The Pal-Partner: The New Low-Key Flirting Trend – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

My younger sources tell me a new kind of romantic relationship is gaining traction: the pal-partner. According to my experts, this term refers to someone who has a less formal commitment than a traditional boyfriend or girlfriend. The issue with this definition is its vagueness — technically, your plumber, your goldfish, or even Donald Trump could qualify as having a less formal commitment than a romantic partner.

We need to pin down the roles, duties, and perks of a pal-partner to avoid awkward mix-ups with actual friends or partners. From what I gather, a pal-partner is someone you don’t have to let into your house, not even on Christmas Eve, but you can call them up for a movie on a random winter Sunday. They’re not exclusive — you can have as many as you want (though it’s best if they don’t know about each other). If you’re a girl with over twenty pal-partners at once, you’re labeled a slut. If you’re a guy, you’re a dead man.

Not much is expected from a male pal-partner — a friend-boyfriend, except that he doesn’t annoy you, wipes his mouth with a napkin (not the tablecloth) after eating, and gouges out his eyes before glancing at another girl. In that sense, he’s no different from a traditional boyfriend. You don’t have to “break up” with a friend-boyfriend because you don’t have to go out with him either. He’s just there — like your dresser, your garden roses, or the trash can. You can call him when you’re bored, and you don’t even have to listen when he talks. You can toss your phone in your bag mid-call, go shopping (which is what you really wanted to do), and still feel like you’ve spent quality time with someone important.

A friend-girlfriend is a pal who thinks it’s hilarious when you call her that because she hasn’t quite figured out what it means. Your bond involves lending her your jacket when it’s cold, managing her phone selfies and class notes, and getting her into trouble with tagged Instagram photos in the summer. You can love her with all your heart, knowing she’ll never abandon you — except when something more exciting comes up, like a girls-only party, a visit from her old friends from London who model underwear, an unfinished Fortnite match, scratching her foot for a good while, or staring at her bedroom ceiling for 15 to 20 hours, which is somehow way more fulfilling than hanging out with her friend-boyfriend.

Pal-partners don’t “go on dates”; they just meet “at the usual spot.” Their hearts don’t race when they see each other — at least not more than when they pass a burger stand. And a pair of pal-partners would never carve their names into a tree unless that tree was holding a machine gun to their heads and threatening to shoot.

A traditional boyfriend is expected to show up on time to the church for the wedding. A traditional girlfriend’s job is to put up with him. These obligations vanish with the pal-partner arrangement, whose closest brush with an altar is often at their own funerals — and even then, not always. It’s worth noting that an alarming number of pal-partners have mysteriously vanished, supposedly eaten by Nile crocodiles. Maybe that’s why crocodiles don’t have pal-partners.

Finally, my sources say a partner is a friend with “benefits,” meaning you can ride the city bus together. In marriage, those benefits are mandatory, which explains why so many married couples take the bus. For pal-partners, “benefits” depend on how many liters of beer have been consumed. And when, against all odds, two pal-partners get married, a gladiolus blooms somewhere in the world, an unexpected aurora borealis lights up the sky, and some politician in a far-off country decides to lower taxes slightly.

This whole thing feels a bit beyond me. I’m wondering if I can call a can of beer my friend-girlfriend.

READ MORE from Itxu Diaz:

Chronicle of an Ideological Blackout

The Rifle and Rally at the Zoo