Not so very long ago, my three close single girlfriends and I spent an inordinate amount of time feeling bad -- and talking about feeling bad -- about not having boyfriends. In the many years we had been friends, there were always, at any given moment, at least two of us who were completely unattached. The men we found usually fell into the traditional categories: gay, married, egotistical, afraid of commitment, or hung up on mom. When a girlfriend found one with a sliver of potential, he inevitably failed to call back after the first or second date. This necessitated a thorough debriefing with the gaggle of us over alcoholic beverages in an attempt to figure out what the hell went wrong.

We were the McLaughlin Group of dating. We rapidly spat out the Top Five Reasons Why He's a Great Big Jerk. We launched into wide-ranging, freeform discussion of topics like Things To Do To Avoid Thinking About Butthead. We even had a loud, drunken, overbearing member (usually me . . . okay, always me) close out each week's "show" by shouting down her friends with her interpretation of the situation, while the rest ignored her. Through these regular bitch sessions, as well as our group retail-therapy excursions, we created the bonds that last a lifetime -- girlfriend bonds.

Then one day, those bonds were threatened. In a supremely ironic twist, it was the very men we coveted who threatened to tear our happy gaggle asunder. They weren't doing it on purpose, of course. We bore all the responsibility for what happened. For the first time in our history, each and every one of us had a terrific boyfriend. A really terrific boyfriend. A boyfriend of the oh-my-God-where-have-you-been-for-the-last-thirtysomething-years ilk. They were (and are) nice, funny, romantic, and kind. They even got along with each other.

You'd think we'd be thrilled.

We were thrilled. But it must be said: we were also a little unsure how to handle the situation, having never actually encountered it before. It's easy to proclaim, "Men come and go, but girlfriends are forever" when the men are, in fact, coming and going. It is when the men stick around that girlfriendship encounters its truest test. What happens to relationships forged against a common enemy when you finally lay down your arms and make peace with that enemy? (Indeed, crawl into bed with the enemy.)

For one thing, the McLaughlin Group of dating became a thing of the past. The last time we had a girls' night out, here's how the conversation went:

Me: So how's your man?

Girlfriend: He's great. We're totally happy. How're things going with you and your boy?

Me: We're really happy, too.

How dull is that? We started spending a lot more time talking about work, or our uniformly dysfunctional families, or the problems in the Middle East. Sometimes, when we got really desperate for something juicy to nosh on, we hyper-analyzed the man problems of girlfriends who weren't even in the room. Occasionally, we'd talk about our men's relative slovenliness or snoring. Sometimes little boyfriend troubles plagued one of us, but instead of dismissing them as the actions of a great big jerk, we found ourselves looking at the situation from the boyfriend's point of view. We were dramatically renegotiating the terms of our relationships with one another.

The new terms included hardly ever seeing each other. When you fall in love, you and your honey pull the blanket of l'amour over your heads and create a warm, snuggly cocoon that no one dares disturb until you come up for air. This usually lasts from four to six months. In the meantime, you completely neglect your girlfriends. It's okay. We understand. We would do the same. In fact, we did. We all met our boyfriends at roughly the same time, and we went for unnaturally long periods without seeing each other. During one of these black holes, the gaggle collectively experienced two layoffs, a promotion, the purchase of two houses, and six separate weeklong vacations. Any one of these events would have been grounds for a major girls' night out back when we were all still on the market. Instead, they barely rated an e- mail.

When we all finally did come up for air, we were officially coupled. This meant that when we started getting together again, we did things as couples. Instead of talking to one another, a great deal of our time was spent listening to our gregarious boyfriends discuss the latest trends in heavy metal, or relaying the details of our latest couple vacation. When we tried to arrange a girls' night, one or another of us invariably misinterpreted the invitation and invited her man, and the event spontaneously combusted in favor of another couples' night. We loved the couples' nights, but I for one desperately missed the regular company and intimacy of the gaggle, even if our conversations no longer degenerated into a discussion of the Top Five Reasons To Hate Men.

The tables had turned. Suddenly, it was harder to get a date with my girlfriends than it had been to get a date with a man. But the rarer a thing is, the more you value it. Although we love our guys madly, we also realized how much we missed each other. Lately, we've taken to booking our girls' nights weeks in advance. We repair to the living room when the boys talk heavy metal and get in as much girl time as we can. We steal calls to each other during our busy workdays. We've started treating each other like special treats, instead of psychotherapists. Now that we all have the boyfriends we wanted, we realize that the girlfriend thing isn't a substitute for a lover, but a precious bond unto itself. And fortunately, it's very resilient.

Kris Frieswick can be reached at krisf1@verizon.net.

Issue Date: May 24 - 30, 2002