Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with girlfriend and friendship

How friendly is too friendly with an attached man?

Anonymous — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 09:34:24 -0800

Are you a bad person if your guy friend leaves his girlfriend for you? I just moved to a new city and enrolled in a grad program, not knowing anyone at this university. I met a guy who happens to be in all of my classes, and we've started sitting next to each other and working on assignments in between classes together. I would text him about homework related questions, and we'd chit chat a little while working together - nothing flirtatious in my opinion. I found out he had a girlfriend about a month into knowing him when I asked an unrelated question, and hadn't heard anything more about her till she started showing up to sit with us while we worked on our assignments. Now she's always hanging around and trying to get him to leave early, which makes me think she has a problem with my guy friend and I spending so much time together. We do see each other every day of the week due to our schedules. I am attracted to him since it's comfortable being together (and okay, he's cute too). Our personalities click really well, with us finishing each other's sentences and having complementary strengths when it comes to completing the homework assignments. I am not actively pursuing anything other than friendship, but I get the sense that he 's attracted to me as well since I catch him staring at me, he's showing up around me more often, and he seems bored talking to his girlfriend.

Should I stop hanging out with him for his sake and her sake... will karma bite me in the a** if he ends up breaking up with her? Is it immoral? Since they're not married, should I not be worrying about this?

I might be making something out of nothing, but my intuition about guys is rarely wrong. I don't have close male friends, so perhaps I just feel conflicted due to not having much experience with men.

How do I handle this best friend breakup?

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:39:47 -0800

I think it's time to get rid of my best friend for the past 15 years. I don't want to, nor do I know how to, but I think I have to. Messy details within. So, my best friend and my girlfriend (for convenience I'll call them BF and GF, respectively) have never got along with each other. They have somewhat similar personalities, and each is prone to complain to me about how poorly the other person treats me -- and each of them has treated me pretty poorly at various points. I have spoken with both of them about this, and GF has made considerable efforts to appreciate and respect my friendship with BF and attempt to avoid starting fights with him. BF, in general, has done the same.

A few days ago, the two of them got into a debate over something really unimportant. GF did a very good job not resorting to personal attacks, though I told her a number of times to just avoid the argument entirely. BF, however, escalated it to the point that he sent a series of extremely personal and hurtful emails to GF based on grudges he's held against her for ways she hurt me several years ago, launching her back into a depression she'd managed to stay away from for the past six months or so. And when GF is depressed, she gets angry. And when GF gets angry, I generally become the target of that anger. She's getting better with that, and I can handle it, I am a very patient person, but it is very stressful, nonetheless.

Over the past 15 years, BF has done this sort of thing with other friends of mine, in times when I've had more friends, thinking he's doing me some kind of favor by getting these, in his opinion, "terrible people" out of my life. In reality, however, it just puts me in the position of either ongoing damage control or losing friends. I am a very patient person, and I'm the only longstanding friend BF has failed to alienate through verbal abuse.

And, goddammit, these two people have, on and off, been fighting this protective and jealous fight over me for years. If BF is going to put me in this position where I have to chose one over the other, I think he should be out simply for putting me in that position. But I think that's just the frustration talking.

At any rate, my concerns are:

I am very non-confrontational. I have PTSD, and when I get worked up, it becomes incredibly difficult to communicate clearly and effectively. I have been very, very busy with work lately and am exhausted and stressed out. And BF enjoys pushing people's buttons, holding grudges, and burning bridges -- I don't need that kind of stressful encounter. I'll be less busy in a couple weeks, but he tends to call me at least once or twice a day.

Furthermore, BF and GF are pretty much the only two people I'm close to. I'm not generally comfortable around people and find meeting new people stressful and awkward. I stopped drinking several months ago, and this has only fortified my social anxieties to the point that I'm having trouble convincing myself that meeting and getting to know people is worth the effort required of me to do so.

So, yes:

Is it worth it for me to attempt to salvage this or should I get rid of BF?
What is the least stressful (for me) way to do so?

