Greetings! We are pleased to welcome you to the National Committee of Girlfriends. Here at the NCG, we strive to connect and uplift the Girlfriend community across the United States, and we are looking forward to you joining us in this mission.
As a New Girlfriend, we invite you to learn a little more about our organization. Our committee has a long and storied history, and we continue to stay true to the aim of documenting, unifying, and supporting Girlfriends nationwide. Every year, we lose thousands of our numbers to the National Committee of Wives, and yet we who have maintained our membership, or continually renewed throughout the years, know that our committee has advantages far beyond any other. This is evidenced by our consistently high enrollment numbers and by the countless testimonials of our members. Girlfriends, we have found, wield significant power. Whereas Wives bear the heavy aprons of their oppressive history and unappealing media imagery, Girlfriends are far more free to carve their own path through relationships. Girlfriends may be doting, but they may also be doted upon. They may be dreammakers, sycophants, muses, or warriors. They are mutable, indefinable.
Imagine, for example, a fight between you, New Girlfriend, and your partner. In your fury, you leave the house. You slam the door behind you and feel the vibration thrum through the doorknob. You get in your car and drive off, aware that inside the house, your partner can hear the car growling awake, the rise and fade of the engine as you pull away down the block. You don’t have a plan, so you just drive, and eventually, you are at the Starbucks drive-through window. You order an iced caramel latte. You park and hold the cold cup in your hand. You are crying. Perhaps you feel ridiculous crying and holding an iced caramel latte. The parking lot is almost empty, and you are alone with a wet face and a wet hand holding your sweating drink. There is a hollow feeling corroding your chest like spilled acid. You are burning with loneliness.
And then you remember. If you were a Wife, you’d be obliged to return to the house you just fled. That house would be where your whole life resided, maybe even where your kids lived. You would have to reenter that door you just slammed, sheepish, holding the slushy remains of your latte.
But you are a Girlfriend. You can let your partner wonder where you are, when you might return, if you will return. You can hide in the plain sight of the barren Starbucks parking lot and let your partner seethe and fret and holler at their own reflection. You are free, New Girlfriend. You are wanted, beloved even, but you are free to disappear.
From there, New Girlfriend, you can drive anywhere. Perhaps you go to your own home and when your partner texts, wait precisely three hours to reply. Perhaps you circle endlessly the streets you know so well— the Starbucks, the supermarket, the curb of the roundabout where you once tripped as a pedestrian and spent two weeks reassuring strangers that your partner at the time had not assaulted you. (Your past partner had a temper that everyone knew, and while he never hit you, he’d punched holes in the wall and once broke the television and a tiny shard of glass lodged itself in your foot. But you were a Girlfriend and on the night you left, the night of the television breaking in fact, you didn’t have to take any legal action to pack a suitcase of sweaters and underwear and never see him again.)
Perhaps you drive until the sky grows dark and the street lights pop on, and you find a restaurant with a bar that looks warm and not too sad. You sit at the bar and order a glass of wine. The regular down at the other end is laughing with the bartender and you feel left out because you’ve never reached regular status at a bar. Eventually, though, he touches your elbow and asks your opinion on the Lana Del Rey song playing from the speakers. When you admit that you like her, he pushes you on the arm, pretends to exile you. He is scruffy and bombastic and at least ten years older than you. If you were to sleep with him, it could end your relationship. But it probably wouldn’t. You’re just a Girlfriend, a New Girlfriend at that— there is still a little room for mistakes. Before you can decide, the regular leaves for a cigarette and when you glance out the window, he’s been swallowed into a group of other regulars.
Unfortunately, New Girlfriend, our committee cannot protect you from all distress. We cannot ensure your continued membership, nor can we guarantee your satisfaction in your role. We are here in solidarity. You may find community in our chapter meetings (please see the attached PDF for official meeting times and locations). You may contact our hotline with pressing questions and concerns: 1-800-NCGASK. We encourage you to reach out to a fellow Girlfriend, to hold one another through the vagaries of Girlfriend life.
It is possible that you do sleep with someone. It is possible you return to an old hook up, someone who will validate that you are worth pursuing. Or perhaps not pursuing, since you are already making yourself so available, but worth returning to. Worth a thirty-seven minute drive and a $32 bar tab. Worth tolerating your sloppy kissing, since you started drinking earlier and by now, you’re not being so precise with your mouth. Worth a kind response to your question, the question that tomorrow you’ll regret, “Why didn’t we ever date for real?” Which is really asking what is wrong with you. You may never know what is wrong with you, but you will feel something wrong, terribly wrong, with their body pressed on top of you, into you, and your cries of pleasure (you are only human after all, a bundle of prickly receptors) are spiked with loathing.
New Girlfriend, even after all that, there is no shame in going back to your partner’s house. You are not entangled and beholden to any one. You can walk back up those steps, ring that doorbell. You can apologize, allow yourself to be held in your partner’s forgiving arms. Even if it was not your fault, not at first. Even if it costs you something each time to keep swimming in these uncertain waters. We understand, New Girlfriend. We are all here because we needed someone who would let us run, let us abandon this project of intimacy, and every time, take us back.
In the end, New Girlfriend, we are each carving our own small mark into the legacy of Girlfriendhood. Some may gouge a hollow, others may barely nick the surface. But none of us need to bear this task alone. We are so happy that you have joined us. We will always be here.