loading . . . I Hate My Boyfriend, but We Met in Real Life Instead of Online, So I Have to Marry Him My boyfriend and I met at a party hosted by a friend of a friend of mine and a friend of a friend of his. This is an anthropological event, an epochal miracle.
He seemed like the kind of guy who would be on my Hinge Standouts (chiseled scruffy jaw, lean, “Greatest strength: Making reservations”), so I approached him.
It was difficult to figure him out—was he in a relationship? Gay? Moderate? A smoker? Didn’t want kids? Looking for something short-term? Without being able to consult a profile, I didn’t even know how tall he was. After the party, he asked me to get a drink.
When we met the following week at a wine bar in Williamsburg, I certainly walked in feeling above everyone else. The place was swarming with online first daters who approached each other hesitantly, inspecting angles to see if their faces matched their profile, and giving awkward hugs. We didn’t need that. _We met at a party._
I knew right away that something was off, but with a magical, real-life meet cute, I was willing to put nearly anything aside.
Unfortunately, my typical first-date stories wouldn’t work on him—he had a little too much context for me to exaggerate enough to make things funny. We couldn’t even discuss jobfamilyapartmentresturauntsroommatesholidays, because we covered everything when we first met. For the most part, the only thing we talked about was how wild it was that we didn’t meet online. We met _in the wild_.
Both of us were determined to make this happen. I couldn’t handle another wedding where the bride (drunk) tells everyone about how she was just about to delete the app, and he was just about to delete the app, but they had one more match, and voila: a wedding invite with a QR code was born.
If I hear one more time about how Mayor Pete met his husband online, I will burst into tears. The thought of the ex–secretary of the Department of Transportation trying to figure out a way to respond to a prompt saying “Together we could… ” is too tragic.
Meeting at the fridge of a friend of a friend’s apartment party (while we both reach for a Corona) is the most romantic start of any of the relationships I’ve had in the past five years. So I have to hang on for dear life.
Does it matter that my friends don’t like him? That we have fundamentally different politics? Live an hour away from one another? No, _we met in real life_.
As our relationship progressed, this fact impacted us more and more. He trashes my apartment every time he stays over. “But we met in real life,” he says. I have loaned him money that he has yet to pay back. “But we met in real life.” I can _trust_ him.
We are part of a dying species, and to avert our inevitable extinction, we have to adopt otherwise unpopular policies. We are polar bears, red pandas—soon-to-be dinosaurs.
I’m basically Jane Goodall, and he’s my silverback gorilla. We must be studied. Preserved. Possibly bred in captivity.
Without being able to show his friends my profile, he has to discuss my personality, and therefore my foundational faults. They can’t laugh at my quirky “This year I want… a lobotomy” response tastefully positioned next to a .5 selfie of me in a bikini sipping a smoothie.
I can’t even ghost him—there are too many other people involved.
So the _only_ option is marriage. Not because I want to, but because this is our civic duty. Our cultural responsibility. If we don’t preserve this one rare, offline-born love, who will? https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-hate-my-boyfriend-but-we-met-in-real-life-instead-of-online-so-i-have-to-marry-him
