I’d imagine it applies to wives and dogs too.  I had a dog pre-then girlfriend, now wife, and I can attest to at least part of this:

“My girlfriend wants a dog more than anything in the universe,” Rogen says. (Her name’s Lauren; she’s a TV writer; they met before he was famous; they live together.) He’s managed to hold her off, for now, by saying they can get one if she lets him get a motorcycle, something he doesn’t even really want: “It had to be something,” he reasons, “that she really doesn’t want me to have.”

“No,” says Sandy Rogen firmly.

We talk about the pet thing, how it’s always a rehearsal for the having-kids thing. You think it’ll postpone the conversation, but—

“Yeah,” Rogen says. “It kind of evolves the conversation, right? Leslie Mann”—his Knocked Up co-star, and Judd Apatow’s wife—“told me that. She said, ‘Don’t get her a dog, or you’ll have to give her a baby.”

It’s late in the afternoon now, and Lauren’s here. She’s got enviable bone structure, a lot of brown curly hair. She finds Little Bear right away, sits in the hallway with Mark and Sandy with the dog on her lap.

“You’re so good,” she says. “You haven’t even tried to bite me once.”

Rogen sees this happening. He walks over, looking like a man who’s just realized he’s probably getting a dog soon, whether or not he wants one.

“Does it feel that different?” he says to Lauren, indicating the dog. “This is what it would be like.”

“No,” she says. “But I’m already touching you less.”

“I know,” Rogen says. “I’m already a third banana.”

He moves in closer; she pats his belly, reaches out to take his hand, but keeps an arm around the dog.

“It triangulates your relationship,” Sandy Rogen says.

My GF/Wife came post-dog, but now it’s already the two of them and then me.  And yeah, the dog gets more love than I do any day of the week.

Read the full profile of Seth Rogan in GQ or at GQ.