From the Archives: February 6th, 1981

‘That’s what The Man in My Life says” agreed a friend recently, in a passing comment about a mutual matter. It was a suitably ambiguous definition of what, ten years ago, would have been mentioned as: “That’s what my boyfriend says . . .”

Nowadays boyfriends exists only among the lower middle classes, being exalted to “fiancé” after a formal engagement. “Blokes” and “me fella” still survive, as threatened species, in the alleged “working class”.

Husbands may be found only in settled communities like Clontarf and Dundrum and maybe sometimes spotted in supermarkets throughout the country on a Saturday morning, performing that most useful of husbandly functions -- pushing a mobile cage of foodstuffs, of which they seem a packaged part. Like the keeper in the zoo.

For the rest – and especially for the free-wheeling females under 30 who live in flats and apartments – the male of the variety, in all his variegated hues, is being more and more loosely kept on a long lead. The lead has at the end of it a tag which reads: “The Man in My Life . . .”

More correctly, 'The man in My Life', for the emphasis is now on her Life. The man in her Life may in time assume the status of fiancé or husband but for the present – in flatland – he exists in a limbo-land. The changing status of women has relegated him to an ambiguity of identity. Such men are usually the escorts of women who have economic independence. Such men may indeed regard themselves as the husband/lover/boyfriend or what have you of the lady in question. But few of them realise the extent to which, among Her Friends, he is anonymously "the man in My Life . . ."

Let us give you some examples. A woman with whom I regularly do business periodically mentions the man in Her Life. Yet when I meet her at functions and such, he is one of two alternating men.

Sometimes, instead, she will have her husband in tow, without either of the other two. It seems to me she has at least three men in Her Life.

She will breezily refer to a television programme: “I watched it with the man in My Life and he says . . .” My difficulty is that, in the course of meeting one of the three men in some other context, I am about to say – “I gather you enjoyed – . . .” when I falter in mid-sentence and I become an Instant Amnesiac, in order to avoid unwitting domestic intrigue.

To compound matters she may then cheerfully mention "I gather you met such-and-such at so-and-so's. By the way, are you alright? He wondered if you had developed a speech impediment?"

As more and more of the salaried young things set up home and residence with men of indeterminate status, so the ambiguity spreads among hoteliers, car-hire firms and travel agents.

Being nothing if not form-fillers, these industries have coped well enough with the coupling that supplies an increasing part of their business. They have become adept at enquiring, without batting a telephonic eyelid: “Yes, Miss O’Flaherty – and in whose name shall I book the rooms (car, holiday)?”

Another usage that is spikeful of implications is “relationship”. Once mainly used by solicitors disbursing wills and by Registrars of Births and Deaths, the word is now common coinage, again mainly among the women of earning means.

‘She is having a relationship with . . .” – you will hear, or, more personally, “The great thing about our relationship is . . .” – or “the trouble with my relationship is that . . .”

Even married women of sense and sensibility, I notice, are using the term with frequency – which implies an ongoing scrutiny of their marriage. The linguistic implication is that some husbands risk being relegated to “the man in My Life” – ie put into the same category as boyfriend.

Now there’s a threat to the status of many husbands. Men formerly happy in the First Possessive Case of “My Wife” are no longer being conversationally treated with the automatic reciprocity of “My Husband”. Which means their status is not what it was, neither in title nor tithe, neither in substance nor in law.

Read the original here

Selected by Joe Joyce