Got home this evening from a wonderful concert (Habib Koite), which I attended with the guy I’m currently pining after, though I seem to be stuck in the friends zone with him. Checking my email yields a message from a guy at a dating site who actually seems rather intriguing … and a message from a woman who I’ve never heard of before.
Oh, JP, you rascal.
JP is someone I do the occasional booty call with – very casual, nonexclusive relationship as far as I’m concerned; he knows I date elsewhere, and I’ve never given a huge amount of thought to whether he does or not.
Interestingly enough, when I think back, I’ve known him since … April of 2006.
I wrote the woman back, ccing JP, and asked how it happened that she was reading his email.
I can see that - I’d be amused myself. Poor Maria. I hope, for the sake of JP’s ethics, that she managed to delude herself and he didn’t delude her. But either way, it isn’t your problem.
It seems like the worst-case scenario would be if she was telling the truth when she said JP told her that his other women were all just friends. Suppose that’s true – would it bother you? If not, then no worries, I guess. If it would, then you may want to ask him why he thinks she would have said that.
Yeah, if JP in fact lied to her and led her to believe they were exclusive while he was seeing other women, there’s nothing funny about what he did to her. It’s not her fault if he lied to her. You may not agree with her decision to contact you, but you could have been a lot more gentle in your response if you truly thought she was in pain.
I don’t know, but I think she did just fine. It ain’t her problem, she didn’t initiate the e-mail contact, Maria did. Why should she worry about being “gentle”?
He didn’t lie to you, but essentially he’s the one who dragged you into this “soap opera”. I would definitely give him a few points on the “asshole-meter” for that.
It’s called a lie of omission. He is in a relationship with someone who believes it to be exclusive. A non zero number of women would deny him sex if he told them that, so he figures why mess up a good thing?
If he failed to tell you that he had done time in prison for murdering his casual lover, that wouldn’t be a lie either, but I suspect you would be perturbed to find it out.
Personally, since you find it oh-so-amusing, I sincerely hope the next time you’re with someone that you really care about you find yourself in a similar situation as this woman so some other woman can have as much fun as you seem to be having. Maybe even the man you went to the concert with who doesn’t seem to like you as much as you like him.
I interpreted that as meaning, “Heh, someone expects me to hit the ceiling because this guy is ‘cheating’ on me - but he’s not. On the other hand, man, that’s really gotta hurt for her.”
It is kind of naive for Maria to assume that all of her correspondents are “innocent parties/victims” and that no one’s going to essentially say, “leave me out of the drama that you’re adding to here.” The second-to-last sentence of her letter sounds like she’s got some kind of Big Plan going on.
I think that you are totally on the money here. Maria thought that JP was telling the same lie to everyone and that they would get some major revenge together like in a lame romantic comedy.
Correct. twickster, if JP told you that he was seeing someone else who was under the impression that she was the only one, would you continue to see him casually?
A totally understandable reaction but rationally, and I know being rational in that situation would be next to impossible, he wouldn’t have done a damn thing to you, she would have.