Put it down to insecurity on my part then. During the initial stages of a relationship, it’s rare that I completely trust someone. It’s taken me a while to build that trust.
But, from my now horribly out of date experience (been with the same person for many, many years, god knows how she puts up with me) that was normal. Both in the people I was dating, and the people my friends were dating, and in myself when I was dating.
Some women are extremely territorial . . . alarmingly so, even. I think that most women will try and shut down any casual friendships between their bf and any girls with whom they’ve been involved with . . . even if he just saw your tits (although I assume more happened then straight tit-viewing).
But overall, as my good friend once said (and I’m sure he was quoting someone important) . . . she had a boyfriend before this one, and will likely have another after him as well, so she should chill out.
Oh please. Oh please. I have yet to boil a bunny in my life. And I think I’ve made it pretty clear this is not about some obsessionail thing. What says it was? Just my my sad loss of pals for lack of balls.
I don’t want my “boyfriends” back, just my friends.
That was uncalled for.
I’m sorry that you’ve lost a friend (for now), betenoir. Of course you’re angry & frustrated. You seem to be taking it personally, though, which is going to cause more pain and drama than you really need.
I’m an experienced therapy patient. One thing I’ve learned is “Don’t take others’ inventory for them.” In other words, whatever your friend’s reasoning may be about this change in your relationship,
(1) It’s because of his (and new girlfriend’s) issues, not because of your personal worth, and
(2) It’s not up to you to figure out precisely what those issues are, or who has the issues, and
(3) Thinking too much about it will lead to obsession, which isn’t healthy.
So do the hardest thing - let go and forgive the transgressions. Welcome him back into your life as soon as (and if) he returns.
The bunny-boiling comes much later. Honestly, people, listen to your therapists.
Although the OP seems to have a different perspective than I, I can certainly relate in an abstract way.
My best friend (and friends, actually) are all guys. I just get along better with guys than girls, I suppose. I can’t count the guys I have refused to go on second or third dates with, because they protested the fact that I have male friends. Sorry dude, bros before hoes and all that :).
I would quite genuinely be pretty broken hearted if my best friend didn’t do the same thing. If he were to pull that, I really don’t know what I’d do. I mean, it has happened in the past with regular guy friends- they’ve just stopped talking to me because, “OMG IT WOULD BE UBER INAPPROPRIATE!” In those cases, I just chalk it up to me being better off- I mean, any friend that would just ditch you for their latest fling is a bit of a douche.
All that said, I want my friends to be happy. If I genuinely think this girl is the THE ONE, then I guess I just have to back off and let them be happy. Shit happens.
Oh and all of my male friends = just friends. The one exception being my ex boyfriend who is now married, but we just talk back and forth, never even see one another.
Change “women” to “people.”
Plenty of guys exhibit exactly the same sort of behavior.
I sympathize, but I do think that whatever snark you are getting stems from your insistence that his ditching you is the result of a ‘lack of balls’ or some hoodoo mind control his new gf has over him. None of that has to be true- he just has to like her more than he likes you. And yes, that can hurt.
And while I’m sure people while chime in with stuff like ‘girlfriends come and go, friends are forever,’ neither of those are necessarily true.
You know I’ve seen this play out quite a few times and it’s not a “woman” thing but rather
a) Two people hook up for a casual thing
b) No serious relationship comes of it but they keep in touch
c) One person takes that keeping in touch as a friendship while the other thinks of it as a casual acquaintance
d) The less sensitive one then finds someone he/she really likes and wants to spend more time with. Also, there is regular sex.
e) More sensitive gets upset that he/she is pushed down the priority list.
f) Less Sensitive blame-shifts to the new squeeze-who is generally unknown and remote, therefore offering an easy escape hatch from the situation while keeping himself /herself out of the asshole department for potential hookups down the line.
I don’t think it’s really about shrivelly balls. It’s pretty much SOP at most college campuses and generally Less Sensitive is played by the guy and More Sensitive is played by the woman though I’ve seen it plenty of times in reverse too.
I don’t understand all these bunny-boiler comments.
Is it really so hard to believe that new girlfriends are often frosty to female friends of their new boyfriends?
