When two worlds collide...

It’s never easy when someone you care about is dating a man you don’t like or when you’re the one with the unpopular partner. Ellie Harrison investigates the issue from both sides

- Ellie Harrison

Gone are the days of taking a new boyfriend home to your mum and dad and discreetly leaving the room so that the trembling, lovesick young man on the sofa can be grilled about his intentions. These days, the ones to impress are your friends.

When a new partner is introduced into my friendship group, they become the main topic of conversation among the rest of us. Did they hold their own at the pub? Are they compatible with our best pal? Are they, well, good enough? For many of us, it’s our friends who set the highest standards for us, our friends who know us best – and who could end up spending many a holiday and night out with us and our new partner for decades to come. But what happens when our friends and a new love interest just don’t click?

Keira, 34, knows this feeling all too well. “One of my good friends has been with her partner for years, and he has never made any effort at all with us as a group,” she says. “Whenever he’s around, he literally sits with headphones in to avoid being part of the conversation, and he often uses the excuse of watching sport on his phone.”

While Keira and her friends were at first sympathetic, and assumed he was shy, “the lack of effort really rankled after a while, and it just started to seem more like rudeness than anything”. Keira’s friend has since married this man, but he’s continued to “blank” his wife’s mates. “It’s all very strange,” she says, “and it’s got to the point where he now has this weird feud against two of my friends, who’ve known her for 20 years, and it’s like an odd shadow over the friendship.”