Should I stick it out?
I'm coming to you with a situation for which I need advice.
A few years ago, I met a Guy. He was honest with me pretty early on about his feelings for me. He really wanted us to be together. I'll admit, I was scared. But there were other complications as well, and I wouldn't date him. We had our ups and (some serious, serious) downs, but we came through it all as friends. Very good friends, in my opinion.
After graduation, we each moved on to new cities. Neither of us knew anyone where we were. We spent hours on the phone with one another each night. Guy still wanted us to be together. I still refused.
One night, after several days of no phone interaction with Guy (which was incredibly unusual), I called him. He told me he was dating a Good Friend. I couldn't tell if Guy was telling the truth or yanking my leg.
Good Friend and I had known each other for at least four years at this point. She was there through every movement of the whole Guy saga. She'd offered advice when I was trying to decide what to do about him. She knew all the dirty details.
I called Good Friend when I got off the phone with Guy. With a quivering voice, she confirmed that they were together.
I'd like to say all was well with Belle's world after this. It was not.
Friend Loss #1
Guy stopped calling me. He stopped returning my calls. He stopped e-mailing me. Contact went from nearly-constant to nearly-non-existent. I missed talking to him. I didn't appreciate the change. I told him as much. He made half-hearted gestures toward maintaining contact for a bit before stopping again. I was hurt to have lost another friend to the all-consuming Relationship, but I could see (or can now see) reasons that we couldn't really maintain a friendship.
About a year ago, Guy came to D.C. for business, and we hung out one night (with Travel Buddy serving as "chaperon"). I was reminded that night of several reasons I had refused to date Guy. Aside from an apologetic call from him the next day, we haven't spoken since. Even though he was once a very integral part of my daily life, I rarely even think of him now.
Friend Loss #2
When Good Friend started dating Guy, there was a general buzz of disapproval from our mutual friends. The primary reason was that Good Friend went from social butterfly/life of the party to relative recluse overnight. Since then, I have reasons to believe she's gotten better about maintaining ties and such.
Except with me, that is.
I was recently reminded that she tossed out an incredibly lame excuse the last time I was in her town and wanted to meet up with her. The reminder came in the form of her ignoring my attempted contact when I was recently in her town again.
Then I remembered the last time I saw Guy. And the fact that Good Friend called no less than 2,974 times in the few hours we spent together (with a chaperon, dammit!). And I started to feel hurt. And a little pissed off.
Having known Good Friend for more than five years now, she's been there for the retelling of a good many of my exploits. She was there to see me devastated when I found out -- a year after the fact -- that some guy I'd drunkenly kissed at a party had a girlfriend at the time who promptly dumped him as a result of our little show. And she was there to hear me vent my anger toward a gorgeous FWB when I found out he had a girlfriend the whole time we'd had our, ahem, arrangement. She was there to comfort me after I shot down a guy I'd longed to be with for months because he started dating someone else and then tried to put the moves on me.
So, suddenly, I'm wondering, what the hell? She doesn't trust me? Have I ever tried to move in on a friend's man? Um, no. Do I even want one someone else has? Also, no. And she knows this. Or she should.
Still, I suppose, things are tricky with the whole Guy situation, considering his feelings for me in the past and her knowledge of those feelings. But the two have been dating for almost two years now. They live together, for fuck's sake, and I live more than a thousand miles away. I don't contact Guy (nor does he contact me). I don't even have his contact information anymore. She has nothing to be worried about from me.
So why can't Good Friend and I remain friends? You know, the kind of friends who take one another's phone calls. The kind of friends who actually want to get lunch together when they're practically within spitting distance after months (years?) of separation.*
My questions for you, dear readers, are several. Do I keep my mouth shut or say something about this? If so, what? If not, do I sit silently and hope that one day I'll be able to rejuvenate my friendship with Good Friend, or should I do myself a favor and consider it a lost cause? Is asking for some form of relatively reliable contact asking too much? Is wanting to see her for a few hours when we're in the same ZIP code asking too much? Am I being unreasonable?
I need answers!
Let me reiterate something before I end. I know I'll probably have dissenters, but I'm throwing it out there anyway. Whatever feelings I might have had for Guy are distant memories now. Like I said, I barely think about the guy. Whatever issue I may have had at the beginning of Guy and Good Friend's relationship are long gone. By all accounts (not firsthand, of course) the two are happy together and will probably remain that way for many moons to come. I wish them all the happiness and luck a couple can handle.
* I've spent time with her parents more recently than I've seen her, for crying out loud.
14 comments:
hi-
i have never read your blog, this is my first time.
are you really seriously asking yourself this question? why won't the guy be with you? give me a break.
he was probably in love with you, and you strung him along as a friend, probably telling him details about how you sucked off some dude and he broke your heart, all the while complaining about it to this guy who IS IN LOVE WITH YOU. you ditched his shit hard. even if your sob stories to you weren't so explicit...believe me, they were for him....
then, when he starts boning your friend, you get all weird and immediately call her to talk to her about it (why?)...of course they are going to diss you...you broke his heart, and he's crying about it on this new biotch's shoulder after they get done rocking the sheets.
you missed out on this dude, who you obviously like to some degree, if you would sit around and gossip with him on the phone about it. your friend, who you gossiped with about your little boy toy with, got all sympathetic with him bc of the way you obviously strung him along.
get some new friends, these one's are TOAST. 3's a crowd, sorry....
lata!!
