Lack of Presence Makes the Friends Grow Fonder

Published : May 20, 2019

By Wally Graham

I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way to impress your partner’s girlfriends is to simply put off meeting them as long as you possibly can.

To the friends of your new love interest that you don’t meet when you first start dating you will develop an air of mystique, while to those you meet early you will become an allergen.

The girlfriends you meet straight away will be the hardest to get on side. They’re watching your every move to make sure your intentions are honourable and that you’re not just leading the new object of your affections on string to the land of sadness, like so many other heartless cads before you.

They’re also most likely to be her single friends. The ones she regularly goes out with on the weekends, so not only are you a possible threat to their best friend’s emotional state you’re also a big threat to their social life.

If she stops going out with them it means they will most probably end up sitting at home on Saturday night watching DVDs, eating chocolate and blaming you for how much weight they’ve put on as they plot and scheme different ideas to erase you from the picture.

To these friends you will forever be the Shane Warne she met when we all know she deserved a pre Angelina – post Jen, Brad Pitt.

One beer makes you a drunk, two an alcoholic. Choosing a restaurant for a surprise dinner will make you a control freak and remembering her birthday will see you labelled a stalker.

But there are other friends of your partner for whom you will forever be the hallowed saint who has rescued her from a fate of certain singledom.

These are her married friends. These women will not fall in love with you personally; they will fall in love with the cult that they develop. The cult of you.

You will probably not meet the married friends as they only see your partner sparingly. They don’t go out as often as the single girls, their weekends are spent ferrying children from sporting fixture to social occasion.

When they do see your partner it will be at a long time coming girls’ lunch. The time when they all get the chance to actually sit and relax, have a few drinks and forget about the husband and family that has curtailed these activities for the last too many years.

If only they could forget about them for the afternoon. Talk soon turns to family matters. Johnnie’s school commitments, Angela’s seemingly endless sport diary and the husband’s lack of attention to anything that is not colourful and moving quickly across the television screen.

They demand to hear about you. What have you been up to? Where have you taken their lucky friend out to dinner lately? When is the big day?

Of course, they won’t hear the answer to that last question. They will however, hear all the good stuff you have done lately. There is no way they will hear how you leave the toilet seat up. How you break wind at every possible opportunity then laugh in an infantile manner.

They’ll hear that you did the dishes this morning after cooking a wonderful breakfast; that you turned the volume down on the football commentary to listen to what She had to say to you; that you went to Ikea together and you didn’t get bored or argue!

To them you sound just like the man their husband used to be. The man they wanted to have forever, who was romantic, took them out to dinner and talked and shared his feelings like the men all those magazines promise really do exist.

Obviously the whole truth hasn’t come to light here. You cooked breakfast because you like a cooked breakfast on the weekend, cereal and fruit are okay during the week when you’re in a rush to get to work and washing the dishes means you can be pretty much assured that you will get to watch the football in peace.

Turning the volume down on Dermott Brereton is more a reflex than an act of affection. So if your girlfriend chooses to talk to you during the half-time break then you just got lucky. While the only reason you didn’t argue at Ikea was because you went during the week when the car park was empty and didn’t purchase anything that required the both of you to assemble together.

Soon the time comes when you finally do get to meet these friends and this is where you really must make the most of your moment in the spotlight. It will take a moment for them to get over the fact that you look more like Prince Charles than Prince William but all you need to be is Prince Charming and you won’t be able to do any wrong.

“So this is the man!” they’ll coo. “At last we get to meet you.”

“I hope it’s been worth the wait?” you cheekily reply.

“Oh, isn’t he just adorable?”…Swish!

It’s extremely important here that you don’t get too over confident. At this point you are on a pedestal and you don’t want to do anything to start it rocking.

This is where it all gets tricky. Not only do you have to convince the friends that you are as charming as they have come to believe you are, you must also, at the same time, convince their husbands that you’re really not and that the tales of your exploits have been grossly overstated.

These poor blokes have been hearing all about you and how you do the stuff they used to but don’t any more. They have also developed a cult around you, one that doesn’t hold you in such high esteem.

The best thing you can do is be as nice as possible while getting as drunk as you can. Your partner will be embarrassed and will have to take you home early but the important thing is that you will have demonstrated enough potential to both the girlfriends and the husbands to the point where both parties will agree,

“He’s a nice bloke. She’s done well there”.