I realize now that I'm married that I will soon be, if I'm not already, someone's "Married Friend." Urban Dictionary always steals my thunder for cool definitions, so I'm not even going to go there. Here's my cooler-than-Urban-Dictionary definition of "Married Friends":
a) People who have been married for as long as you have known them, and your friendship with them is inseparable from your friendship with their spouses
b) People who you only see when they are with their spouses and thus you refer to the couple as the same person by name (i.e. Pamanda)
c) Abbreviated "MF" for obvious reasons
As used in a sentence: "We were going to see our married friends Pamanda at midweek dinner, but Paolo has class on Wednesday nights so we won't be able to see those MFs until next week."
The "Married Friend" stamp can be undermined if and only if you have known a person before he or she was married. For example, I have known Wesley long before I was married and therefore I cannot be his Married Friend. I am just a plain old friend. However, if I meet a married couple through Wesley, they can only be MFs to me.
Here's the challenge with being a MF: It's tough to coordinate. I had a hard enough time keeping track of where I was supposed to be before I was married. Now Amanda and I have to keep both of our schedules in sync, and they mostly are anyway, but I don't always know if Amanda has planned some rogue event, or if I remembered to communicate to Amanda that I had an event come up. We've managed so far, but we also have just about every weekend of the summer planned out and somewhere in there I need to hang a new front door and build a fence.
Ain't that a MF?
I have to say that the greatest tragedy of having couple friends (MF-to-MF) is when you have to break-up with them. I call it a break-up because if you or your spouse can't maintain a friendship with one half of the MF then you can't be friends with them either, even if you get along with them or at least one of them yourself. You have to be clear about it. Just like marriage, it's an all or nothing proposition.
Of course, the beauty of being a MF is that you get to share all of your social experiences and friendships with your spouse, as it should be. And inherently you should be married to your best friend, which is why it's worth all of the surface level scheduling and strange couple (or MF-to-MF) friendships that you endure with your spouse.
No matter how I splice it, I'm now a MF for life, and I'll be a MF to everyone that I meet for the rest of my life. I suppose I should just embrace it, huh?
(In my best Samuel L. Jackson voice) "Pamanda is one hell of a MF."
