Terminology Saves Sanity
So a friend of mine just dumped a guy. He went to her birthday dinner and spent the whole time talking to a new "friend" that he invited along, who he was vibing with. Her friends and family at the dinner was confused and perturbed. Spent the time that the birthday girl was in the bathroom complaining to new friend that his current girlfriend doesn't have the same easy vibe with him.
Mutual friend calls him out for being an ass and he's all defensive, and immediately gets ropes the birthday girl into the argument as she comes back to the table. He stalks off, awkward new friend leaves with him.
Dude gets home that night (after dropping the new friend off) and is shocked and sad that his girlfriend is so insecure. Girlfriend looks at him flatly and says, "You're monkeybranching. Get out. We're done."
Friend assures me, five years ago she might have tried to explain to him how fucking disrespectful it is to chat someone up right in front of your girlfriend. Let alone at her birthday dinner. She might have tried to convince him that her feelings were hurt, that their relationship deserved his attention, etc.
But this time she just said no, told him what he was doing was shitty, that his transparency was insulting, that he is reckless with the feelings of others, and told him to leave. He literally took out his phone to look up what monkeybranching is, and she said it looked like the all the color had been drained from his entire head.
Anyway, I don't have a witty conclusion to this, just a statement that sometimes, having new terms for concepts we've known all along can be helpful.
