RELATIONSHIPS are all about compromise, which means you have to go to events you’ll hate. Here’s how your scheming partner will make you think it’ll be okay.
‘We’ll go to that place you like after’
If you agree to attend your partner’s two-year-old nephew’s party at a heaving, screech-filled soft play venue, they agree you can stop somewhere on the way home that you enjoy, like the KFC drive-thru or the pub to catch the second half of Arsenal vs Chelsea. Unfortunately, the end will never justify the means and you’re being taken for an idiot.
‘Such-and-such a person is going’
To tempt you into attending, your partner dangles the one person from their work/family/friendship group that they know you don’t actively hate. After grudgingly making small talk for a while, it gradually dawns on you that Fun Uncle Alan isn’t going to turn up, you’ve been dragged into it under false pretences, and now you’re stuck for the next five hours.
‘I think there’s a free bar’
A classic ploy when your partner has been invited to the evening do of a wedding and you have to be their plus one. The promise of free alcohol acts like a siren call and you agree, but on arrival it quickly becomes clear that the cash behind the bar has long been spent. You whine like a baby and your partner reminds you they only said they ‘thought’ there was a free bar, the tricksy bastard.
‘We’ll only go for an hour’
Let’s be clear: you won’t. Your partner genuinely believes this when they say it, and you are forever hopeful, but once you walk into that room, it’s game over. You’ll be at your partner’s great uncle’s wake until 11pm, listening to mind-numbingly boring stories about someone you’ve never met, and starting to wish that you were the one who was dead.
‘We can have sex later’
The promise of a shag works like magic so you agree to go for a long Sunday lunch with your partner’s insufferable uni mates. However, when you finally get home again, you’re so annoyed by the fact that they’re all much more successful than you, and clearly think you’re not good enough to be their friend, that you throw a strop and go and sleep in the spare room.
