By: Julian Patterson
1. Read Your Text Messages
Situation: You’re hanging out with your girlfriend when you’re phone vibrates. It’s a text message. You look at your phone and decide whether or not you want to respond. You pick up your phone and start to draft a text message. You stop texting, however, because you feel your girlfriend breathing on you as she peers over your shoulder. While she is straining to figure out whom you’re texting, you raise an eyebrow and tell her to mind her own business.
In order to maintain a healthy relationship, both parties involved must respect their significant other’s privacy. A girlfriend who is constantly worrying about what their boyfriend is doing is very annoying. Guys don’t want to date their mother. Rather, they want to date someone they can take home to their mother. You aren’t married, so what’s yours isn’t hers. It can be very detrimental to your relationship if your girlfriend relentlessly keeps tabs on you—irrational jealousy is he source of many major problems. A little bit of space can go a long way.
2. Beer Tears
Situation: You enjoy a night out with your bros—pounding beers, taking shots, ordering food late night, etc. In your drunken state, you somehow manage to text your girlfriend, fumbling your phone several times in the process. You eventually meet up somewhere. She is drunk. She is upset you are drunk. Because she is drunk, she sensitive and emotional, even more so than usual. She begins to complain about the little things, which inevitably turn into larger issues. Next thing you know, she’s crying uncontrollably.
Nothing kills your buzz more than your girlfriend drunkenly crying for absolutely no reason. Drunken arguments are the worst arguments. Nothing good comes from it. Nothing ever gets accomplished. Addressing these issues soberly is generally the best way to go about it. Let her know that. It’ll pay off in the long run.
3. Talk About Her Ex-Boyfriend
Situation: You take your girlfriend out to a nice dinner. You’re having a good conversation, the food is wonderful, and things are going smoothly until she mentions her ex boyfriend. You brush it off and try to regain the momentum established at the beginning of the date, but she continues on and on about how her ex-boyfriend did this and that, and how he took her to this place for their anniversary and how nice it was, etc. You’re pissed off and stuck with the bill…
No guy wants to hear his girlfriend talk about her ex-boyfriend like she might still have feelings for him. It’s annoying and frustrating to hear your girlfriend talk about some other guy like he was the one that got away or something. If he was so great then why don’t you get back together with him? We don’t want to hear about him nor do we want to be friends with him, so it’d be best to leave him out of the conversation. Thanks in advance.
4. Bring Friends into the Relationship
Situation: You say or do something that upset your girlfriend. You do major damage control and apologize profusely. However, instead of accepting your request for forgiveness, she goes to her friends for advice. She tells her friends a completely biased version of what actually happened, and allows her girlfriends to pass judgment and decide your fate.
Bringing her friends into your relationship is honestly one of the worst things a girlfriend can do. When you are seriously involved with a girl, you are also inherently affiliated with her friends to a certain extent; you have to interact and build a relationship with them. Your girlfriend can make the process of developing a positive rapport with her friends difficult if she only has negative remarks about you. If they decide they don’t like you, they have the power to convince her that you aren’t the right guy for her. Beware of the outsider’s perspective.
5. Passenger Seat Driver
Situation: You pick her up go somewhere. The whole car ride she is complaining about how you drive too fast or too slow, or that you are following the car in front of you too closely. She might even try to tell you which way might be faster, or mess around with your iPod. You try to keep your cool, but some things simply cannot be ignored. You open your mouth, which unsurprisingly ends in a petty argument. She doesn’t speak to you until you apologize.
The way it works is quite simple: The guy drives the car while the girlfriend sits in the passenger seat and lets her hair blow in the wind. We are in the driver’s seat. We know what we are doing. We don’t need our girlfriend barking directions or senseless driving tips. If we did, we would plug it into the GPS or call one of our friends. That’s how it’s been and how it’ll always be. Boys will be boys. Sorry we’re not sorry.
