We've been together for a few months now, and I can't express enough how happy being with her has made me. Even though we work together, and therefore spend a lot of time with each other, we never seem to get bored or tired of each other's company. That said, we still make time to see our friends and spend time apart, as should be the case in a healthy relationship.
When we first started dating, my gf made (what seemed at the time) a half-joking comment about her close friendship with another guy. She mentioned how this had been an issue in her previous relationships, and that if things were to go further, I needed to be aware of this. I told her then exactly how I still feel today; that I'd never get in the way of her friendships with other people, and would never stop her from seeing those she was close to.
When things became a little more serious between us, I started to see what she meant. Her friend kept showing up unannounced whenever we had plans to do something together, and would insist on joining us. At first I thought it was totally innocent, but when it kept happening, it seemed more and more like a deliberate attempt to interfere with our plans. When I brought this up to my gf, she gave me the backstory to their relationship to explain things.
She had been through some really tough times in the past, and her friend had always been there to support her, through thick and thin, when her other friends and family hadn't. But it was clear that her friend had always wanted to be more than just that. One night when she was extremely upset, drunk and feeling vulnerable, they slept together; something she regrets to this day. She explained to him the next day that it had been a mistake and she should never have slept with him, and they agreed to stay friends. But it was clear that her friend was hoping more would come of it.
She told me that her friend had used their night together to drive a wedge in her previous relationships, and she was telling me because she didn't want that to happen again. I could tell by her tone of voice that she meant what she said. I told her I was OK with it, and that I trusted her. From the way she described her revulsion the day after sleeping with him, I felt confident that her friend was never going to be a threat. With this, she assured her friend that I was OK with their friendship and that they would still see each other.
But this wasn't what her friend wanted to hear. From that point, he cranked things up a notch. Me and my gf were out one night with some of my friends. Her friend insisted that he would come too after meeting his friends from work, but she politely told him that she didn't want him to join us as she was meeting my friends for the first time, and didn't want to be in the weird position of being stuck between meeting my friends and keeping her friend company. Regardless, he showed up anyway and followed her around the whole night, interrupted her conversations with me and my friends, dragging her off for 'private conversations'. My friends thought the whole thing was extremely weird and immediately started making jokes: "Who's this guy? Is it just me, or does he seem unnervingly obsessed with your girlfriend?" My gf was so uncomfortable with the situation that she asked me if we could sneak off back to my place while he was distracted. I said I didn't think this was the right way to solve the situation, but she was unwilling to talk about it there and then; she just wanted to go.
Not ten minutes after we left, my gf started to receive text after text from him: "Where are you?" "Can't believe you just left" "what's wrong with you?" "Call me now, we need to talk". Her phone was ringing non-stop for half an hour, until eventually he text her to say he had gone to her place. My gf had a babysitter watching her kids that night, and she even called her to say how disturbed she was by the state her friend was in, showing up out of the blue, extremely pissed off. My gf was livid; she went back home to confront him about his behaviour and ask what his problem was. He had left before she got there, but they had a lengthy conversation which can be summarised as an ultimatum: I would never be OK with their friendship, so either she break up with me or they can't be friends. I was pretty shocked that he came right out and said this, and I knew talking to him at that point, to explain how I didn't feel threatened by him and that I wouldn't stop them being friends, would only piss him off even more.
Since then, her friend has made this type of threat to her every time she so much as mentions my name. He constantly accuses her of seeing him less even though they usually see each other twice a week. One week they didn't see each other at all, which at the time he explained as him "taking time to look after himself". Whenever my gf points this out, he just flatly denies it and blames me for not letting her see him. He's done every back-handed tactic to guilt her: from threatening to move to a different country, to accusing her of taking advantage of him as a friend, and so on and so forth.
I'm now at the stage where I think I should talk to the guy, even though I'm 99% sure he is just going to get angry with my gf because I got involved. But I can't stand to see her so upset every time he does this. It seems like an obvious attempt to emotionally manipulate my girlfriend to break up with me. I feel like I need to call him out in this and ask what the problem is, but I don't want to make things worse for my gf.
Tldr; my girlfriend's best friend is trying to emotionally manipulate her into breaking up with me, claiming that I am stopping her from seeing him and that I'm not ok with their friendship. When in reality, I am not in the least threatened by the guy, and trust my gf 100%. Do I speak to him about this, call him out on his obvious obsession with her and risk causing more misery and stress for my gf?
Submitted December 02, 2018 at 09:10AM by A_SilentMetro-Gnome https://ift.tt/2RAMQcc
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