A friend of mine went through a break-up a little while ago. The relationship had been long-distance for a while, and eventually she just said she wasn’t getting her needs met with the two of them living on separate coasts (she was going to school in LA). Most of our mutual friends had a sort of good-riddance approach to the breakup – someone said to me specifically that she was “happy they broke up because she was boring.”

This bothers me on two levels.

First, it sort of discounts his feelings – he obviously found her interesting! And the breakup definitely weighed on him. I understand the quasi-universal desire to disparage the other party in these situations, but calling her boring asserts she wasn’t being amusing enough to his friends, and who cares about that?

Second, I’m coming to the realization that I’m sort of boring, too. Ask me what I do outside of work and I sort of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ a little bit, then weakly say “well, I read books and make jokes on the twitter” and that doesn’t impress anyone. I was on a date recently and found myself trying to explain that I didn’t watch TV or go to the movies very much, not out of judgment or disdain but I just didn’t have the habit? And it was just incredibly awkward, because I think she assumed I was some sort of cultural caveman who wouldn’t understand if she dropped a reference to Broad City.

But the implication of “happy because she was boring”… people shouldn’t date people who aren’t immediately engaging to their friends? It just bugs me.