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Switching Partners
Soap Opera Digest
March 14, 2000

Soap Characters sure are good at sharing -- maybe too good, judging by all the date-swapping on daytime. [And let's not forget about those generous souls who marry the women that their friends got pregnant!]

Fraternizing Friends: Phillip Spaulding, Beth Raines, Rick Bauer and Mindy Lewis

Dates And Confused: Mindy dated Phillip while Rick courted Beth in 1983, but it was Phillip and Beth who were crowned king and queen of their senior prom. Phillip and Beth finally confessed their love at Mindy's birthday party. Phillip had one last tryst with his ex, then took off with Beth for New York City to elude her abusive stepfather. Phillip proposed to her in 1984; a dejected Mindy turned to Rick.

Headaches And Heartaches: Phillip was smitten with Beth the minute he laid eyes on her. Rick and Mindy grew close when they followed their friends to New York. But Mindy learned she was pregnant with Phillip's child, and although Rick persuaded her to say that the baby was his -- and even proposed to her -- Mindy's outraged father, Billy, discovered the truth, which he announced at [Phillip's] wedding to [Beth]. Dutybound Phillip married Mindy instead.

And, In The End... By the time Mindy miscarried and divorced Phillip, Rick was involved with Claire Ramsey. A depressed Beth turned to Lujack. After rekindling her romance with Phillip in 1986, Beth supposedly drowned in Stony Lake. An amnesiac Beth resurfaced in 1989 and -- after her memory returned -- briefly married Rick in 1990 to cover for an on-the-run Phillip. She and Phillip tied the knot in 1991, but divorced five years later. Their lives are again intertwined -- she's pregnant with his second child as a result of an interlude following a plane crash. This baby won't be a bundle of joy for Phillip's wife, Harley, or Beth's husband, Jim.

Rating The Relationships: The heartache Phillip, Beth, Rick and Mindy endured was due to timing -- they stayed with mismatched partners for too long.