Dating A Musician Ain't Easy

It's pretty easy to fall for a musician. Most of them are hugely talented - how can you not swoon for a guy with an amazing voice who can get up in front of hundreds of people and captivate them. They have awesome creative ideas, and drive. They're resillient - given they work in an industry that comes with more setbacks than most - and have an imaginative, idealistic quality that most grown adults seem to have lost somewhere along the way.

Plenty of them have an erratic craziness and spontaneity that comes hand in hand with their creativity, which makes them real fun to be around, and many wear their heart on their sleeve, which makes communicating a dream. But dating a musician is no easy ride - in the words of Journey, it ain't always what it's supposed to be.

One thing immediately becomes very clear. You will always be the sidechick – music is the real girlfriend.

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You'll probably be around the band enough to know backstage life isn’t the R-rated Gucci Mane video clip you first thought, and mostly just a lot of standing around.

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...but there will still always be beautiful girls also standing around backstage, making you feel insecure.

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When he's away on tour, you'll start having paranoid dreams that he has a whole other tour girlfriend on the side...

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...leaving you always wondering if those lyrics supposedly about you are really about you.

He’ll regularly be plagued with self-doubt about his creative abilities...

...and it will become your job to ensure he doesn't throw in the towel on the whole music thing by assuring him of his immense talent.

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He'll have way more followers than you on Instagram.

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And he'll selectively ensure you're not in any of the shots on his profile so as not to disillusion the dedicated female proportion of those followers:

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The female groupies will find your Instagram anyway, and troll you with with jealous comments (“this is her”).

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If you live together, your house will be overtaken with gear, and you’ll constantly be tripping over cords and guitar cases. Your tiny one bedroom apartment starts to double as a recording studio.

Between the riders and the drink cards, he’ll always be drunk. He’ll come home later than you (standing alone gets boring), and mostly keep the hours of a vampire. Forget ever going out for breakfast before midday.

If you pool your finances, it will start to feel like you’re working around the clock/multiple jobs to support him, while he has all the fun...telling yourself it will all be worth it when he gets famous. So you loan him the money to get a new guitar.

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If he isn’t on tour, he’ll be playing hometown shows, and a large proportion of your quality time together as a couple will be spent at rowdy venues and sweaty clubs.

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He'll be busy setting up, soundchecking, performing, networking with "very important music people"...they're all talking shop and you end up just feeling awkward but trying not to show it.

You have to watch the same set over and over, weekend after weekend - you know every lyric and every last lighting cue. Things will get boring. Your friends who used to come to every gig will now only come to a handful, which means you'll mostly end up drinking alone.

In a bid to be a good girlfriend you might drive the band around, sell merch...

Or use your marketing or organisational skills to help them where you can, especially if they don't have a manager…

...until his bandmates start to interpret all that free help as you being too controlling, and come to resent you. That's if they don't already resent you for drawing their bandmate's focus away from his music.

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If his band goes international, they'll be on tour for months on end. Your +1 will be absent from most dinner parties, work events, engagements and formal occasions.

You’ll miss out on heaps of his all-time experiences and life-changing moments; which will mostly be relayed through 3am phonecalls from Europe (“Tonight was the best night of the tour the crowd’s energy was insane!” “That’s great babe, I gotta go now, I have work in the morning.”)

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When you finally realise dating a musician sucks, you'll break up with him. Then he'll write a diss song about you.

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...the track will be on the radio every bloody time you get in the car.

Of course, it will be the track that finally makes him mega famous. And he'll never ever pay you back for that guitar.