It’s become the fashion these days to put the words “unpopular opinion” in front of such benign “takes” as enjoying pineapple on a pizza or preferring prosecco to champagne.
But I’ve begun to suspect that I secretly harbour a genuinely unpopular opinion: I reckon it’s totally fine to ditch your mates at the beginning of a new relationship. #Sorrynotsorry.
I’m painfully aware this makes me sound mildly sociopathic and goes against accepted “wisdom” drummed into us since childhood – certainly in terms of heterosexual romance. “Bros before hoes”; “boys come and go, but your friends are for life”. The wording may be different depending on gender, but the message is always the same: romantic love is fickle, fleeting and transient while platonic love is eternal, bezzies 4eva-type stuff. Prioritise your friendships, because they won’t let you down (plus you’ll need them when this latest dalliance goes to s***) – that’s the general thrust of the argument.
While I sympathise with the overarching sentiment, the older I get, the more I can’t help railing against it.
Don’t get me wrong – I adore my friends, both male and female. I have cultivated and nurtured friendships and poured myself into those connections – and received from them – far more than I have with any one man over the years. We have encompassed innumerable roles in each other’s lives: confidante, cheerleader, commiserator, wingwo/man, dance partner, therapist, de facto parent, de facto partner. We’ve laughed with each other till we cried and cried with each other till there were no tears left. We’ve held each other’s hair back while vomiting and scooped each other up off the floor with the promise of sauvignon blanc and the hope of things to come. These people are so deeply interwoven into the tapestry of my life that it would be little more than a handful of cheap threads without them.
Friendships are also two-way things: main character syndrome sufferers need not apply. You can’t pick people up whenever you need them because you’re single, then drop them the second you’re not, as if they were playthings created solely for your entertainment. Everyone knows a person like that – and nobody likes them.
Yet I have come to believe that we should all be given a free pass to pretty much disappear for six months or so when we meet someone special, especially once we hit our thirties and beyond. Emphasis on the word “special”; I’m not advocating for ducking out on plans with mates for every random Hinge date you happen to score, nor is it acceptable to cancel at the last minute or miss big life events because you’re hunkering down with your new boo. Respect is everything, and no one wants to feel taken for granted. I’m reminded of the somewhat bitter lyrics of The Zutons’ song “Remember Me”: “Well, we used to be the best of friends/ And we used to hang around/ Now I always see you and your new girlfriend/ On the sunny side of town.”
In your twenties, were you not fortunate enough to meet your person at university or work and waltz off into the land of Smug Marrieds together, you may well end up spending a decade working your way through a motley line-up of ill-suited suitors. By the time you get to midlife, however, you’re (hopefully) not dating wildly inappropriate people anymore. Every time you fall in love, therefore, it is likelier to be your last. I’m not trying to be morbid here – quite the opposite. It’s a good thing! For a die-hard romantic and monogamy-enthusiast such as myself, the real dream is for a new relationship to be full of “lasts” as well as “firsts”: the last time you go on a first date; the last time you have a first kiss; the last partner you introduce to your parents for the first time.
Age adds a bittersweet poignancy to all this – the awareness that life is finite, as are our experiences in it. And if you knew, really knew in your core, that you were falling in love for the last ever time, wouldn’t you want to savour it? Linger in it? Absorb and cherish every moment because you could never get it back. The Japanese probably express this feeling best with the devastating phrase “mono no aware”: the combination of melancholy and gratitude that comes when you realise that all things in this world are transient, made all the more beautiful by the fact that they will end.
The “falling” part of love doesn’t last forever, as we know. Science even confirms it – the mad chemical shift that floods us with the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine, lighting up our brains in the same way as taking cocaine does, while increasing our stress levels and robbing us of serotonin, gradually settles into something much calmer and more contented as things progress. And thank goodness; as Harvard professor and social scientist Arthur Brooks puts it, “Falling in love is a thrill and wonderful and also really terrible – you wouldn’t want to stay in that stage for the rest of your life.”
After around six months or so, this initial flurry of intensity mellows; we’re able to emerge, blinking, back into the real world. That’s when we can pick up where we left off with friends, make amends, give our mumbled apologies about dropping off the face of the Earth and reinvest emotionally – because we once more have the mental capacity of an adult, rather than a hormone-addled teenager.
Though wildly different in many ways, we could think of it as a bit like having a baby. Hear me out – that initial whirlwind where you retreat into an impenetrable bubble, barely get enough sleep, can’t think of anything else, feel euphoric, feel anxious, feel like you’ve lost yourself, feel like you’ve found yourself, wonder if you’re going mad. Just as we accept that our friends are going to be “off-grid” for an undisclosed period of time once they become parents, shouldn’t we offer a similar grace period to those embarking on a new romantic relationship?
Friends are for life. The good ones, anyway. So if you’ve noticed your recently coupled-up mate is looking perpetually star-struck and taking a minimum of three working days to reply to a WhatsApp, don’t judge them too harshly, I beg you. Just know it’s not personal, cut them some slack, and look forward to their reentry into your life in six months’ time.
