Just five years ago, the news that a friend was about to embark on a bad-idea relationship with an utter prat would have been cause for exasperation, rather than concern. I might have rolled my eyes a few times and then left them to get on with it, safe in the knowledge she’d emerge into the light, blinking, in eight months time, contrite and full of remorse, blocking him on Facebook with one hand while downing a conciliatory shot of tequila with the other.
But now the stakes are higher – we’re in our thirties, everyone’s getting that little bit more panicky about their prospects, and that bad-idea relationship could easily become a bad-idea marriage.
Conventional wisdom dictates that you make all your bad decisions vis a vis relationships when you’re young and naive and it doesn’t really matter. Your twenties are when you date the losers and the cheater and the weirdos, so you can learn to avoid them when you’re in your thirties.
But the fact is, we make just as many crap decisions with regards to relationships when we get older. The only difference is, when we get older, those crap decisions tend to stick, and everything gets a bit more permanent. And once you’ve announced that your bad-idea relationship is forever, no one’s allowed to say anything.
When a couple get married, you have to spend the entire run up to the wedding, the wedding itself and a good month after the honeymoon banging on about what a wonderful couple they make. "You guys are just meant to be " "he’s the one, I can just feel it", "you’re just such a perfect fit". You just have to, it’s the law. You even have to say this if you think they’re the most unlikely couple since Liz Hurley and Shane Warne, and even if you hate him so much you spent the first 18 months of their relationship walking out of the room every time his name was mentioned.
I suspect, on a level, you will always slightly hate your absolute closest friend’s significant other. But there’s a big difference between silently resenting him even though you know he’s a fundamentally good bloke who has your friend’s best interests at heart, and absolutely hating his guts because you know he’s a feckless idiot who is nowhere near good enough for your beloved friend. And in a way, you hate your friend even more than you hate him, because the entire relationship is a damning indictment for how little she values herself.
So it’s complicated. Made more so by the fact that you can’t say anything until she does. No matter how awful he is, no matter how many times he’s an obnoxious drunk, or how many times you see him grab her sister’s arse, or how many times she mentions, in a small voice, that he’s been working late a lot with some bird called Claire, you can’t criticise him. Because if you do, the floodgates will open and it will all come out: how much you hate him, how much everyone hates him (including her mother, who tearfully and drunkenly confessed as such to you at about 10pm at their wedding reception), and how much you prayed her really nice ex-boyfriend would burst in halfway through the ceremony and scupper the entire marriage.
And if she doesn’t say anything, it will be for one of two reasons. Either she’s so blindly in love and thrilled at the prospect of being married and being part of a couple that she’s wilfully blind to the fact that she is, in fact, married to a fool. Informing her of this will lead to angry recriminations, and possibly some storming off. Best case scenario your relationship is a little frosty for the next few months and he refuses to have you in the house. Worst case, and most likely scenario, you don’t speak again until the birth of her first child, and he still refuses to have you in the house.
Alternatively, it may have dawned on her that she has made a full legal and spiritual union with a chopper of monstrous proportions, and can’t quite bring herself to say it out loud. She will need your full support when she chooses to acknowledge this, but for now, keep your opinions to yourself.
Basically, you can’t do anything productive, or say anything, or even imply anything. So, here’s how to keep your mouth shut and play nice while your friend works out she’s shacked up with a total loser:
– Don’t change the subject every time she mentions his name. She’ll start to notice. Instead pre-plan some nice things you can say about him in a slightly stilted voice each time you see her. For example: "With that new hair cut, Mark looks a lot less like Dennis Pennis than he used to. Well done you." Or "I see from Facebook that Mark hates kittens – while I don’t necessarily agree with his point of view, I can understand where he’s coming from."
– Do launch a charm offensive every time you see him. If you really can’t resist telling him how much you loathe him, whisper it in his ear in the middle of a noisy bar when he’s good and drunk. He’ll never be 100 per cent sure if you actually said it, and you’ll feel significantly better.
– Don’t mention what an arsehole you think he is to any of his friends. They’re his friends for a reason. And chances are he’s already told them what an arsehole he thinks you are.
– Do set up a Tinder account for your friend on your phone, ‘just for fun’. There’s nothing like seeing what else is out there to turn a girl in a miserable relationship’s head.
– Don’t engage him on any of the following topics: politics, feminism, religion, economics, Russell Brand. Don’t talk to him at all if you’ve been drinking white wine.
You’re welcome.
The Telegraph, London
