My wife’s new best friend is a dog.

As a previous best friend I always knew it would happen one day.

Replaced? Yes. Instantly and without a backward glance.

I have to say I get a chuckle when people post anniversary posts about marrying their best friend because that’s not really how I think about my wife. Best friends don’t fight as much as we do, or at least as much as we used to…

My best friend’s name in high school was Jason and I never wanted to marry him because that’s creepy. I did eventually try to transfer the “best friend concept” to Erin some months after he introduced us, but Erin failed to understand what I was looking for in a best friend:

Someone who shares my interests, watches sports, talks me into doing what I already wanted to do, laughs at all my jokes, has my back when I attempt stupid things in search of adrenaline rushes and/or drives me to the hospital after.

Erin does none of these things except offer to drive me to the hospital, which I have yet to take her up on because I’m not a big baby. I would literally have to be physically unable to drag myself into a car to hand her my man card and let her drive me to the hospital.

“Mr Kope? You’re next. Is this an emergency?”

Me: “Um….”

Emergencies to a Kope male assumes the loss of more than one limb or being struck as a pedestrian by something bigger than a compact car.

“Mrs Kope? Is this an emergency?”

Erin: “Yes! Obviously!! I carried his arms in!!! Don’t listen to him, he’s an idiot!” (She wouldn’t say the last part but she’d think it)

If she was my best friend she would get it. Ironically if she was my best guy friend I’d probably go to the hospital more.

“Dude! That doesn’t look good! We’re going to the hospital.”

See the difference in a marriage approach and a best friend approach? Best friends just tell each other what to do and we let them.

So I know technically I have to say Erin is my best friend or I look like a bad husband, but she’s a little more than somebody I go to movies with every now and again, she’s somebody I go to movies with and think about making out in the theatre.

Big difference.

But whatever I previously was to Erin I’ve been replaced. And quickly!

Our friends have a dog named Harley. I’m not sure exactly what kind of dog because my brain has a single category called “Dog” that all dogs are filed in. Erin just told me he might be a Shih Tzu/ Spaniel cross or something for all you dog-sympathizers out there.

Harley is like 100 years old in dog years and physically looks like an old man. He has a glorious underbite and his front legs are turned impossibly outward and all of this makes him irresistible to Erin.

Harley has some massive advantage over friendship with me and they are as follows:

Harley looks like an old man. I’m not an old man and Erin loves old men. She once ordered me to buy a painting from an old Cuban man in the market and that she “Didn’t care which one or how much”. I also didn’t care which one but I absolutely cared about how much, though none of that matter because Erin glared me into price submission.

One day I’ll be an old man and maybe she’ll like me.

Harley’s other advantage is he’s, well, a dog. Dogs don’t disagree with you and let you emotionally feel whatever you want to and have no expectations about what time dinner is and cuddle whenever YOU want to.

Yeah…

His overbite makes him absolutely adorable and my teeth are just normal human teeth I think and that makes me dentally undesirable to Erin, not that it’s a competition because I was never in the running.

Harley potters around our friend’s house and Erin gets her Harley-Fix several times a week. I don’t feel jealous because I’m better than that and it would be hard to explain that I’m jealous about a dog to psychologist anyways.

And Harley is not the most threatening type of personality, because apparently dogs have personalities now.

Before I met Erin I would occasionally SEE dogs, but now we MEET them.

So Erin and I are watching a movie at home during the recent zombie outbreak because we were somehow unable to keep the outbreak down AND not destroy the rest of life as we know it, and she turns to me and says

“Before tonight is over buy a dog or buy a motorcycle”

Because I’m morally opposed to funding my own replacement I’m taking the high ground and buying the motorcycle. (Cough cough)