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Shikha Sharma
My husband met my friends six weeks into our relationship.
This was not the plan. The plan was somewhere around the four-to-six-month mark, after we had established sufficient relationship stability to survive external observation, after I had sufficiently updated my friends on who he was and what he was like, and after I had coached him, gently but specifically, on which topics to avoid and which friends required what kind of handling.
None of this happened. What happened instead was a coincidence at a birthday dinner where he was invited by the host who happened to know us both, which I found out about twenty minutes before the dinner when it was too late to do anything except arrive and manage the situation in real time.
I arrived at the dinner. He was already there. My friends were already there. They had been talking for eleven minutes before I walked in.
Eleven minutes. Eleven minutes of unmediated access to my entire friend group, with no briefing, no coaching, no strategic framing of who he was. Eleven minutes of him being exactly himself, without me there to provide context or manage impressions.
I sat down. Priya immediately said oh he is very funny. I said yes. She said he told us about the thing with the keys. I looked at him. He smiled in the way he smiles when he has said something that went well. He had apparently already told a story that involved a running joke in our relationship and the table had laughed and he was comfortable and my friends had decided they liked him before I had even arrived.
We were having chai and Sunfeast Marie Light at some point later in the evening and I said to him quietly that the plan had been to do this differently. He said what plan. I said the plan where I introduced him properly. He said it seemed to have gone fine. I said that was not the point. He looked at me with the expression of someone who does not fully understand what the point is.
What I Had Been Planning
I had a specific approach.
The approach involved telling each friend, individually, the relevant things about him before they met him. Not propaganda. Accurate information, selectively ordered to produce the correct initial impression. The correct initial impression being: this person is good and worth knowing and I am happy and you can trust him.
My friends would have received this briefing and then met him with the briefing in mind and the briefing would have shaped the initial assessment and the initial assessment would have been positive.
Instead they met him with no briefing and formed their own initial assessment, which was also positive, but which was formed without any of my input.
This is what bothered me. Not that it went badly. That it went well without me.
My friend Meera had a similar experience in reverse. Her husband met her friends at a house party where he arrived early and she arrived late. By the time she got there he had been talking to her closest friend for forty minutes. Her closest friend had formed a strong positive opinion. Meera said she felt oddly left out of a positive thing that was happening to her. She had wanted to be there for the forming of the opinion. She had missed it.
Her friend said she liked him very much. Meera said thank you. She is still not sure thank you was the right response.
The Version They Met
The version of him my friends met at the birthday dinner was the version he is when he is comfortable and performing slightly for an audience.
This is his best version. I know this. He is very good in rooms when he is comfortable. He is funny and warm and he listens well and he makes people feel like they are interesting.
I had been planning to tell my friends this. Instead they experienced it directly.
This was, objectively, better. A briefing that says he is funny and warm does not produce the same result as sitting next to him for eleven minutes while he is actually funny and warm. The experience is better evidence than the briefing.
My friend Kabir met his wife's friends before she was ready and has a different story. The friends had heard about him but not in detail. He was quieter than expected, which her friends had interpreted as reserved. It took three more meetings before the quietness was understood as thoughtfulness rather than reservation. The first impression had been correct but incomplete and the correction took time.
He said if she had briefed them in advance, the quietness would have been understood immediately as one of his qualities rather than a question mark. The briefing matters when the person is complex. It is less necessary when the person presents clearly. He does not present clearly in new rooms. He takes time.
His wife agrees the briefing would have helped. She has thought about this. She has not found a way to go back and redo the first eleven meetings.
What Happened After
My friends like my husband. This is a good outcome.
They formed their own opinion of him, without my input, and the opinion is positive, and I trust the opinion because it was formed independently. If anything the independent formation makes the opinion more reliable. They are not liking him because I told them to. They liked him because of the eleven minutes and the keys story and the subsequent dinners.
I have let go of the plan. Not because the plan was bad. Because the outcome was good despite the plan not happening, which tells me something about the plan.
My friend Priya said something useful about this. She said we prepare briefs because we are afraid of our people not liking the person we chose and the fear is really about whether our choice reflects well on us. The brief is a way of managing the risk that our judgment will be questioned. She said if he is who you think he is, the brief is not necessary. If he is not who you think he is, the brief will not help.
She said this more gently than I am summarising it.
She was right. He was who I thought he was. The eleven minutes showed it.
I have stopped being bothered by the eleven minutes.
I am a little bit glad I missed them.
