Friday 10 June 2011

Questions for couples

Do you speak about your other half at work? Do you use 'we' when you're talking? Do you ever talk about your relationship with your colleagues or your friends? How soon before meeting a new person do you mention your partner?

I'm curious. And intrigued.

12 comments:

  1. With colleagues, I'd have to know them quite well before I mentioned him, except maybe in passing. Ditto family.

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  2. I don't think I've ever really thought about stuff like how soon is OK to mention a partner. It just comes up if it comes up, and not if not. I suspect I don't mention the Beast unless I'm telling a story about something that specifically involves him (and that couldn't be told without his inclusion). I'm more likely to talk about my other half if the person to whom I'm talking has met him.

    It irritates me when people speak about themselves as "we" assuming that whatever they have done will be understood to have been done with their partner.

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  3. Oh, and I hope I haven't just fallen into the trap of answering a "question for couples" despite the fact that I'm not a couple, but an individual who happens to have a boyfriend.

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  4. Z, interesting. Do you socialise at work?

    TB, I'm just curious when people first talk about them, I don't think there's a right or wrong. It intrigues me because it is often how people seem to define themselves. (I've got a theory that women start to talk about their partners, or at least refer to them, quite soon after meeting a new acquaintance, whereas men barely seem to mention them. It is just a theory, so I'm hoping some men will pipe up. But I wonder why.)

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  5. I had a friend whose boyfriend never told his friends he had a girlfriend. They lived together and everything.

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  6. That reminds me of a guy I met who told me he lived with his 'flatmates' - it turned out that one of the 'flatmates' was his girlfriend. Cheeky.

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  7. Sometimes.
    No.
    Superficially with colleagues. Occasionally with close friends.
    Do you mean how soon AFTER meeting a new person? Hopefully before it would be misleading to continue with innocent flirtation (to coin a fundamentally oxymoronic phrase).

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  8. Ian, yes that's what I was trying to say, how soon after. Right, see my last comment. He was naughty.

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  9. People just tend to assume I’m gay, whatever I tell them.

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  10. They do? That is curious.

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  11. i bang on about Andrew all the fucking time. online, offline, in work, with friends, in your comments. have done since day one.

    that's bad, right?

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  12. No no, it's kind of sweet. I'm just intrigued by people who sleep with someone, eat with someone, go on holiday with someone, possibly buy houses and have kids with them, see them every morning when they wake up and every night when they go to sleep, but NEVER EVER TALK ABOUT THEM. What's up with that?

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