It’s been a tough few weeks to be a boyfriend. I never expected to worry that my girlfriend might see me the same way she now sees the side fringe she had in 2016. It’s been chilling to realise that boyfriends currently have as much cultural cachet as a moustache tattoo on an index finger. I’ve been waking up sweating from nightmares that she’s changed her lock-screen photo from us at a friend’s wedding to something cool, like CMAT or a spoonful of ketamine.
Since Vogue declared a fatwa on boyfriends, I can’t be the only one worrying that my girlfriend is kissing me goodbye sarcastically. “There’s been a pronounced shift in the way people showcase their relationships online… It is now fundamentally uncool to be a boyfriend-girl,” wrote Chanté Joseph. Admittedly, she was talking about posting your boyfriend online, not arguing you shouldn’t have one. But the article has taken on a life of its own. It seems our days are numbered.
It’s been pored over on telly, rewritten in the national press, and gone stratospheric on social media. One TikTok I watched showed chic French women dancing along a river at sunset in an attempt to capture their joy after reading the piece. It made me want to join in. But I’ve heard little from the boyfriends, which is surprising, because I feel like we are at risk of attack at any moment. I imagine I’ll get to know a few of them when the council picks me up after my girlfriend leaves me outside her flat with a note on me, but I felt I needed to speak to them sooner. Do they even know?
So I arranged heart-to-hearts with lots of boyfriends. Apart from gay ones. I think they’ll survive this trend cycle. My friend Dan recently got into a relationship. It seems like buying Zimbabwean farmland in 2000. I text him to let him know the bad news. “Is it weird that this hasn’t come as a shock?” he wrote back.
It turns out it wasn’t weird. Most of the men-soon-to-be-formerly-known-as-boyfriends conceded that having a boyfriend could be a bit embarrassing. They didn’t even seem worried about being unfashionable. Harry, a 29-year-old who’s had a girlfriend for 14 years, explained that we boyfriends might actually have brought this on ourselves.
“I think we can be guilty of annoying things like weaponised incompetence. I was putting the wet clothes on the rack without shaking them, and my girlfriend had to tell me to sort it out.” Harry laughed. “And she was right!” The trope of a slovenly boyfriend who can’t look after himself is well-trodden. It’s one that Remi, a 32-year-old decorator who has been with his partner for 13 years, rails against. He’s frustrated with being a boyfriend altogether. “If you can’t afford to get married, what are you going to call your significant other that you’ve been with for over a decade?
“When I’m going around clients’ houses, they’ll say something about your wife because they look at me, look at my age, and presume I’m married. But I don’t have 25 grand to drop on a party for all my friends. My partner’s dad is a 60-year-old man. He refers to his partner – who he’s been with for five years – as his girlfriend, and she’s also a 60-year-old woman. That, to me, is bizarre. She’s your partner, mate. She’s not your girlfriend!”
I was enjoying my boyfriend chats. Maybe life at the boyfriend dump would be OK. We could take turns falling asleep on each other while watching Goodfellas, or forgetting each other’s friends’ names. But still. What if I’m the problem? What if I’m the freak that doesn’t fit into a tasteful Instagram grid?
Johnjoe told me not to worry. He’s been in a relationship for six years. “I don’t want men to look at the article and think, ‘Oh shit, maybe I need to act differently to not embarrass my girlfriend.‘ Everyone’s embarrassed by family members; everyone’s embarrassed by certain things.”
The boyfriends really didn’t seem worried, but I wondered if this was just blissful ignorance. I felt bad when I spoke to Jack. He’s moving in with his girlfriend after just six months. I was about to tell him he was about to go the way of Enron when he interrupted me.“It’s such a magical thing, falling in love, that actually everybody should be exposed to it. If you want to go into the relationship and you are falling in love with someone, try your best to be yourself and go full hog.
“When you’re accidentally wearing the same outfit as your girlfriend as you’re walking down the road, that’s probably embarrassing, but so what? It’s great to be walking side by side in love with someone. I think it’s more than cool, my relationship.” More than cool. Mine too. I think I’ve been overreacting. Why would I think my girlfriend – a woman who has hand-drawn every birthday card she’s ever given me – could ditch me so callously?
Besides, there aren’t any photos of her on my Instagram. When I made my profile public, I was so concerned about my privacy as a lowly podcaster with 800 followers that I archived all my photos of her. If she dumped me for that, I’d get it.
[Further reading: My year-long quest to find London’s best nightclub]
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