The Luv Doc: An Excellent Wingman

Dear Luv Doc,

My boyfriend has a really obnoxious friend who is always trying to get him to go out drinking to clubs and parties because he says my boyfriend is "an excellent wingman." I'm sure that's true because he is good-looking, funny, smart, and confident in all kinds of social situations, but it really annoys me that his friend is shamelessly using my boyfriend to pick up women and he hasn't even asked me how I feel about it. How does he not get that it isn't OK? My boyfriend says his friend probably thinks it's no big deal because I am so beautiful – his words, not mine – that my boyfriend would never be tempted, but I think that's a lame excuse. Should I be OK with this? I'm sure you're going to say I am being overly sensitive, but I'm not the jealous type and I don't have low self-esteem, I just think this behavior is dangerous. Should I demand that he stop being his friend's chick magnet?

– The Wingman's Woman

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You could certainly make that demand and you would be fully within your rights to do so, but demands are a bit of a blunt instrument in a relationship. Blunt instruments can be effective, but they're messy and unreliable. For instance: You could probably kill a wild boar with a Louisville Slugger, but unless you're insanely jacked like the Rock or painstakingly precise with the placement of that first hit, it's going to come down to endurance, toughness, and perseverance. Normal people don't have the stomach for that kind of brutal, blood-soaked slug-out. Look, I don't even know you, but if you told me you were going to try and kill a wild boar with a baseball bat, I would be putting my money on the wild boar killing you first, because I feel like that's a safe bet for around 95% of the American populace. We're soft. Way softer than wild pigs.

That ugly little bit of cold, hard reality is what makes Lord of the Flies a completely implausible work of fiction. There is just no way a group of British schoolboys is going to kill a wild pig. Actually, let me rephrase that: There is no way in hell a group of preteen British schoolboys would be able to kill a wild pig by first stabbing it in the anus with a sharpened stick and then slitting its throat. Do some goddamned research, Golding. The most likely scenario is that the pig would kill and eat all the British schoolboys long before they got a sharpened stick anywhere near its asshole. Yes, you can absolutely quote me on that. That's an extremely tall order for a grownass adult, even someone as swole as the Rock. If you feel confident you can prove me wrong, give me a call. I'd like to shoot some video.

Anyway, there's no need to blindly flail at this wild boar with a Louisville Slugger – especially when something much more subtle will suffice. All you need to do is to agree with your overly willing wingman boyfriend that he is indeed providing an invaluable service to his boorish friend. Then, casually suggest that you have been considering providing a similar service to one of your single friends on a regular basis. You'll of course need to dress provocatively, throw a lot of eyebrow-raising come-hither looks, and sauce up your barstool banter with shockingly salacious innuendo, but what's a little risky behavior compared to the important work of helping your friends bait-and-switch their way to an easy shag? After all, they say that the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others, right? If not, why do glory holes even exist?

I doubt your boyfriend can answer that question either, so don't sweat it. Just know that everybody needs a little help now and then, and there's no shame in asking for it. However, when someone starts asking for help on a regular basis, it begins to feel more like a grift. It sounds to me like either your boyfriend is getting grifted by his friend, or he is wingmanning for some other reason he isn't telling you. Maybe he is enjoying his nights on the town. Either way, there is a double standard here that you can easily exploit to make your point. What's good for the gander should also be good for the goose. No, that wasn't a Top Gun reference, it was an anachronistic ornithological metaphor about gender equality. And hey, if this all seems too complicated, you can always just lay your cards on the table and say that you feel threatened by your boyfriend's ongoing willingness to help his friend pick up women. If he truly doesn't get that, he's not being an excellent wingman to you.