I don’t know if this is just me but, I find myself having a lot of troubles remembering female Chinese names. For some strange reasons, female Chinese names don’t seem to be able to stick inside my memory at all. They’re like, malicious worm programs that get filtered out by my innate antivirus system or something. This was especially frustrating for my wife Emily, as I keep forgetting her friends’ names, which can occasionally be quite embarrassing, but most of the time, just difficult for her to kibbitz about somebody to me (which she thought would be a waste of effort if I don’t really know who she was talking about…)

But then being a reasonable person that she is, she understands my problems, and she knows that being a bitch about it won’t help either. So we kinda developed this tacit solution for my problem over the years in our relationship. I, will try my best to remember her friends with Chinese names, and she on the other hand, will help me remembering them. Take special note on the phrase - ‘remember her friends with Chinese names‘. It’s completely different from ‘remember her friends’ Chinese names‘. If you don’t get it, here’s a scenario to help you out:

Emily introduces me to her female ex-colleague, Xiao Huey, for the first time. I told Emily that Xiao Huey looks like an oversized hamster and went on to forget her name the next minute. Fast forward 1 year later, Emily relates a story about Xiao Huey to me,

Emily: “Dear, do you remember my ex-colleague Xiao Huey?”

Me: “No I don’t.”

Emily: “The girl that you said looked like a giant hamster?”

Me: “Oh… her! Yes, what about her?”

Emily: [yakety yak]

The scenario above was a true event that actually occurred, though the name ‘Xiao Huey’ was fictional (because I don’t fucking remember her friend’s name)

But it is a beautiful workaround, ain’t it?
a) I get to retain my personality… and at the same time,
b) I also get to express what I feel about my wife’s friends without qualms,
c) my wife gets to do her gossip shit without any technical setback…

You see when a woman gets to do her gossip shit regularly, she’d get her ample dose of de-stressing and that in turn, translates to more bliss for the boyfriend/husband. It’s a win-win situation (well, more like ‘not to lose too much’ for the guy, actually…)

This is one of the many tricks that you can adopt to make a relationship a less stressful affair.

So, if you’re a forgetful (or eccentric, if that’s what you want to call me, I don’t really give a crap) person like I am, this can be a solution for you - remember their distinctive features instead of names, you know, like… the chick with a huge motherfucking nose, lopsided droopy eyes, reminded you of incredible hulk, etc. If the trick works for me, and there should not be any reason why it cannot work for you. All you need to do, is to convince your other half… (and thence, nobody should ever complain that you didn’t do no shit for the relationship…)