As my wife for some reason reminded me recently, most of my closest friends are females. And, as I thought to myself and replied to her at the time, why wouldn’t they be?

Girls, or at least the ones whose company I enjoy, are not only more interesting to talk to than most of the guys I know, but also a great deal prettier to look at in the process. Plus my friendships with females don’t have the built-in limitations of my relationships with fellow hetero males.

Or to put it another way, there’s always the chance with a girl friend – or a risk, if that’s how it strikes you – that those separate, simple constructs ‘girl’ and ‘friend’ will someday coalesce into the altogether more complex and compelling if also potentially explosive concept ‘girlfriend’.

It’s only natural, of course, and even, unless we’re very, very careful, well nigh inevitable. Even the most innocent intimacy with someone of a gender in which we’re interested can all too quickly incite excitement.

In other words, we’re all too prone to starting off as soulmates, quickly developing into playmates and ending-up as bedmates. Or, as someone long ago more succinctly expressed this thought, ‘familiarity breeds attempt’.

silhouette man and woman in shadow 130208 Between people who are single or at least not too firmly otherwise attached, this tendency for friendship to blossom into richer or at least racier relationships may be all very well and good, and even desirable for the future of the human species.

But for someone who’s as married as I am, and as contentedly so, and as committed to remaining that way this time around, it’s a risk too potentially ruinous to run. So I’ve developed a variety of techniques to ensure that my girl friends won’t turn into girlfriends, no matter what.

One of the most reliable of my strategies is to only ever fall in like with people who may be attractive as companions and conversationalists, but utterly out of the question, hanky-pankywise.

Like my near and dear workmate years ago whose lesbianism rendered the possibility of any physical interaction between us absolutely unthinkable. And as if mis-matching sexual preference wasn’t enough to keep us safe and sound in ‘just good friends’ mode, she eventually resettled in New Zealand and I’ve since lost contact with her.

Not nearly so safe by virtue of either gender or geography, however, are most of the other fascinating females I meet. So in these cases I have to either summon up the wisdom to give them a wide berth, or else cultivate as girl friends only those who are clearly as committed to their spouses or steady boyfriends as I am to wedded bliss.

I also take the precaution of introducing prospective girl friends to my wife, so she can see for herself they’re not girlfriend material, and thus feel no reservations about hitting it off with them famously. But not so famously in most cases, fortunately, as one girl friend of 20 years or so.

She has become such bosom buddies with my spouse since they met that, these days, I find myself feeling like the proverbial odd man out in a platonic version of the eternal triangle. Not that I’m the slightest bit jealous, you understand. Losing the occasional girl friend to my wife this way is only to be expected given that, for all the pleasure I take from female company, I’m still, and doubtless always will be, as hopeless as the next guy at girl-talk.

Enter the girlfiend

Besides this and other language difficulties, of course my most powerful protection these days against collecting more girl friends than I or my wife consider good for me, or running the risk that existing girl friends will metamorphose into girlfriends, is my rapidly advancing age.

Most ‘girls’ under forty perceive and treat me like the grandfather than I am, which is a terrible blow to my self-image or at least memory of myself, as quite an acceptable-looking ‘mature’ male.

I used to be able to kid myself that, on a good day or at least in low lighting, I looked quite youthful for my years. But when I happen to catch sight of myself in a reflective surface these days, I find I have finally to face the truth of Dorothy Parker’s deathless dictum, "time wounds all heels".

Not that I’ve ever really thought of myself as a heel, however shabbily I see in retrospect that I may have treated some former girl friends who for a time became girlfriends. In any event, none of my ill-use of them, unintentional or otherwise, ever went long unpunished. It’s one of life’s fundamental truths that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

But as chilling a reality as that is, it’s only half the story. In my personal experience, a girl friend who blossoms into a girlfriend and later gets to feeling even slightly neglected, unappreciated or less than exclusive, let alone outright scorned, has a terrifying way of turning into that most fearsome of figures, a girlfiend.

valentine day 130206 But that, as they say, is another story, and I’m almost out of space here.

Just enough room remaining to do what I set out to in this week’s column: wish my wife, my girl friends, guy friends, and all you singles and couples out there who are still young and foolish enough to be blithely oblivious to the perils of socio-sexual politics, a very happy and sappy Valentine’s Day.