At a Halloween party with my cousins and a female friend, I realized I might have acquired a girlfriend without either of us agreeing to it. Not an actual girlfriend. A girlfriend visible only to women I would quite like to meet.
I'm 24, and I usually go out with cousins or friends rather than by myself. When I go clubbing, this particular friend is often there. We're good friends, but neither of us finds the other attractive in a dating way. As far as we're concerned, the arrangement is uncomplicated. Now I'm wondering whether it needs subtitles.
What I've started noticing is this: I see a woman I find cute, we hold eye contact for a little while, and it seems as though there might be some interest. Then she sees my friend with me. That's where my explanation takes over. I think she assumes we're together, which would make my attempt at flirting look considerably less charming.
In my head, I have gone from a single man making eye contact to a man checking out other women beside his girlfriend. It's an unfortunate character development, especially since the girlfriend in this version has no idea she's been cast.
There is one slightly inconvenient piece of background. Back in college, I had a huge crush on my friend's roommate, who was also her best friend. So this isn't a friendship in which I've secretly been waiting for my chance with her. My romantic attention was directed elsewhere even then. That history makes the distinction obvious to me; it is not, of course, information a stranger gets by looking across a club.
Still, nobody has told me they're assuming we're a couple. The eye contact feels promising to me, and the explanation afterward is mine too. I could be noticing a real misunderstanding. I could also be filling a very small gap in information with an impressively detailed accusation against myself. I don't know whether anyone actually thinks I'm trying to cheat.
The awkward part is wanting to make it clear I'm single without making a good friend feel like a problem I need to move out of the way. Going out alone would change the situation, but I like going out with people I know. Creating obvious distance from her could get strange very quickly. Announcing my relationship status to a room would at least remove the ambiguity, along with most of my appeal.
I haven't worked out whether I need to do anything differently or stop treating a few seconds of eye contact as a full conversation. We went to a Halloween party as friends. I'm the one who came away wondering whether we needed to make that clearer.
