Met up with a mate, let's call him Stan, for dim sum this afternoon and he mentioned he's decided that it might be time to find himself a nice lady and begin down the garden path to the house with the white picket fence, dog and two and a half children. Okay, I might be getting a little ahead of myself with the story - there was no mention of garden path or children.

Stan's one of those guys that party's most weekends, is a bit of a blokey bloke and has a good number of gorgeous female friends. So while dissecting a prawn-filled rice paper roll, I suggest he just pick the chick he likes the most from his harem of beauties and ask her to be his lady-friend. Simple. I got a lightning quick response of, 'no, they're not girlfriend material".

Stan's the second single guy in two weeks that's referenced the term girlfriend material. So I'm curious, what does make a guy consider girlfriend material?".

Being the net-junkie that I am, I googled it and got 689000 results - the top few were quizzes.. and then there's the article on eHow: "How to Get a Guy to Know You are Girlfriend Material". There's this list of nine steps about how to get some bloke to think you've got those special qualities that will make him want you in a relationship with him. No reference to what girlfriend material actually is.

So I put it out to the few readers I have (maybe have?) What is girlfriend material?