According to literature and TV/movies, it’s a nearly universal experience to openly contend with a romantic rival for the object of your affection. Has this ever actually happened to you or anyone you know?
I’ve been around the block a little but it’s never happened to me, my former love interests would tend to pine after celebrity/fantasy partners instead. (And in the real-life stories I’ve heard about affairs, the person didn’t even know they had a rival until after their partner ended things.)
No. Maybe this is my ego talking but I’m a bit of an odd duck. So if said girl is having a hard time deciding between me and someone else, she may as well just go for the other guy as I am probably not right for her.
Women who are into me usually tend to have weird taste in men, judging by my ex GF’s (and current GF) previous BFs.
So how does this play out - would a woman date two guys and whoever comes up with an engagement ring first “wins”? Or a guy dates two women (Betty/Veronica style) until one of them out-charms the other?
I mean, I’m vaguely aware that some people live in that world where they pick up “rivals” like candy but I’ve never see it actually play out in front of me.
I agree if a girl can’t decide I would always decide for her. I have competed for a girls attention on many occasions, win some loose some. I have never gotten raging angry over a female but I have gotten irritated when a known player starts making headway into someone I am interested in and I all ready know they are going to win.
This is me. A decade ago, a good friend was after the same woman that I was interested in. My response was basically a romantic case of sour grapes: “Oh well, she’s a complicated, egotistical, hard-to-please person anyway.”
In my twenties, I briefly dated someone I worked with. Though I didn’t know it, I had a rival among my co-workers. He did everything to poison her against me, and she was somewhat inexplicably nuts about me so it was hard work. It did payoff - one day we met and she launched into a public tirade about how I was an asshole, for no reason I knew of. That ended it, and we later learned my rival had told her I was also seeing someone else. She apologized when she realized what had happened (basically the “other woman” saying “epbrown who?” when confronted). I was still ticked at being publically harangued for something I’d never do, and the fact that she just launched with no discussion.
Unfortunately for my rival, the lie she fell for soured her on him quite a bit. Amazingly, she married another guy from work less than two months later, and they’ve been married 25 years.
I’ve always been wise enough to stay out of situations like that. I once had a girl I was very interested in but never expressed anything. I went away for two weeks, and when I came back, she announced she was engaged to somebody else, whom I didn’t even know about. I just said “Aw shucks”, and we remained friends for many years after that.
My last serious girlfriend before the Lovely and Talented Mrs. Shodan took up with someone else while we were (I thought) being exclusive. They wound up married, eventually, although I think they later divorced. I wasn’t happy when I found out, but I didn’t exactly say “him or me”. More like “if I can’t trust you, I am out of here” and we broke up.
I have no agency in the matter, I’m just a prize to be won. I just sit here on this pedestal, doing my wallflower thing. I’m just a hunk of meat, really. Then the women fight it out with paintball guns. The one left standing puts me in a box and takes me home. Then I do housework for them.
Yup. At least, in his own mind he was a rival. The woman who is now my wife wasn’t into him at all, though.
Turns out my wife also had a rival that I was unaware of - another woman was interested in me, but I did not know it at the time.
What happened was this, to make a long story short: I met the woman I later married through another, male friend, when we were all in university. He invited me out one night to see some live Jazz. He also invited some other friends - including this woman. He was interested in this woman, but she was more interested in me; we hit it off very well, and she got my phone number - but he was annoyed, and so more or less dumped me.
I didn’t hear from either of them for some months and I sort of forgot about them.
Then, one day, she called me out of the blue - to invite me to a dorm party at her place. Much later, I learned what had inspired her to call: she had another, female friend, who was in one of my classes. Unknown to me, this friend was interested in me, and asked my future wife about me: specifically, “do you know this guy and do you think I should invite this guy to my party?”. My future wife told her friend “yes, I know him; I don’t think you should invite him - he’s too weird for you”. Then, having been reminded of my existence, my future wife called me up and invited me to her party, instead.
We were an item soon after that.
My future-wife’s friend never forgave her, but my wife insisted she’d been perfectly sincere. She said to me: “you were too weird for her. Not too weird for me, though”.
(And in the real-life stories I’ve heard about affairs, the person didn’t even know they had a rival until after their partner ended things.)
The woman who is now my wife wasn’t into him at all, though.