How To Get A Life Outside Of Your Boyfriend For Dummies

 

I'm Sorry, Your Boyfriend Cannot Be Your Entire Personality

There is a certain genre of girl online right now whose boyfriend has somehow become her full-time job, favourite hobby, best friend, personality trait and extracurricular activity. Every repost is about having a boyfriend. Every TikTok is “when he…” Every photo dump is him. Every story somehow circles back to him. Ask what she did this weekend? Him. What she wants to do this summer? Probably something with him. What her goals are for the next five years? Well, he gets off work at six. 

 And listen, I love love. I actually think being obsessed with your boyfriend is fun and normal to a certain extent. I want my boyfriend to be one of my favourite people. I want to miss him.  I am not arguing that women need to treat their boyfriends like casual acquaintances in the name of feminism.

But I keep seeing girls who only post about their boyfriend, only repost videos about relationships, only talk about their boyfriend, and seemingly have absolutely nothing else going on. No life goals. No trips they want to take. No dream they are working toward. No hobbies besides lying in his bed (no, going out to eat does not count). No plans that don't include him. Just two losers sitting in somebody's mom's basement watching Netflix and TikTok, convinced they have cracked the code to life because they are doing it together. I’m sorry. That is not what life is about! 

And I think this is part of why the whole “my boyfriend is my only friend” thing bothers me so much. People say it like it is adorable. “POV your boyfriend goes out with his friends and now you have nothing to do.” Girl. That is an emergency!! Apparently one man leaving the house has caused your entire social infrastructure to collapse. You need to have human interaction! 

  It does not mean your boyfriend is controlling you either. I actually hate when every conversation about women becoming too dependent on their relationships immediately turns into “he isolated her” , sometimes he didn't! Sometimes that man would LOVE for you to go somewhere. He wants to play Xbox (preferably Playstation) without you asking what he is doing every eleven minutes. He is begging you to develop an interest in pottery. Or to hang out with someone! Being unlikable and lonely isn't hot unfortunately. It's a bit of a red flag.

It happens so slowly that I understand how people get there. You start dating someone and obviously you want to see them all the time. Then you start choosing him over plans with friends because hanging out with him is easier. Then you stop getting invited because you always say no. Maybe you move in together. Your routines merge. Your friends get busy. Suddenly six months have passed and the only person you regularly talk to is a 22 year old man who thinks putting his laundry beside the hamper counts as putting it away. Bonus points if its all you post about so now the world knows too.

Now enter the stay at home girlfriend.

I need to make one thing very clear: I do not hate the concept. If your boyfriend makes enough money for both of you and genuinely wants to support you, and you genuinely want to stay home, congratulations. I am not going to kick down your door and force you into an Indeed application. There are worse things in life than waking up at ten, making an iced coffee, going to Pilates and wandering around HomeSense while somebody else is at work. Waaaaay worse.

I understand the appeal completely. What I do not understand is why the fantasy sometimes includes having absolutely nothing of your own. The TikTok version of the stay at home gf is always something like: wake up, make boyfriend breakfast, clean boyfriend's apartment, go to gym, buy groceries, make boyfriend dinner, wait for boyfriend to come home, boyfriend comes home, go to sleep.

Okay.

What did you do?

And I don't mean what productive labour did you perform. I genuinely do not care if you have a career. I mean where are you in your own day?  Paint something. Start a Depop. Learn Italian. Volunteer. Write something. Take a class. Decide you need to see every lighthouse in Nova Scotia. I don't care. Just don't be an uneducated or unemployed loser! Because there is a huge difference between being taken care of and becoming furniture.

The financial part also makes me nervous in a way the cute morning-routine videos rarely acknowledge. “sah wife” and “sah girlfriend” are not exactly the same thing. If you are married, there are at least legal systems built around marriage, shared property and divorce. Being 19 with no income, no savings, no work experience and a boyfriend who pays for everything is a much shakier arrangement.

And that does not make him evil. He could be the nicest man alive.

He could also wake up one Tuesday and decide he does not want to date you anymore.

Then what?

I don't think you need to live every day preparing for your relationship to fail. That sounds miserable too . But having your own money, friends, interests and basic ability to function alone is not secretly plotting your breakup. The same thing applies socially. Your boyfriend should not have to be your boyfriend, best friend, therapist, gossip partner, travel companion, and drinking buddy all at once.

That is an insane workload for Tyler.

Go call Jessica! 

And please maintain female friendships when you get into a relationship. There are few things more irritating than the girl who disappears off the face of the earth every time she gets a boyfriend and then crawls out of the rubble eighteen months later with “heyyy girly I miss you.”

We know what happened.

The boyfriend factory shut down.

I also think social media has made this worse because relationships are incredibly easy personalities to have online. You don't have to figure out what you like or what you want to say. You can just repost “when he thinks I'm mad but I actually just need cuddles” seventeen times and call it a digital footprint. Never a single pic with a friend, but like twenty on a mediocre sat with the boy!

What do you want to see? Where do you want to go? What are you saving for? What are you making? What do you do when nobody is texting you back?

There should be answers to those questions that have nothing to do with whoever you are dating.

And none of this means you need to become some hyper independent girlboss who refuses to let a man buy her dinner because of Gloria Steinem. Depend on people. Let your boyfriend help you. Let him pay for things if that is your arrangement. Stay home if that is genuinely the life you want. Be embarrassingly in love.

Just don't become a supporting character in your own life!

Because “my boyfriend is my best friend” is cute.

“My boyfriend is my only friend, only hobby, only plan, only source of money, only person I talk to and the subject of every thought I have had since February” is less cute.

Have friends. Have your own money if you can. Have something you care about. Book the girls' trip. Go somewhere alone. Make plans without checking whether he wants to come. Have stories he wasn't there for.

Please, for the love of God, have lore.

Your boyfriend can be a huge part of your life.

He just shouldn't be the entire fucking plot.