Write it off. Like most humans, you are taking too much account of "Sunk costs". It's like when your car has had thousands of dollars worth of repairs, then needs a new engine. The new engine costs more than the car is worth, but you think about the thousands you've already spent and decide "what's a leetle bit more?"
If this were a new friend, you wouldn't make these kinds of excuses for her behavior to keep her in your life. Why are you going out of your way now?
The fact that she was your good friend makes her behavior more reprehensible, not less, so why cut her some slack?
Wanting to see her is well within reason, and completely normal. There's a lot of shared, intimate history. That said, my rule for these situations is a Two-shot one: One call/email whatever to initiate, one to follow up if there's no response. After that, it's their life to lead. It kind of sucks in a way, but I've found it's the best way to maintain one's own sanity.
First, I'm sorry you had to go through all of this...You had your reasons as to why you didn't make it official with Guy, and at the same time, Good Friend was definitely in the wrong.
However, if I were in this situation, and it bothered me that Good Friend and I were no longer friends, I would definitely step up, contact her, and pretty much tell her what I wrote in my blog. Perhaps approach it in a calm matter where the conversation won't end up with someone hanging up on the other person. I would call rather than e-mail Good Friend.
Good luck.
Anon:
i have never read your blog, this is my first time.
Thanks for stopping by!
are you really seriously asking yourself this question? why won't the guy be with you?
Um, no, actually, I'm not. At all.
And you pretty much missed it on everthing else I said, too.
Lata!!
Where's the little emoticon with eyes rolling in the back of her head??
Moving on...
Ninja: The car analogy = brilliant. I wouldn't have thought of the situation in such cut & dried terms. Thanks!
Brooklyn: If I play by your rules, I have one prong of the approach left before moving on. The problem is my ego may not withstand the rejection again. Thanks for stopping by!
CeeCee: Thanks for stopping by and the good vibes.
First, I'm not sure when you say that Good Friend was in the wrong if you're referring to her starting dating Guy or basically cutting me out. I didn't have a problem with the two of them dating; I'd staked no claim on Guy, so I don't feel like that was wrong on her part at all.
That said, I typically would concur that a phone call and a rational adult discussion would be the best route, but in this situation, the problems are twofold with that scenario:
1. She won't answer or return my calls.
2. I'll probably sound like a whiny bitch if I try to discuss these things.
All that said, I'll be pondering your suggestions and trying to decide what to do.
belle - the trick of it is not to think of them rejecting you, but rather you deciding that you're moving on, their feelings be damned.
It's not easy, and it's not always clean, but like I said ... it's the way I've managed best myself.
Keep writing thought-provoking posts, and maybe this won't be the only time I drop by (not like I subscribed or anything ... nothing like that.)
Brooklyn: Their feelings me damned... I like it...
[Grin]
at first i thought that you should try at least one more time to reconnect with Good Friend. But... after reading everyone's comments and your responses, i think at this point, you've done what you can. it seems like your efforts to rekindle your friendship are rebuffed again and again. continuing to put yourself in a situation that could end badly is not emotionally healthy. or something. BUT i think if Good Friend tries to come back to you in the future, let her in. carefully of course.
h: I think you're right. Before I posted this, I had to fight the (admittedly petty) urge to delete her from my social networking sites and the like. But I think I can manage to avoid that. If, in the future, she returns seeking friendship, I might be convinced to let her back in. Carefully, of course. :)
Oh, whoops... I suppose I should check my site stats more often. Good Friend, you're reading this, aren't you?? Why not give a sister a call??? (Or, at this point, a nasty message of some sort, which wouldn't be entirely undeserved.)
So, after reading the first comment, I was somewhat thinking everyone one going to be as stupid and as close minded as the first douche to comment. Luckily, this was not the case. I think that the "first time" you read someone's blog you should probably READ it prior to COMMENTING on it. Ugh, people, and the way to know exactly how they are by a few twisted references that clearly and obviously reflect their own, pathetic lives......
Good friend isn't that great of a friend to begin with. If she couldn't be the one to call you from the start of her relationship with the guy, she was scared and obviously threatened to tell you.
"even if your sob stories to you weren't so explicit...believe me, they were for him...."
ummm, what? how does this person seem to think they know you down to a T?
This reminds me of a story a friend (guy) of a friend (girl) wrote and asked the friend to "revise". It was obviously about her, but for some reason he wouldn't tell her it was her. Weird huh? I just hate when that happens.... at least be slick about it.
Pissed: Hmmm... that story seems to ring a bell... ;-)
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