The case for keeping your partner’s friends at a safe distance

My boyfriend and I have no couple friends, no holiday buddies, no padel tennis group. Perhaps the closest thing we have to a “mutual” is his pal C, whom we cross-examine together about his outrageously adventurous love life – then argue over who he likes better (it’s me).

Of course, I know my boyfriend’s closest confidantes, and he knows mine. We just don’t hang out with them together. Ever. And that’s the way I like it. I wasn’t always like this. At one time,
imagined partnering up as a doubling up on my social life. Because I am deeply unoriginal, I pictured my soulmate’s pals as this tight-knit crew who are constantly together, roasting each other like it’s a love language, and somehow never getting sick of one another.

These photogenic charmers with razor-sharp banter would obviously be obsessed with me from the get-go. We’d glamp at Electric Picnic like pros, hop between Tulum and Thailand for the ‘gram, and toast the New Year from some windswept cottage on Achill Island. (Listen, I was single for a long time – I had time to get elaborate.) Then I actually got into a relationship – or, as my mother used to say with a straight face, “doing a line” – and, if anything, I have fewer friends than I did when I was single. And while we can probably blame “getting older” for some of that, the truth is I now prefer having no social overlap with my boyfriend.

At this stage of my life, I’ve curated a small group of people whom I can tolerate who can also tolerate me. As we are all probably tired of hearing, the world seems bad now, pretty much all of the time, and my brain is tired from whipsawing back and forth between disassociating and engaging. Basically, I just need to be around people I know I can be depressing and mildly offensive with.

Life is too hard and busy to waste social time on people with whom you can’t be yourself. With new friends, or ones I’m not very close to, I mostly babble about the weather or trade intel on speed traps, like we’re all 80-year-olds with driving anxiety. Throw me into dinner with a near-stranger, and I’ll spend the whole evening trying to dazzle, like a ten-year- old in tap shoes paying the mortgage.

This isn’t to say my boyfriend isn’t friends with some fabulous people. I’ve spent time with some of them and thought, “Oh my god, she’s great, it would be a load of craic to hang out with her.” But I’ve also thought, “I should really learn Italian.” I don’t have the time or drive to do either thing. Everybody I know is exhausted from trying to balance work and health and family and activism and keeping up with news and on and on and on.

Furthermore, in this day and age, doesn’t everybody need a little more space from their partner? If you’re in a long- term relationship in 2025, you probably have spent an awful lot of time in a confined area together. We’re all working at home more, eating at home more and just generally not leaving the house (which is probably a cramped apartment because of the economic downturn and the housing shortage). The fact is, we need time away from the person we’re doing all this extra staying in with.

Between everything, I have a limited amount of time per week that’s just mine. And if not with my lovely boyfriend, I’d like to spend that time out drinking one glass of wine too many with my select besties who have opinions about Pedro Pascal’s arms. There’s just some stuff you can’t get at home.

This article originally appeared in the Autumn 2025 issue of IMAGE. Have you thought about becoming an IMAGE subscriber? Our Print & Digital Magazine subscribers receive all four issues of IMAGE Magazine and two issues of IMAGE Interiors directly to their door, along with digital access to all digital magazines and our full digital archive, plus a gorgeous welcome gift worth €75 from Max Benjamin. Visit here to find out more about our IMAGE subscription packages.