There are reasons why we need friends and partners
It’s 8am and I’m logging in online to do my 20-minute daily morning exercises with my friends, It’ s always sunny in par tick and Dundee Woman, crunching, lunging and weights.
We’re all a bit bleary but straight away Dundee Woman and I clock that we’ve both had our hair cut since yesterday’s session and comment on it. Just like that. No prompting or trawling for compliments required.
I say: ‘You’ve had your hair cut. It’s great, bobbed. Really nice.”
Dundee Woman says: “So have you, it looks good on your shoulders like that.”
And we discuss cut and colour briefly until It’ s always sunny in par tick, whose hair always looks good first thing, especially with the sunlight bouncing off it, and we say so, tells us: ‘Right, one minute plank to warm up, now!’.
After a minute of gasping and groaning and what my neighbours must think is me having brief but vigorous morning sex (I know that’s what I thought about them last week until I saw their old washer/dryer out on the kerb), the conversation resumes as we do crunches and Dundee woman says:
“You see, you noticed the change straight away. If I ask Dundee Man, who won’t have noticed, for his opinion on anything by saying ‘does this look good?’ he reminds me of his strict rule – no trick questions. Nothing vague. It has to be very specific, like ‘this is a new top, does it look OK?’ or ‘I’ve had my haircut, and they’ve dyed this bit here so it’s now a different colour to what it was before, and they’ve cut that bit there. Does it look nice?’ Anything else and he refuses to answer."
“Trick questions!” shouts Dundee Man from another room off screen, ever vigilant when he’s the subject of the conversation.
This is why we have friends as well as partners.
This made me think of another friend who mentioned to her husband that her post-surgery reconstruction might be an opportunity to reimagine her shape, to which he correctly responded, ‘no, well, it’s up to you obviously, it’s your decision, but I’ve always really liked your body just how it is’ and they floated along basking in a moment of marital bliss, and if he’d just stopped there it would have been fine, but he continued talking, bursting the bubble with: “But if you did ever want to consider doing anything like that, you could always see about getting something done with your ears.”
Ouch. And he was doing so well. And this is why we have friends as well as partners.
Dundee reminds me of his strict rule – no trick questions. It has to be very specific