What in the world does 'boyfriend' mean?

Boyfriend is a girl's (or boy's) male love interest. There may be sexual relations, or not, but a boyfriend is a candidate for a partner/mate, and usually the precursor to a husband.

I always wondered why a girl could go out and have fun with her "girlfriend" but a guy talking about his "boyfriend" always resulted in raised eyebrows and snickering.

Hell, I wonder if anyone "goes steady" anymore?

Apparently these days it means 'guy you screw' or 'guy you want to screw and have maybe kissed on occasion'.

Intimacy is a rather odd duck these days. People want to blurt out, "I love you!" to strangers who they find attractive. And, at the same time, they get a ton of positive signals and still need for it to be signed, sealed, delivered because OH MY GOD I MIGHT FAIL AND BE REJECTED.

It also means long-term (where long-term, apparently, is defined as a couple of weeks) online connection only. Of course instantaneous international communications creates this. And lonely folks project all sorts of fantasies onto people who they only see at their best and when it's convenient, who they never smell or see their dirty rooms or failure to pay bills or do housework or the like. Those people make it so the local folks don't stand a chance, when the local folks do the same. And, of course, the local folks end up becoming the projected fantasies for people somewhere else.

Real people sweat. They fart. They hog the covers. They snore. They forget birthdays. They are sometimes short until payday. They get tired and cranky, and they sometimes show up at inconvenient times. And you have to spend money on them.

But they're real.

Ah, how refreshing! You both understood me, me with the confusing sentence that I didn't catch in time.

The big change from my days of being a teen or even later on has been that back then we didn't ask each other for advice. We might mention we were dating Clifford or Johnny (I didn't have a Clifford, but I still remember thinking my friend's boyfriend had (to me then) a funny name.

Instead, I read magazines like Seventeen, or later, Mademoiselle, and, after that, with some wincing, Cosmopolitan. I even read a booklet my parents (well, hey, my mother) left around on a table undoubtedly for me to see, re sin and going to hell if you died in an accident after a mortal sin of the flesh. The Liguorian was the name of the booklet. They are still around, as I looked it up now to be sure of my spelling. I made my own way, though, taking the magazine columns with grains of salt.

Somewhere along the line, I even read Esquire (still do, once in a while, but for different reasons now).

So, all these years later, I am reading over and over people online in anguish who can't seem to do any thinking with out help.

For me, no advice from mother, she didn't know how and left it to the nuns, little from dad along those lines, but he and I talked a lot about other stuff.

I did have girlfriend groups, most always have, and we talked about a lot of matters - just weren't asking for advice.
We called ourselves The Smart Ass Group, a name given to us when we went as a group to see El Cordobes in a bullfight in Tijuana, and some guys gave us that name, guys from a family of one of our group.

This makes re realize anew how lucky I was to have those strong friends all this time. Grown women, apparently early with opinions. We did help each other a lot over the years, but not with dollops of advice syrup...

Well, one thing to keep in mind is, this group is self-selecting. The people who think they don't need advice don't come here.

But yeah, instant-ish international communications plus a hurry-up culture don't help. And I think we really messed up as a culture about 20 years ago, getting to be more like 30 now. And the idea was (in the wake of AIDS in particular), only have sex with someone you love. That is a beautiful sentiment, and it was of course well-intentioned. But life didn't work out that way. Instead of elevating sex, it cheapened love. Now people toss around the love when what they really mean is attraction/horniness.

True. Or are here for different interesting discussions.

Totally get and agree with your second paragraph. I hadn't quite thought about it as clearly as you said before you said it.

I, of course, am a former sometime slut and not sorry about it. Wouldn't have missed it.

Not all that long, as the crow flies, but memorable.

Maybe You Should Just Be Single