I guess I can leave off the "How do I make new friends?" question, because I know there are plenty of variants of that in AskMe.

goodbye my friend

whalebreath — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 15:30:56 -0800

How do I gain closure on this lost friendship? This is going to be long.

I met Drew in second year university - a quiet, reserved, intelligent guy, and we started dating. We dropped out of school to spend a year traveling around the world, never tiring of each other's company and having a fantastic time. We came back to Canada and moved to a big city we'd never been to before, sharing a little apartment and getting along great.

As great as our relationship was in many ways, it did have its problems. From the beginning we never had much physical chemistry, but I didn't give it too much weight. He never went down on me. He seemed much less interested in sex than I was. At first I just thought that this is what sex was like with 'nice guys' (I was young and naive and had only dated an oversexed 'badboy' up to then), but over time I started wondering if he had been abused, or was gay, or if I was repulsive, etc. Talking about it with him led to him shutting down and just saying that he didn't know why he didn't feel sexual, and that he wasn't willing to go to therapy about it. A few things made me think he probably was gay (especially when he got drunk), but the sexual rejection I felt led me to break up with him.

Then, it turned out I was gay! Or at least way more into women than I had ever admitted to myself. Talk about projection (although in the relationship with Drew it was really me who wanted to be physical and him who didn't). I started dating women, and Drew was heartbroken that I had broken up with him. We still hung out all the time, and his friends called me his 'lesbian life partner'. Over time he got over the heartache and we were just best friends (which is pretty close to all we were when we were dating).

Our friendship was so important to me. We had been through so much together and I felt like he understood me more than anyone. Then he met Rebecca. They started dating and he was really into her. She's beautiful and interesting and I was happy for him. I was dating someone and I wanted us to all hang out.

Rebecca was jealous of me though. Which I can understand, since Drew and I had been so close. I felt Drew drifting away from me, and talked about how sad it made me to him. He said that it made him sad too, but that whenever he told Rebecca that I had been in a group of people he was with that she would get really jealous, and if she was drinking she would say mean things about me. Drew is passive and kind of a pushover, and Rebecca is fiery and bold, and he wouldn't argue with her. He did say however that he would talk to her, and then said that he did, and that he wanted to maintain our friendship.

I didn't expect our friendship to remain the same as it had been. I was up for only hanging out in groups of people, for always inviting Rebecca whenever I invited him anywhere, etc. But he just dropped our friendship completely. At one point, when I felt like I had been the only one making an effort, I just decided to stop trying. This led to about a year of no contact as he didn't ever initiate. I was kind of heartbroken. A mutual friend said that she got the impression that he thought that I didn't want to hear from him.

Eventually he sent me an email. No hello, no how-are-you, just a link to an article he thought I might enjoy, with a corresponding 'thought you might enjoy this'. I wrote back saying thanks, it's been a while, how are you. His response was a 2 page letter, updating me on all aspects of his life, saying him and Rebecca were doing great, saying that he thought of me and that I was wonderful and he hoped that my life was as wonderful as I was and how was I? I wrote back a similar email, and his response was again distant. I didn't write back to it and haven't heard from him since.

In my long email I never mentioned how sad I was about the loss of our friendship, but I feel like I want him to know it. I also feel anger, resentment, and hurt that he so willingly let our friendship go. I'm leaving town in a couple of weeks and I have some of his stuff. He's out of town for a month, so I'm giving the stuff to a mutual friend to give to him.

I can't figure out how to gain closure with him, either internally (by just accepting that the friendship is over and moving on) or externally (by letting him know how sad it's made me to have lost the friendship). In my leaving I'm feeling regret about several things I never did (ex: asking certain people on dates) and I don't want to just always feel regret at having never said anything to him. In addition, I don't think he wants our friendship to be over completely....I know he loved and cared about me...I think he's just in a new relationship and forgot about me/let me go. I don't know. I just find it really sad because I wanted to know each other forever, and it feels like I just have to forget about him and can't (it's been a year). Even in that year of no contact I never really got over it, so I don't think it's a matter of time.

