Meeting Their Friends

They look so nice, don't they?

Meeting the parents is a well-known nerve-wracking event. Whether it’s your parents or theirs, the prospect of embarrassment, awkwardness, or general dislike is enough to heighten your blood pressure and cause you to sweat like a murderer on trial. However, what is less analyzed but almost as bad is meeting your mate’s friends for the first time. Like parents, they are protective, judgmental, and probably have enough “inside” stories to make you feel like the ultimate outsider.

Unlike parents, though, they don’t have the obligation to be polite adults. They will probably have no qualms about making you feel extremely uncomfortable, whether by sharing their friend’s sexual exploits or telling you about the time they got a ticket for peeing on a fence.

When meeting your boy or girlfriend’s friends, it is important to be friendly and sociable without being overly abrasive. You want your partner’s friends to get to know you, but you shouldn’t be quite as open or candid as you might be in private. When entering a new group of friends, you have to realize they already have a modus operandi, and would probably be a little more than irritated if you came in and tried to take over the conversation.

On the other hand, if you sit in a corner all night texting and barely paying attention, you’ll come off cold, not to mention plain rude.

A good rule of thumb is to maintain eye contact and a smile, but don’t interject too much unless people are asking you a question. It might seem harsh, but at least for the first time you meet, it’s more important to learn as much about their personalities, likes, and dislikes as you can, while offering just a bit about yourself.

With a good first meeting, you can be sure your significant other’s friends will be interested in meeting you again. That’s when you can let your best Yoda impression loose, but not until then.