Wingmanning

Over the past few weeks I’ve reconnected with a few friends. I’m grateful to the people in my friend groups who have been open to hosting a handful of us at their place. Being able to reconnect and shoot the shit about the good old days have led to conversations that bring me back to when I was young still in university. Those were the days I still had a couple of brain cells at my disposal. One of the conversations included the many ways I apparently wingmanned my friend to marriage. Here’s one memory he brought up.

Let’s go back to 2016, when my friend was extremely interested in this girl who was loosely in our friend group. At the time, we were unsure of a lot of things – the future, our careers, and the relationship statuses of those we liked. Being the person I was, I wanted to gather as much information as possible which would increase my friend’s chances with her. There was one major source of uncertainty that held him back from asking her out. She had been dating someone when we all had first met, although she seldom mentioned this relationship.

Asking someone if they’re single is hard, right? Sometimes you don’t want them to know that you’re interested in them. While brainstorming on how we could approach this delicate situation in his basement, I came up with this idea. I was seeing someone at the time, why don’t I ask her out on a double date? This is how we got our answer.

Maybe this isn’t really conventional wingmanning, where I’m with him at a bar and I’m trying to make him look cool or something to impress some random girl. Regardless, this brief conversation, aided by my other friend’s (in the screenshot) brutal rejection of wanting to go on a double date, set off a chain of events that led to them being together, six years in the future. I’m glad that I could offer him a push on the back, no matter how gentle that push may have been.