Of course, women aren’t the only ones silently pining for serious relationships with potentially ambivalent partners. Laura, a hotshot Manhattan magazine journalist, was “hanging out” with this guy. Even though in her books they were far from exclusive, when his birthday party came up, she felt like it would be rude not to go. “Suddenly all these girls are coming up to me and saying, ‘Oh my God, you’re Ryan’s girlfriend, we’ve heard so much about you!’” Laura recalls. She and Ryan lasted through a date the following weekend, where he introduced her as his “lady friend.” “He did it to be amusing and also to sort of skirt the issue,” Laura explains, “but I was so irrevocably turned off at that point that it didn’t matter.” Point is, there’s no more efficient way to get rid of a girl you’re mad for than to take the relationship public before there’s an actual relationship to take.
Of course, we all have our different reasons for wanting to keep a romance private. A guy I know, Crash (because he’s wrecked every car he’s ever owned – I seriously don’t even know his real name) found himself dating a 20-year-old when he was 30. “I really liked her, but she thought Led Zeppelin was a guy,” he remarks, still sounding dumbfounded. “But that kind of thing was only a problem when I took her to a party; I’d just get so uncomfortable knowing my friends wouldn’t be able to help but judge her.” But even worse were the glances he received from strangers. “She looked even younger than she was so it made me look even more perverted than I am,” he says. “She seriously looked like she could have been my daughter.”
Meanwhile, when C.J. was 33 and went from dating a 42-year-old to a 26-year-old she endearingly calls “The Boner Machine,” she definitely wanted the word to get out. “I felt like, ‘Yeah, I still got it,’” she laughs. “I wanted everyone to see me with him, especially all my exes.”
The truth is, what your mom always told you about how labels don’t really mean anything is kind of true. That guy who was thrilled to introduce me as his very own from the get-go confessed, in some miscalculated effort to earn my trust years after we’d broken up, that he’d cheated on me back in the day with a girl I knew. (Note to all: In case it isn’t painfully obvious, this kind of confessional is usually a very bad idea.) And I’ve had perfectly lovely, truthful encounters with men who, for one reason or another, didn’t qualify as boyfriends.
Then again, maybe they only seemed lovely and truthful because I never had to hear what Mom had to say about them.