Are you honestly saying that this is perfectly okay, and objecting to it makes you a shrewish bitch?
If so, we sure live in different worlds.
It has been quite a regular occurrence for me to be cut out of a male friend’s life because of a new girlfriend. NOTE: this happens with great frequency to guys with whom I never have and never would bump uglies. For instance, I have just lost someone with whom I have been good friends for 16 years (and hardly ever even touched, apart from the occasional hug) because his wife doesn’t like me and they just had a baby.
Would I be a bunny boiler to object?
What would the difference be if we had slept together, once, in the nineties? Would I still be a bunny boiler to object?
Now, for the case where the the intimacy was quite a lot more recent: I think that any two people who have any kind of relationship owe each other a certain amount of respect. What this means is that if you are “just friends” because your sexual relationship didn’t work out, then you are friends, and you should treat them the way you would treat a friend.
Would you just stop calling your friend? Would you say “I’m sorry, my new girlfriend doesn’t want me to see you any more” to your friend?
Well, maybe you would. But that would make you a jerk.
The last time this happened to me (with someone who had assured me that my friendship was very important to him, and then made no gestures of friendship (and ignored mine) for the following several months), I called him up and respectfully told him that in my opinion he was acting like a jerk. Either (a) my friendship IS important to him and he’s being inconsiderate, or (b) my friendship is NOT important to him and therefore he lied to me. He agreed that he had been acting like a jerk. And in fact he continues to act like a jerk in this manner. Dare I say he does not have the balls to act in a respectable way.
The most hurtful part of this is that he knows I think he’s a jerk and he doesn’t care. So not only is my friendship not important to him, but he doesn’t mind that I have a low opinion of him.
Does that make me a bunny boiler?
Christ, what’s a woman to do, when she can’t even stand up for herself when she’s being trampled on? Yes, of course the solution is to realize the problem isn’t with you, and to move on.
But that doesn’t make him any less of a jerk, and it doesn’t mean it’s objectionable for me to point that out.
Never suggested otherwise.
My point was a more general one about trust in relationships. It was also a counter to those who suggest that the OP should just get over it and move on.
See above. It was pretty clear, i think, that i was making some general comments about trust and relationships, points that might only be tangentially related to the particular circumstances of the OP.
Well, first of all, in this thread i have adopted my usual habit on the SDMB, which is to take the word of the OP about her situation unless i have compelling reasons to doubt the truth of her statements.
You might be right that the relationship was not as important to him as the OP believed it was, but this casts no doubt whatsoever on the honesty of her statements. Also, i like to think that, in most cases at least, we have a pretty good idea when someone is genuinely a friend.
Yes, we do.
But intelligent, caring, non-psycho people also realize that there are concessions which it is unreasonable to ask for, and justifiable to refuse. One of those, in my opinion, is to drop an old friend just because s/he might make a new partner uncomfortable.
I like my wife more than i like my friends. And, as an added bonus, i love my wife in a way that i don’t love my friends.
Doesn’t mean i have to drop my friends. People are acting as if there’s some sort of quota of friendship, and that adding a new partner means that someone has to get tossed out. It’s simply not the case. If the like/love you have for your partner is inversely proportional to the quality of your friendships, i feel sorry for you.
Well, your sadness over the loss(es) of your pal(s) is certainly valid. It’s understandable that you didn’t anticipate the loss of a friendship being an inevitable ramification of a decision to not form a permanent pair-bond.
OTOH, characterizing the outcome as being caused by some sort of character flaw in men in general is probably not the most effective way for you to come to terms with it, wrt getting folks to commiserate with you. And it has the potential of hindering your likelihood of retaining friendships of other men with whom you mutually agree to forego permanent mate status (by placing an expectation bias in your attitude and behavior).
He fucked her, didn’t he? So it’s not the same as simply being a friend of opposite sex.
I should make clear, by the way, that i think the OP needs to do something about this, and not just whine about “guys and their new girlfriends.”
If this guy really was a good friend, then you need to say to him, straight out, that you don’t like the way he’s treating you. Tell him that you value his friendship, and that you want to be friends with him even though he has a new girlfriend. If he hems and haws, and makes excuses, tell him that you’re cutting him loose.
