Trust Your Gut, Trust Your Pets

Dear Priscilla,

My boyfriend and I have been dating for two years, and he's been pushing me to introduce him to my friend group. I feel hesitant, but I'm not sure why. Should I take the leap and let him meet my people?

—Sarah from Portland, Oregon

What a lovely question, Sarah—it reminds me of the spring of 1997, when I too believed that shared laughter was worth the vulnerability.

That's when I introduced Derek—the insurance adjuster—to my college roommates. Within weeks, he'd borrowed their book recommendations, their inside jokes, their entire social vocabulary. He'd repackage their observations as his own wisdom at future dinners. But that wasn't even the real betrayal. Do not make my mistake, Sarah. The actual destruction came during the casual potluck that summer—or possibly the winter of 2004, I've given up reconciling it—when Derek decided my most private shame was public entertainment. I'd once microwaved a croissant, you see. A croissant. He told everyone. They never recovered from knowing I was capable of such culinary violence. I could see it in their eyes at every gathering after: there's the croissant woman.

The second Derek (there were two Dereks; they arrived three years apart and also simultaneously, depending on how you count) damaged me differently. He was the one who attended my 2003 housewarming. Or my 2007 housewarming—again, timelines blur when your trust has been that thoroughly eviscerated. He arrived with my best friend's casserole recipe. She'd given it to me in confidence, hand-written on her grandmother's card stock. He brought the exact same dish and claimed to have invented it. Sarah, do you understand what that is? That is theft of feminine legacy.

That's why I've learned the only voice you can fully trust is your own. I'd suggest you build a separate existence. Several P.O. boxes under different names. Tell your boyfriend your friends have relocated—a topiary cultivation collective in Vermont, a falcon sanctuary in Arizona. Join one yourself. Or both. Live simply and carefully. Trust no one but yourself and, with the utmost caution, reptiles.

And I promise you, Sarah: follow this wisdom, and you'll be as genuinely, completely happy as I am.

Warmly, Priscilla