If your boyfriend hasn’t met your friends, is he even real? The Gen Z dating manual is pretty strict on this milestone. Sure, you’ve dissected every detail of his life in the sacred friend group chat, but once things are official, a real hangout is what sets the ghee apart from Dalda. Pass, and you’ll be rewarded with cute candid pictures with your bae; fail, and you’re left defending your romantic choices.
Meeting the parents isn’t half as stressful.
When is it okay to introduce a date to the friend circle? It’s tricky. Even the endless threads on Quora, Reddit, and Twitter can’t settle this burning question. Stakes are so high that nobody wants to rush it. Unsuspecting partners are invited to crowded house parties to be evaluated by a secret panel of judges lurking in the corner.
Meanwhile, 20-somethings are out here juggling Hinge, Bumble, and Tinder matches, unsure which one deserves the honour of sharing space with their friends. It’s their own Fellowship of the Ring—not to fight the orcs, but to conquer something deadlier: awkward silences.
A 26-year-old fellow man-lover got swept up and dragged his friends into a brunch nightmare. Even after launching several talking points, his new boyfriend wasn’t vibing with his old friends. The noise of cutlery became loud, but the silence on the table was louder. Then the boyfriend started giving his hot take on CAA-NRC and the group declared the verdict on him in why-are-you-dating-him glances. To this day, the boyfriend—now obviously an ex—has united the group in consensus: They all agreed to label him “the moderately ugly guy”.
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New genre of horror
Getting a stamp of approval from Gen Z isn’t easy; they’ll cancel you for your choice of protein. One can imagine how hard it is for us to approve of our friends’ dates. The wisdom about the friends’ romantic history comes in handy to tell if they’re yet again falling for their problematic “type”. Or being delusional about making another good-for-nothing side character the hero of their love story.
We aren’t always accurate about these things, but that doesn’t stop us from giving our unsolicited opinions. We decide if our friend is living a Modern Love episode or a Love Is Blind one.
A poly woman in her late 20s struggled to convince her best friend that her boyfriend wasn’t cheating on her by dating five other people. It took several arguments and explainers on polyamorous relationships to finally get both her favourite people to meet—for a karaoke night. Predictably, it ended in a screaming match. The best friend and the non-exclusive boyfriend couldn’t sing along and were never seen in the same room again.
The grapevine is rich with the horror genre of friends-meeting-partner stories. It’s not like having friends’ approval really keeps the dates from fumbling, so some of us keep the two worlds apart. This way, we avoid two things: reality checks and social landmines. Luckily, my dating app picks tend to get rejected by my friends at the talking stage itself, so I don’t have to worry at all.
Ratan Priya is a copy editor at ThePrint’s Opinion and Ground Reports desk. Views are personal.
This article is part of a series of columns on modern dating in India—the good, the bad and the cuddly.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)