The stuff of his that I have includes a bunch of pictures of us on our voyage. I could just let the mutual friend give them to him and let him be sad as he looks at them. THe problem is he's not very communicative or emotionally expressive, so I think even if he did regret losing our friendship, he wouldn't be the one to say so or try to reinitiate it.

I also realize that this is more than a friendship since we loved each other and were together, so maybe it is best to let him go and be in his new relationship and forget about him. I just don't know how. I've tried but never stopped feeling sad/missing him. I don't want to be with him or date him - I guess I don't even know what I want now that I'm leaving. When I was here I wanted to be in each other's circles of friends - invite each other (and our respective partners) to dinners, hangouts, parties, etc. Now that I'm leaving I guess I just want to know that I won't never see/speak to him again, or else I want to know how to accept that fact.

If I knew he hated me, or really didn't care about me at all, I think this would be easier to accept. I don't think that's the case though.

I don't know if I've managed to articulate any kind of clear question in this post, but I'm looking forward to your interpretations, advice, and illuminations of my blindspots nonetheless. This is on my mind a lot and I just want to get past it somehow.

Tell him about unwarranted jealousy?

BusyBusyBusy — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:48:14 -0800

Do you tell your boyfriend about (unjustified) feelings of jealousy, or just get over them on your own? I have a great boyfriend with a guy I've been dating since high school. He is a couple years my junior, and we go to the same university. Recently, he as made a new friend at our university, a girl we both had met before through volunteer work. She is a nice, funny, pretty girl, although not insanely attractive (I'd say we're about equal).

He recently had lunch with her, which I had no problem with. He has always had an easier time making female friends than male ones, and has confided in me that he is embarrassed of this. After the lunch, he texted me with "She's so cool!", which I agree, she is. Later he mentioned something funny that she said. This is all that has happened.

I'm not asking if I should feel jealous. I shouldn't. I know he loves me, I feel good about myself, solid in the relationship. But I do feel jealous. The question is, should I tell him? I normally tell him pretty much everything I think and feel, and him likewise. We have a very loving, supportive relationship. My concern in telling him is that he might a) think I'm being crazy b) block the girl out of his life to avoid upsetting me.

I'm mostly worried about b. This girl is cool, funny, nice, a perfect friend for him. Likewise, I have many male friends, even friendships with ex-boyfriends, and he has never said a word about jealousy. I don't want to upset anything going on between them, although in the back of my mind I'm worried it might develop into more. I also worry that telling him would actually weaken our relationship because it might seem I'm trying to shut other people out of his life. So what do you think?

I Wish More Guys Were Like You: Let's Be Friends.

StrikeTheViol — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 15:29:38 -0800

I'm soon to be 22, and I've never had a relationship... I seem to very consistently turn all my dates and potential girlfriends into girl friends and my therapist, family and friends seem to be running out of ideas. Any suggestions? Of course, complications and some potentially funny stories inside. In junior high, I heard "wait till high school", and in high school "wait till college". Now that I'm here, having done a whole bunch of life work, seeing a therapist, finding new hobbies and new friends, I still can't find a girlfriend. It seems like girls I meet don't take me seriously as a potential partner after a short while, and I end up becoming friends with them. Beginning from my first crush, This has happened even in situations when girls have approached me. I don't seem to have trouble meeting them: although I'm in a wheelchair and have CP, I'm fairly fit, can speak articulately, and have been repeatedly noted for my sense of humor, although I'll admit I'm not as "quick on the draw" as some other Mefites. So, what gives?

I've tried many different things. Online dating was funny. The only girl who I ever could get in touch with was a stunning Serbian engineering student moonlighting as a model. A year and half later, we're good friends, and I'm starting to feel like my life belongs in The Onion. Disabled-specific dating? Check and ditto. I'm confident in my masculinity and positive qualities... what next, Mefi?

Becoming friends with girls when you have a girlfriend.

banished — Sat, 09 Apr 2005 22:16:43 -0800

How do you make friends with girls at if you have a girlfriend? Or is this pointless? How do you make it clear that you're not hitting on them, but just interested in becoming / being friends? How do break the news softly that you have a girlfriend if you feel they are becoming interested in you? When is the best time to bring it up?