Amidst the ghosts, ghouls, and grim reapers that will make an appearance this Halloweekend, there is one most horrific sight that awaits: your gorgeous friend in a couple’s costume with a man who is rotten inside and out.
You know the one. Every sweet thing he’s done is suspiciously performed only when the two of them are alone, his oeuvre of jokes resides firmly in his girlfriend’s areas of improvement or his lack thereof, his mother probably made him feel a little too special growing up so he somehow bare-minimums his way into your friend’s heart—and your social calendar.
Did someone pop into your head? I’m not surprised. The loser boyfriend has been itching for a comeback lately.
Just last week, newlyweds Rashmika Mandanna and Vijay Deverakonda appeared on Koffee with Karan, where Mandanna revealed that she was the one who proposed marriage and Deverakonda’s response was that she should ask one hundred times for him to consider it. One entire calendar year of daily asks later, the pair decided to live happily ever after!
In the days that followed, the internet posted the clip with captions reading “red flag”, “humiliation ritual”, and “may this love never find me”. The couple eventually responded with coordinated Instagram posts, Mandanna’s a nine-slide letter, the long and short of which was telling the bitter people of the internet to mind their own business, that this is “not feminism”. A like left by Alia Bhatt on Deverakonda’s post even sparked its own offshoot of memes.
This very week last year, boyfriends were decreed embarrassing. One year (or one proposal gestation period) later, the loser boyfriend still seems to think he’s hot shit. How did that happen?
Maybe it was the lookalike contests emboldening these rat-faced men who don’t use facewash to walk around thinking they’re Josh O’Connor. Maybe it’s the coinage of terms like “rodent boyfriend”. Maybe it’s the eons of rewarding bare minimums and boys-will-be-boys-ing bad behaviour away. Even then, the 2010s notion of the reacher and the settler has been swallowed whole by the man who’s willing to speak badly of his partner and the woman who isn’t.
Not even a day after the KwK episode, the new season of Nobody Wants This dropped, and like clockwork, so did the latest alarming sound byte about Kristen Bell’s relationship with Dax Shepard. Appearing on Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, Bell shared that one of the ways that she knows he’s flirting with her is seeing him…flirting with other women in front of her? The rest of the room fell silent, mouth agape, not unlike Karan Johar, as Bell tried to explain herself. The internet tore into the clip and gave new meaning to the words Nobody Wants This.
The number of sends on these posts are rarely low, friends DMing each other, making sure they didn’t accidentally send it to the group chat with the friend to whom this applies, picking apart if their like on a post was a cry for help or if they’re oblivious to their situation.
She leaves the party before her favourite song gets to play because of his bad mood or long day. Even worse, she ruins your debrief by talking about him. Her stories about him are delivered in a cadence that almost makes them sound endearing, but you listen and wonder, “Does she hear herself?”
A loser boyfriend has a way of turning his girlfriend into an overworked publicist. “He has a hard time in group settings of people who don’t know his personality,” she rationalises. “It’s just his sense of humour!” she insists. “He’s not making me wipe it off. He just loves my natural lip colour!” But the loser boyfriend’s worst quality is rarely one of his own bad qualities (of which there are many) but instead the effect he has on the woman he’s lucky enough to date.
You’re tempted to say something, but if you do, they will get engaged within the next six months. They just will.
Even the most well-meaning concern said in the most therapy speak you can muster can sound like a personal attack on her. This is where the dreaded “You don’t know him like I do” defense tends to come in. Granted, I may not. But I also don’t want to. And voicing that runs the risk of hurting the friendship.
Still, saying nothing has its own cost. If they stay together, any beautiful toast you may deliver at her wedding will be compromised by a mention of him. Not to mention, she has to be married to him. Sure, she may become like one of the many women who decided to get a divorce after watching Heated Rivalry and realised they deserved better. But if you think she deserves a better best-case scenario than that, there is a happy medium between talking about it to everyone but her and a full-blown intervention.
Rather than a straight-up confrontation of your distaste for him, I find that broad, well-meaning, loaded comments are best. You don’t want to make it about your feelings or being right. Wait for openings; let her know she’s not crazy for being bothered by something. Don’t ask her why she lets him talk to her like that; ask him. And if she’s venting about him, don’t use it as an opportunity to pitch a breakup. Maybe ask leading questions that plant the seed for her to say it when she’s ready.
If you’re super non-confrontational and just can’t take it anymore, maybe send her this article. And if no such friend comes to mind, maybe the call is coming from inside the house.
