Husbands v. Girlfriends
You hear men sometimes say their wives are their best friends. This is just crazy.
It implies that a man would actually have a best friend with whom he shared intimate conversations about his feelings, men he would go to lunch with and spend afternoons wondering if, among other things, other people really like him, or if it’s okay to buy that cute three button jacket.
But any wife who calls her husband her best friend is not being completely honest with herself, although she may think he’s swell.
Men are wonderful companions and fathers, confidants of the highest order, and capable of great understanding; they’re just not that particular animal known as A Girlfriend.
The most obvious quality of a girlfriend is that she always knows you’re right, even when it’s a different right than it was yesterday or last week. The fluid nature of women’s understanding of the ups and downs of life are part of what makes them so able to solve problems sensibly and quickly. Girlfriends see that how you felt about things yesterday is just as true as today’s new understanding.
The exception to always thinking you’re right is when you’re about to make a big mistake, at which point a girlfriend knows how to remind you that you’ve arrived at your crazy place and need to be led away from there.
My girlfriend recently reminded me that I have no personal boundaries. I have stray dog syndrome, a condition that causes me to bring home people I think need fixing.
Money, furniture, and clothing: I will actually give you the shirt off my back when I have on torn underwear because I believe I can fix you, or your friend there, the one holding the gun.
When my sympathy gets the better of me, when my checkbook no longer balances because I’ve given everything away, and as my living room couch is about to go out the front door with a stranger, that’s when I have to call out the border patrol. Only a girlfriend can help me recognize that the common sense train has left the station and I’m not on it.
A girlfriend always knows when to not say the thing that will crush your soul or make you have to stand up for yourself in a demented fight for your dignity.
Girlfriends fill in the holes in your skill kit. Like that computer game, Tetris, where the bricks keep falling and you keep moving the cursor so that each brick helps build a solid wall? A girlfriend helps you guide your falling bricks into the holes.
My husband will live with me for the rest of my life; you could say he’s stuck. A girlfriend can always move or get another girlfriend or get too busy and suddenly, you just have e-mail, but a great girlfriend sticks it out. She has a secret coping mechanism.
A girlfriend can always hang up the phone and tell her husband or boyfriend you’re crazy.
It implies that a man would actually have a best friend with whom he shared intimate conversations about his feelings, men he would go to lunch with and spend afternoons wondering if, among other things, other people really like him, or if it’s okay to buy that cute three button jacket.
But any wife who calls her husband her best friend is not being completely honest with herself, although she may think he’s swell.
Men are wonderful companions and fathers, confidants of the highest order, and capable of great understanding; they’re just not that particular animal known as A Girlfriend.
The most obvious quality of a girlfriend is that she always knows you’re right, even when it’s a different right than it was yesterday or last week. The fluid nature of women’s understanding of the ups and downs of life are part of what makes them so able to solve problems sensibly and quickly. Girlfriends see that how you felt about things yesterday is just as true as today’s new understanding.
The exception to always thinking you’re right is when you’re about to make a big mistake, at which point a girlfriend knows how to remind you that you’ve arrived at your crazy place and need to be led away from there.
My girlfriend recently reminded me that I have no personal boundaries. I have stray dog syndrome, a condition that causes me to bring home people I think need fixing.
Money, furniture, and clothing: I will actually give you the shirt off my back when I have on torn underwear because I believe I can fix you, or your friend there, the one holding the gun.
When my sympathy gets the better of me, when my checkbook no longer balances because I’ve given everything away, and as my living room couch is about to go out the front door with a stranger, that’s when I have to call out the border patrol. Only a girlfriend can help me recognize that the common sense train has left the station and I’m not on it.
A girlfriend always knows when to not say the thing that will crush your soul or make you have to stand up for yourself in a demented fight for your dignity.
Girlfriends fill in the holes in your skill kit. Like that computer game, Tetris, where the bricks keep falling and you keep moving the cursor so that each brick helps build a solid wall? A girlfriend helps you guide your falling bricks into the holes.
My husband will live with me for the rest of my life; you could say he’s stuck. A girlfriend can always move or get another girlfriend or get too busy and suddenly, you just have e-mail, but a great girlfriend sticks it out. She has a secret coping mechanism.
A girlfriend can always hang up the phone and tell her husband or boyfriend you’re crazy.
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