How can I avoid being an utter jerk in this situation?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Sven, I think you’ve gotten a lot of really good advice here.

The other way to approach this: She’s just immature and doesn’t really see how her actions affect other people. She’s having a good time and probably doesn’t even notice that she’s acting flirty, she just thinks “Oh, I’m in a good mood today so I feel like calling Sven DAHLINK”. She probably has self-esteem issues (hence the jerk boyfriend) and would find it hard to believe that you are seriously affected by how she behaves.

Feel sorry for her, set some serious boundaries, and just avoid her beyond a “Hey, how ya doin’?” at least for the short-term. Even as a friend, she’s nothing but a heartache. First you save yourself.

And if that doesn’t work,** MSmith**'s delightful “I let her blow me” remark should add some excitement AND end the flirtiness in a heartbeat! :smiley:

JK

22

Not so sure about this one. I get where it’s coming from, but it establishes the power dynamic too much in her favor. It’s admitting that she still has a hold on you (and, to be honest, it kind of makes you look like a pussy.) It may work with certain mature people in certain circumstances, but, as I read the OP, I think it would only serve to stroke her ego to know she’s still got this sort of effect on the OP.

23

This. (+1, it seems, as alice beat me to it)

Really, if being honest means being a jerk (and she may just be crazy enough to think you’re a jerk no matter how you bring it) so what? She’s wacko anyway so it’s not like you can please her no matter what you do. Tell her flat out that she missed the boat, sorry, and her antics are wearing thin. No more cutesy pet names, no more nap time visits, no more angsty tales of her relationship woes, you’re done.

You think she’s not a jerk for what she’s pulling with you? What goes around…

24

That seems like a pretty accurate description of her. I don’t feel like she’s acting with any deliberate intent to string me along just to milk my sympathies and feelings, which is why I don’t want to tell her to go fuck off. She’s not a scheming manipulator; she’s more naive than anything else. I know some genuinely heartless women, and she isn’t one of them. But I also know plenty of mature women with keen senses of how their actions affect those around them, and she’s not one of them either. I’m not going to drastically change the way she relates to people, but I can at least put my foot down on how she relates to me and how I relate to her.

I, too, have some growing up to do, and now’s a good time to do it.

25

Id say something like ‘Im sorry but I cant be that kind of friend for you’, and if asked more Id say the flirting feels odd, and you arent really willing to be a relationship confidante yet given your own history.

Which she will either understand given the circs, or will not be worth having as a friend. Fixing this earlier will probably help more with mutual friends in the long run than avoiding it, even if theres an initial ruckus.

If she gets an ego boost out of it, she was probably doing that anyway, and this means she cant say she ‘didnt realise’ or the like.

Otara

26

I’m not going to tell her again that I have lingering feelings for her, but I am going to tell her that the way she’s acting toward me is pissing me off. Something like: “Hey, you remember that conversation we had a couple of months ago? Yeah, that one. Listen, I want you to stop calling me ‘darling’ and ‘love’; it really gets on my nerves. Any other situation, and that’d be cute, but with me, it isn’t and I’m not cool with it.”

27

I’d probably take out the ‘yet’. I don’t ever want to be her relationship confidante. That’s a service I care not to provide even to friends I’ve known for years.

28

Your best bet is no intense emotional conversations with her - just be cordial and nothing more. Anything else draws you back into Drama World. The other thing you don’t want to happen is for you to give her a kiss off speech and it makes you more attractive to her so she starts the cycle all over again - you are absolutely right when you decided to try to get over her and move on.

29

I’d pull a move. Right now, you’re just being stubborn because you feel like she hurt you by not reciprocating your advances. If you hit on her, that will clarify things immediately. If she’s jerking you around, this will cause her to stay away from you on her own.

The flaw in this plan though is the mutual acquaintances. If they’re more her friend than yours, you might get some bad feelings from them.

But, the big issue here to me is regret. You don’t get that shaking feeling every day, and you don’t want to look back 30 years from now and regret not taking the chance.

30

Fair enough, theres more than one way to be friends.

I guess it also comes down to whether you want that or whether you just want her to back off in general because shes bugging you. Your post before this suggests more the second.

