COMMITMENTS : Couple Seeks Same : And you thought dating was difficult? Try making connections as a twosome. It’s not easy finding four friends who get along.

Your single days are finally over. You’ve settled into a comfortable, long-lasting relationship as part of a couple. No more dating, with all the attendant anxieties and insecurities, you think to yourself with a huge sigh of relief.

Think again.

And prepare to enter a world far more complicated than you ever expected.

It should come as no surprise that even those madly in love and utterly wrapped up in each other still, sooner or later, seek out the friendship of others.

What’s unexpected (and, to be perfectly honest, rather annoying) is that the process of making friends, even in the context of being a couple, is fraught with almost exactly the same perils as dating--the same fear of rejection and a whole litany of other insecurities.

And (presumably) sex isn’t even involved.

Friendships, for many of us, are among the most important relationships in life, surpassed only by family ties and the one (hopefully) permanent bond--husband, wife, life partner, whatever.

It is family and friends (and not always family) who help us get through the daily struggles and the sometimes larger hurdles of life. Friends who support us, friends in whom we confide, friends to whom we complain about family--and sometimes even about other friends.

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In the early stages of romantic involvement, the two partners, wrapped up in each other, often neglect all others and friendships invariably suffer. You may not like some of your mate’s closest friends, while some of them--believe it or not--may not like you.

“Maybe 50% of friendships going in survive when anyone gets involved, because you run into the new partner not liking your friends, or the reverse,” says therapist Susan Langdon.

Beyond that, there’s a natural attrition rate as people move and change jobs, and you’re certain to lose friends following the breakup of a relationship--yours or theirs.

And, while not quite the dividing line that having children can be, the chasm between being single and being half of a couple is large enough that many seemingly solid friendships plummet into its bottomless depths when one friend becomes half a couple while the other remains single.

One would hope that in the security of a relationship, two people would find it easier to communicate and connect with others. But rather than becoming simpler, making friends as a couple often just elevates the degree of difficulty geometrically, with all interactions potentially four times as complex as before.

Now, not only must you get along with one person--tough enough, as we all know--but you must get along with (or, at the very least, be able to tolerate) his or her spouse, as your spouse must get along with both of them.

What are the chances of that? What are the chances of a lasting peace in the Middle East?

Writer Laurie Drake had been married one year when she and her husband, journalist and screenwriter Robert Masello, moved from New York to Los Angeles, leaving behind everyone they knew.

“We had to make a whole new set of friends,” Drake says.

“Robert, being more gregarious than I am, made the initial forays. He’d meet people and say we should all get together. But we are both of us not good at making dates with people--we’re a little shy that way.”

They would sometimes wait for others to take the initiative. “Some of our friendships depend on the other couple making plans,” Drake admits.

The entire process of making friends dredges up a number of other issues for Drake, but she did find it easier than looking for a mate. “There’s the insecurity of wanting to be liked. But it’s less threatening than dating, with no sexual angle or threat involved. That’s a relief in a way.”

And Drake sees at least one advantage in the couples scenario: “If you’re rejected, you can blame your partner,” she jokes.

For Drake’s partner--Masello--the question of making and maintaining friendships is “an issue very close to my heart.”

When the couple relocated to Los Angeles, Drake had family and old friends to fall back on, but Masello knew almost no one. “I had to make an effort. I was more aggressive than I had been in a long time. It was stressful, anxiety-provoking.”

Yet he has no doubt that the effort to find and make friends is justified.

“People who don’t have friends are losers because of it. It’s the needle in the haystack, but you have to look, you have to put yourself out there.”

For Masello more than his wife, the process of making new friends is painfully reminiscent of being single. “You go through all the stuff you go through when you date--all the explaining, the life story, what are your politics, what do you read, do you read, how honest you can be.

“It’s like a courtship ritual between four people.”

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Therapist Langdon says the question she often hears from couples is essentially the same as from singles: Where do you go to meet people?

“Most people just don’t know where to meet the kind of people they can bring into their homes. It is difficult, and I have dealt with it in my own life. If a relationship doesn’t last, there go all the friends.

“Most people want to make friends as a couple. I tell them to find any of the groups that deal with that, to first stay on outskirts and observe,” Langdon says.

Therapist Patricia Allen, co-author of “Getting to I Do” (Morrow, 1994), is less sanguine about the possibility of making friends as a couple: “The ability to get four people in the same place at the same time takes a lot of compromising.”

She believes that once people pass the initial hurdle of making a connection, they will often hang onto those friends, whether they really like them or not.

“It’s like a marriage, and it disallows a lot of creative exploring. Most people lead lives of quiet desperation and keep friendships with people they don’t really like.”

In response to the question of where to find people, Allen suggests searching for new friends in the places one already frequents. “Where you find them is where you play; sports people find sports people, culture people find culture people. You go hunting at the watering hole where you personally feel comfortable.”

But Allen knows it isn’t easy, even as a couple, to approach others.

“We are all so hideously afraid of rejection and abandonment, we hope the other person will have the courage to do what we’re afraid to do.”

Allen laments the breakdown of the family unit, and sees in its dissolution some of the problems we face relating to creating and maintaining friendships. “We are not learning how to communicate due to the loss of family, the lack of family dinners. Therapy replaces the family we didn’t learn to communicate in.

“Why do you think therapy’s such a big thing in California? These days, we pay for listeners,” laments paid listener Allen.

Of course, once you enter therapy, you just might end up becoming friends with your therapist--and his or her spouse.