The girlfriend boyfriend ambiguity

The concept of a girlfriend and boyfriend is really ambiguous. They’re words that don’t really need to exist in the English language. Were they put there to confuse? A girlfriend is formally defined as a female companion with whom you are friends with. However, the degree of that relationship is not established by the word itself. Is it a casual, platonic relationship? Is it a romantic or sexual relationship? Or is it a contractual, monogamous relationship? All of these definitions fall within the confine of the word girlfriend.

In many ways, I’ve had a lot of girlfriends growing up. Girls who I genuinely admired, took on casual dates, looked up to, respected, and considered to be friends. Did I enter into contractual relationships with these girls necessarily? No, I didn’t and part of that was largely because I knew I was gay deep inside. It didn’t feel right and it felt deceptive to try and ask them to commit to me in an exclusive sense. I value truthfulness in a relationship. However, I did feel pressure from the conservative end–such as from my parents–for me to, presumably, enter into a contractual, monogamous relationship with a girl in a way that I consider almost as a gateway to a heterosexual marriage, which isn’t necessarily a negative thing mind you. It just wasn’t necessarily what I was aiming for in my youth because I didn’t consider that to be an ideal marriage for me.

Yet, the concept of the girlfriend and boyfriend terms will always still be there and be open to broad interpretation. It’s really about how you use these words that show who you are as a person. In my youth, because there was still so much stigma and controversy around being gay, I did sense that I needed to use these terms in a way that I internally felt was a bit deceptive, which I’m not proud of. However, they were not meant to hurt anyone or to boast. They were simply used in such a way just because I was still thinking things out in terms of what it meant to function as a gay man in our modern society. Timing matters when it comes to being gay.