Ways Couples Alienate Friends Without Knowing It
It can be a challenge to balance a romantic relationship with your friendships. A budding romance is an explosion of new emotion, excitement, and possibility. Friendships can be more of a slow burn. Unfortunately, they can be taken for granted a lot easier and set aside when convenient. It's all too easy for couples to develop tunnel vision for one another while pushing their friends off to the sidelines, especially when it comes to newer relationships.
Falling off the face of the Earth
Couples are ostensibly together because they like each other. It makes total sense they would want to spend a ton of time together. However, we've all had that friend that pulls a disappearing act the moment they get into a relationship. You go from hanging out all the time to wondering if they still even exist in corporeal form.
PDA to the max
We get it. When you're in a relationship, you want to put your face on the other person's face. But can you at least consider that maybe your friends don't want to be your audience? Nothing says lack of social awareness like making out with your significant other while your friends just awkwardly try to look at other things in the room until you're finished.
Using too many inside jokes
Couples can't seem to resist subjecting their friends to endless punchlines with no context that only they understand. If no one but the couple can participate in a joke or conversation, it's like being intentionally excluded, and that cuts right to the friendship. They need to save the making out and exclusive jokes for when they're alone.
Baby talk out in public
Watching and hearing baby talk between grown adults in a relationship is always cringeworthy for everyone else. We don't care what kind of stupid lingo you guys came up with on your own. Nothing can undo the psychological toll it will take on you or restore the respect you lost for them, so save the Rugrats talk.
Using pet names in front of everyone
Dropping stupid, lovey-dovey nicknames around your friends combines the exclusionary effect of an inside joke with all the dry heaving of baby talk. There's nothing wrong with occasionally saying "babe" or "hun" instead of their first name, but anything beyond that is excessive. Can we all just agree to use our human names while we're out in public? Bonus points if you shame the couple by making fun of their silly nomenclature.
Playing Cupid with their single friends
Congratulations, you've found someone willing to deal with your nonsense and mash their privates together with yours on a recurring basis. That doesn't make you the lord of romance and a flawless matchmaker. Maybe some of us want to stay single and avoid the eye-rolling stuff you guys are doing (followed by the inevitable relationship drama).
Bragging about how it's so much better than being single
Do you gloat to a starving person about how wonderful a hot meal tastes? That's why we hate it when a couple brags about how great their relationship is. No one likes being reminded that they don't have something that they want.
Latching onto each other in a social setting
Some couples become so codependent that they can't (or won't) function independently in a social setting. Being superglued to a partner can make a social event really awkward. We get it — it's a comfort thing. For everyone else, it seems like they came to a party to hang out with each other, which they could have done at home.
Making every little decision as a single unit
Having to ask permission to hang out with your buddies is a huge red flag for both the relationship and your friendships. It makes us feel like we're on a different team, and the less important one at that. Relationship or not, you should be free to hang out with your friends if you'd like. We understand if you want to see if you've got something planned with your beau, but hanging out with your friends shouldn't be an issue.
Inviting one means inviting the other
When a significant other tags along to everything, it changes the dynamic of a friendship. To some degree, it is understandable. However, having the boyfriend show up to what everyone else thought was going to be ladies night might not sit well with the clique. He shouldn't have to drag you out when he's with his guy friends, and we shouldn't have to leave him sitting in the salon's waiting area.