennial garden if she was looking for something to do that night. "Can't," she said airily, wedding band flashing in the sun. "Tomorrow is my boyfriend's birthday, and I haven't bought his present yet."

When I wasn't able to formulate a response, she added helpfully that she was in an open marriage and, further, that her husband - who'd be babysitting the kids while she was wining and dining the boyfriend - was helping her think of a suitable gift. Of course, I needed to know if the husband had a girlfriend and if the boyfriend had a wife. No and no. She was the brightest star in this particular emotional constellation, or so her happy smile implied. I should add that this woman was - how do I say this delicately? - no Maria Sharapova. Think Birkenstocks and knee-highs.

Tsk tsk, I thought as I listened to another philanderer tell me she'd left her husband and two children for the stranger in the middle seat on whose shoulder she had fallen asleep while flying to West Palm Beach. Similarly, I know that a goody-goody twitch crossed my face when another hostess, a new acquaintance, told me that her current husband started off - quite adorably, one was supposed to infer - as her children's nanny. How badly did I take the news that a cousin left the salt-of- the-earth husband we all adored because she'd married at 20 and missed the sexual revolution? And did I think much of the bum (he was a doctor) who announced he was leaving my friend because he wanted to have sex 2.5 times per week, the national average, and they were not?

I take divorce between my coupled friends hard, especially those whose troubled marriages and fooling around have escaped my detection. Do I want these people to remain in unhappy unions? Not exactly. My low threshold for breakups is less about puritanism than it is my own sheltered life and failure of imagination. I want my friends to be happy, their lives tidy, my address book unedited. It's about me. I don't like change, and I know from experience that life won't be the same, that in an effort not to take sides, I'll soon be dining with each of the exes and his or her odd choice of a new flame.

I must be a prude. Could it be that I have the moral and family values of those people who smirked at my "Very Kerry" button last election? But wait. Wouldn't those moral values be incompatible with Northampton civic pride and my wanting to be a bridesmaid at my gay friends' weddings? Maybe not. Maybe we Northamptonites are simply traditional, prescribing the same square things: Respect the laws, especially those minted in Massachusetts. Stand by your man or woman. Elect marriage, and leave the open ones to the wacky heterosexuals.

Elinor Lipman's eighth novel, My Latest Grievance, will be published in April. E-mail comments to coupling@globe.com.