Monday, March 29, 2004
How To Deal with Your Girlfriend
Most men will probably spend at least some portion of their adult life in the company of someone who starts calling herself a “girlfriend.” You find yourself getting introduced to people as a “boyfriend.” The main purpose of this is to confuse you. This “girlfriend” person is likely to be neither a girl nor your friend. Girls are those pretty things that you make out with in bars because they want your coke and whom you will never call no matter what you say while you’re tugging down their sorbet hued hip-huggers. Friends are the ones who pretend that you really don’t have a drug problem but put you in a cab at five in the morning even though you’re pretty sure you know a spot that’ll still serve you and you believe you aren’t that drunk yet anyway.
The girlfriend is the opposite of these things. She doesn’t want your drugs. She doesn’t think you’re funny and she is honest about how embarrassing you are when you’re drunk. She isn’t excited when you call because she wants to know where the fuck you’ve been for the last three days.
A girlfriend isn’t the worst thing in the world (the worst is that thing called “work”), but that college t-shirt she still sleeps in has got disaster written all over it unless you take the right measures. And what’s worse, there are at least eight types of girlfriends, and each require you to protect yourself in a different way. To keep you safe and sane through this girlfriend period, I’ve created this guide on how to deal with each type of girlfriend.
Most men will probably spend at least some portion of their adult life in the company of someone who starts calling herself a “girlfriend.” You find yourself getting introduced to people as a “boyfriend.” The main purpose of this is to confuse you. This “girlfriend” person is likely to be neither a girl nor your friend. Girls are those pretty things that you make out with in bars because they want your coke and whom you will never call no matter what you say while you’re tugging down their sorbet hued hip-huggers. Friends are the ones who pretend that you really don’t have a drug problem but put you in a cab at five in the morning even though you’re pretty sure you know a spot that’ll still serve you and you believe you aren’t that drunk yet anyway.
The girlfriend is the opposite of these things. She doesn’t want your drugs. She doesn’t think you’re funny and she is honest about how embarrassing you are when you’re drunk. She isn’t excited when you call because she wants to know where the fuck you’ve been for the last three days.
A girlfriend isn’t the worst thing in the world (the worst is that thing called “work”), but that college t-shirt she still sleeps in has got disaster written all over it unless you take the right measures. And what’s worse, there are at least eight types of girlfriends, and each require you to protect yourself in a different way. To keep you safe and sane through this girlfriend period, I’ve created this guide on how to deal with each type of girlfriend.
The Type: The Buddy. She’s trying to blur the lines between friend and girlfriend, as if she was one of lads and just out for kicks.
How to Deal: Invent a hobby. You don’t want her fucking with the shit you like to do, so start doing something you don’t care about. This is what culture was invented for. Museums, theater, music, literature—we came up with all that shit to keep the women from fucking with things we care about—mostly sports and drinking.
The Type: The Blogger. Writes about her life on a blog. Has a cute but wholly-derivative psuedonym for you. Eventually she will shred every last shred of your dignity.
How to Deal: Get your novel published. She will hate and envy you forever since blogs are just novels for people too lazy to even pretend they are writing novel.
The Type: The Control Freak. Perhaps the most dangerous kind of girlfriend. The Control Freak will attempt to take over every aspect of your life. If you are not careful, you will find yourself unable to perform even simple tasks without asking “honey-baby” for permission. A few years later you’ll be her flying monkey commuter taking Metro-North for two-and-half hours from the place in Connecticut where she fucks the tennis pro and doesn’t let you use salt on your food. Then one day you’ll try to electrocute yourself by sticking your cellphone into the toilet on the train.
How Deal: Bombard her with information. Tell her everything you do that is not remotely interesting to her. When she asks how your day went describe what the floor felt like when you put your feet onto it as you got out of bed. Leave out any detail that is not utterly pedestrian. If you lead an interesting life you should dump her. Short of that, just make up boring stuff. Read blogs if you want to know what people with boring lives are like. You may be able to short-circuit her control mechanism with the sheer volume of data.
Bonus How to Deal: When she interferes with your life, do not become defensive or combative. The word here is deceptive. Let her control every aspect of a life you’re not actually leading—fake jobs, phony friends, family crises that don’t exist. If she tries to make you stop wearing the leather jacket that you think makes you look like James Dean, you should…actually, you should stop wearing that fucking ratty thing. But you get the idea.
The Type: The Funny Girl. Ha. Ha.
How to Deal: I only date dim girls because I like to be the bright one. If you’ve fucked up and wound up with a girlfriend who is witty you’ve got to try to dull her sense of humor. This is why we invented valium. Medicate her to the other side of the bell-curve and it’ll be like you’re dating a tri-delt again.
The Type: Together Girl. She’s got her shit together, and she knows it. She’s going somewhere and therapy has got her over her resentment of being the basketball team’s fuck-puppet in high school. You just look like a clown in her presence.
How to Deal: Even the most well adjusted girlfriends can be ruined by the simple introduction of heartless decadence. Encourage her bad habits, or invent new ones for her. Introduce drugs, after-hours parties and porn into her life. Self-destruction is the new self-improvement. Once she’s fucked up enough, dump her because you really need someone who is less of a basket case.
The Type: The Scenester. Always at the v.v. hot clubs and beautiful people parties.
How to Deal: Unless you own a record company, she’s fucking someone else, my friend. Just let this go on. Who cares? When you want to dump her, just tell her you know about the blowjobs in the games room of Soho house. She’ll probably believe you because her drug problem has dulled her memory.
The Type. The Nymphomaniac. She just cannot get enough.
How to Deal: Oh, fuck off. This isn’t one of the problem categories.
The Type: The Fitness Girl. It might be nice to wrap your arms around that tight body but you know she’s secretly a fat chick waiting for marriage so she can exchange her gym membership for a few more chins.
How to Deal: Medicate her out of her fitness routine. Martinis, drugs and late nights will destroy her will to improve herself. Don’t feel bad about this. Self-destruction is self-improvement for honest people.