I don’t know whether it’s his new girlfriend who is pressuring him to ditch you, but whether she is or not, it’s his responsibility to make the decision about whether he wants you as a friend. If he does, then tell him to start acting like a friend. Otherwise, tell him to piss off.
Then have the balls to accept that he’s a jerk, cut him loose, and not blame it on his girlfriend.
betenoir, for what it’s worth, I’m not doubting your word, I don’t think that you’re lying. I just think that perhaps your perspective on this is a bit skewed. Again, if the options are 1. everyone involved who isn’t you you is emotionally stunted and behaving unreasonably or 2. you overestimated your importance to this guy, well… Occam’s Razor and such.
In Russia, the bunny boils YOU!
See, and people wonder why men and women can’t be friends. I swear, I have never had anything approximating this sort of interaction with another guy. Perhaps because it’s assumed that when a friend hooks up, he’s quite right in not hanging out with me when he could be with his woman. That doesn’t hurt my feelings in the least, and I don’t put myself in situations where he’d have to choose. I’m content to let us drift apart, and then, assuming things don’t work out, or, if things relax, drift back together when he feels like it. And I’d expect the same from him.
Yes, I might razz someone (or more likely, get razzed myself) over spending too much time with their SO. But I’d really not let it bug me unless I thought she was, in fact, bad for him. And then, I’d keep my mouth shut until things ended. And if they never do? Oh, well. Maybe I was wrong.
I have, and I have never blamed the girlfriend. (I don’t think the OP did either; she’s currently being criticized for blaming the GUY.) The point is, he’s still a jerk, and it is perfectly reasonable for me to think so - even if I’m not losing any sleep over it.
I’m just saying that jerks can still be called out for being jerks, even if it’s just on a message board. There are things that people do constantly, regularly, frequently, that are jerkish, and just because they are standard operational practice for relationships doesn’t absolve them for being jerks.
If we’re going to treat betenoir as an unreliable narrator, and selectively disbelieve parts of her story, then I’d speculate that the friend actually had a crush on her, and used the girlfriend’s mild discomfort as an excuse to break away. Of course it’s all pure speculation with no evidence then. betenoir will have to make some statement that undermines her own version of events and points us to the truth of the matter, and should relate verbatim a conversation and then analyze it in such a way that is obviously off base and reveals her own bias. Then in the last three paragraphs, she should come to a conclusion while “inadvertently” bringing the reader to a contradictory conclusion. Also, I’d like it to end with a murder, like “Tell the Women We’re Going,” say.
I agree. 100%. It’s not enough for you to act like a bunny boiler on an anonymous message board. Anybody can be a whining, needy bitch online. Get out there and do it in the real world! Get in his face! Nobody puts baby in a corner!
Or, you could just go on with your life and not be a psyco.
I don’t want to make this thread about me or my situation, but I am getting annoyed that these things are so often interpreted to make women look like bitches no matter how unacceptable male behaviour is. This is often based on assumptions of facts not in evidence. The circumstances of my situation have nothing to do with him not hanging out with me when he could be with his woman, it has to do with actions requiring a very basic level of human respect that he is somehow absolved from because we once slept together.
For example: he offered to do something straightforward but time-limited for me, something that anyone would do for a friend, no big deal. I could have done it myself but he offered. (Nothing to do with the woman, she was in a different city than we were at the time.)
He didn’t do it. By the time I found out that he hadn’t done it, it had become massively inconvenient for me to do it myself. His response? “Oh. Oops. Well, it’s not too much trouble, is it?”
That is the behaviour of a jerk, and utterly irrelevant to any of our past history, his current woman, etc. If your guy friends do that to you, and you don’t say anything, I think that would make you a bit of a doormat.
It is the assumption that I was being unreasonable - before the situation was revealed - that really gets my goat. Women have to accept really disrespectful treatment, because to do otherwise (no matter how disrespectful the treatment, or how reasonable and respectful her objection) gets her labelled as a bitch/bunny boiler/psycho/etc.