Beyond the Binary: Finding My Person in a Software Engineer's Girlfriend
It started, as many modern friendships do, as a casual add-on. "I'm meeting my friend Sameer for drinks, he's bringing his girlfriend," the text read. In my mind, a vague, stock image formed. I didn't mean for it to, but the label "Software Engineer's Girlfriend" came with its own set of preconceived notions, like a default CSS style sheet for a person.
I pictured someone who was either also in tech, ready to talk shop about APIs and agile methodologies, or someone completely outside of it, patiently nodding along, her eyes glazing over as the conversation inevitably drifted towards debugging and deployment cycles.
When I met Anika, she was neither.
Our first few hangouts were exactly as predicted. The conversation was a triangle. Sameer and my other tech friends would be at two points, deep in a discussion about a new JavaScript framework, and Anika and I would be the third, making small talk about the weather, the terrible traffic in Kanpur, or how good the chili paneer was. The conversations were pleasant, but shallow, like paddling in the kiddy pool while the deep-end conversation happened a few feet away. I liked her, but I saw her through the lens of Sameer. She was "Sameer's Anika."
The shift was so subtle I almost missed it. We were at a crowded house party, and the tech contingent had formed a tight circle, excitedly debating the ethics of a new AI model. Anika caught my eye from across the room and gave a tiny, almost imperceptible eye-roll. I grinned back. It was a silent, two-person conspiracy.
A few minutes later, we found ourselves on the balcony, away from the hum of servers and syntax.
"I swear," she said, leaning against the railing, "if I have to hear the word 'algorithm' one more time tonight, I might just short-circuit."
I laughed, a real, genuine laugh. "I get it. Sometimes I feel like I need a glossary just to hang out with my own friends."
That was it. That was the spark. For the first time, we weren't talking around the tech world; we were bonding over our shared experience as loving insiders-who-were-also-outsiders.
That night, I learned that Anika wasn't just "Sameer's girlfriend." She was a textile designer who could spend hours talking about the history of ikat dyeing. She had a wicked sense of humor, a fierce love for street food, and an opinion on every historical drama on Netflix. She was a fully-formed person who just happened to be dating a guy who wrote code for a living.
Our friendship blossomed, completely independent of Sameer. We started a "No Tech Talk" brunch club. We'd hunt for the best chole bhature in the city, spend afternoons in dusty bookshops, and send each other memes that had absolutely nothing to do with programming. She became the person I’d text when I had a terrible day, the one I’d call to celebrate a small win.
Sameer was thrilled. "It's so great you two get along," he'd say, happily oblivious to the fact that our friendship was now a thriving ecosystem of its own, no longer a subplot in his story.
It taught me something important about the labels we use. We often define people by their proximity to others—someone's sister, someone's colleague, someone's girlfriend. But those are just coordinates. They aren't the destination. Anika wasn't a "Software Engineer's Girlfriend." She was, and is, Anika. And I'm incredibly lucky to call her my friend.