Beware the Margarine Man

“He was a margarine man, anyway.”

This is what my friend Amanda said of the guy — let’s call him Ryan — with whom my latest more-than-dating/not-quite-actual-relationship situation (is there a word for that?) had fizzled.

Both single and dating, Amanda and I are always trying to help each other see the truth about our relationships — no easy task when it’s your friend’s heart on the line. You want to give her the eyes you have for a relationship, as an emotionally uninvolved outsider looking in. You want your words to be true, but not nasty — accurate, but not critical.

Amanda and I are also both bakers, serious bakers. We learned from our moms and grandmas, we know the power of a good batch of cookies, and we take pride in using ingredients that are quality and real.

We’ve watched each other tolerate plenty of nonsense in dating situations, but there’s one thing neither of us would tolerate in our kitchen: margarine.

Calling Ryan a margarine man, Amanda’s effect was clear and immediate. Say no more, my friend, I thought. I think I hear, possibly for the first time ever, just what you’re trying to tell me about this guy.

What, precisely, she was saying isn’t something I could have named at the time. All I knew was that margarine said it all. I gave up on the Ryan idea and never looked back.

It was over a year later before I realized what Amanda had meant. I was telling a story about a failed dating situation to a friend — this friend male and married, bless him — when he challenged how I’d handled it. He said maybe I shouldn’t have given up on the guy in question; he didn’t seem so bad.

My friend’s point surprised me, because I agreed with him completely. The guy hadn’t been so bad. In fact, in a lot of ways, he had been awesome. “But that was exactly the problem with him!” I said. “He seemed good, but he just…he just…”

Finally it hit me. “He just wasn’t date-able.”

My friend’s face tweaked with a cringing smile. I felt immediately self-conscious — guess that didn’t come out right. “You might want to find a different way to say that,” he said. “Saying someone isn’t date-able sounds pretty mean.”

I didn’t want to be mean, but I did need to be honest.

And that’s when I knew exactly what Amanda had been saying about Ryan. Sure, his best-advertised traits (the ones I was focusing on), like margarine’s, all seemed like a good idea at first. But Amanda saw the shadow side of the margarine man, and thank goodness.

Traits of the Margarine Man

• Attractive.
• Convenient, often enough.
• Seems like a really good idea on paper — or a nutrition label.
• It’s easy to focus on one or two of his best traits. You remind yourself of them often: “But he’s so great, he contains no saturated fats!”
• Friends might point out that the healthful virtue of said best trait is actually up for debate…plus, how genuine is he, really?
• Over time, you find yourself craving nuance and flavor you didn’t even know you were missing.
• Maybe he’s not as versatile as you thought he was — just look at how he melts down!
• Um, is this guy a wannabe? Whatever he is…it ain’t the real thing.
• Damn. This was not a heart-healthy choice, after all.

Maybe this does sound mean. But sometimes you just need to call margarine man (or margarine woman, as the case may be), and move the eff on.

Thanks to all the friends out there like Amanda, who figure out how to say margarine right when we need to hear it.