Otara

31

Serious question time, Sven: what do you want from her?

Seriously. If it were me, I would want her to say “Dude, I am totally in to you. I was stupid before. I don’t know what I was thinking before.” And then for her to start making out with me.

I have several female friends, many who are married or dating other guys. I like them and all, but if one of them called me “darling” or whatever, I wouldn’t really care.

I’m not trying to come across as “peering into your soul” or anything, I’m just saying that it sounds to me like you are still pretty into her.

So, I suggest one of two options

  1. basically cut off all contact in a low key way.
  2. start acting dominant and together in a way that will make her into you.

Here’s what I don’t suggest: more heart to heart conversations, or “straight” conversations or whatever. I’m all for having straight conversations with people but not about this topic and not under these circumstances.

A while back I met this woman. I knew she was dating another guy, but she dropped hints (or at least I read them as hints) that she would be into getting together with me. So she would do stuff like call me on a Saturday morning and say “do you want to go on an adventure” and then we’d drive all around the city and hang out all day. And it was all like some romantic comedy or something. Except it wasn’t. Because she wasn’t going to leave her boyfriend. Really she just wanted the attention and I left every interaction feeling like crap. So, f___ this says I and I just dropped it. It kind of sucked, because I was into her, but oh well.

Option 2 is you start acting more dominant. More like you don’t really give a crap about her dumb, drama queen problems. If she tells you about some problem with her boyfriend, then, like some poster above said, you bust on her. You goof on her, and act likes it not a big deal. If she calls you and says, do you want to go for coffee, you say “you know, I was thinking the other day that little miss muffy (or some goofy name you make up for her) owes me a coffee. I will go but on one condition: you also have to buy me a scone.” You are playful, there are plenty of fish in the sea, etc. If she starts talking about her problems, ESPECIALLY problems with another guy, do NOT take her seriously. “I just don’t know what he wants, one minute he’s cool, but the next he’s being a jerk.” Now, every fibre of your being is screaming “are you KIDDING, that’s what YOU do.” You just say, “that’s an awesome story. and then you found five dollars, right? Maybe you’re just not having sex with him enough”

If you can’t pull off option 2, then go for option 1.

32

Superhal: it’s true that most people regret the relationships they didn’t get into more than those they did. But I’ve been down this road before, and see all the same signs popping up. Who knows? Maybe this time around, this particular instance will break the pattern, but I’m not willing to bet on it. I’ve been infatuated, I’ve been in love, hell, I’ve even been engaged. I may be a relative late bloomer in relationships, but it’s not like I’m doomed.

That strikes me as the most unlikely of all possible outcomes. But that’s a damn good question. I’m certain I don’t want to be in any sort of intimate involvement with her. I may have gotten all giddy around her in months past, but I’m only feeling a sort of faint glow since the past couple of weeks that I don’t like carrying around, because I get no impression that she’s about to leave Guy #2 and come throw herself at me.

Mainly, I just want her to quit.

She doesn’t call any of our mutual friends in those terms, at least as far as I’ve seen. It’d be cute, if it weren’t for this particular situation between us.

I think you might be right. I’m planning on only bringing it up if she kept acting like this, especially if she suddenly turned it up a notch. I wanted this not too long ago, but then she suddenly showed up with Guy #2, and then that whole brouhaha with him and his ex popped up. I don’t want to feel this way toward her. This will be a lot easier if she weren’t acting like this.

33

But she is acting like this, because she’s getting something out of it (probably an ego-stroke, if I had to guess). You’re good enough to keep dangling on the hook, but not good enough to date. For what it’s worth, she’s the one being a jerk.

34

Total, 100% agree with this. Look, there is a certain type of woman–not going to get into yet another debate about whether it’s 2% of women or 57% or 99%–who like to have guys in orbit. They don’t want to date the guys. They just want to feel like there are other options out there.

Here is what I have come to in terms of a firm rule about this:

  1. if I am not attracted to a woman, or only slightly attracted, or yeah I think she’s attractive but I just somehow don’t think of her “in that way” then everything is coolio and we are like three little fonzies. I won’t go see stupid movies that I hate, but I will hang out. Here’s part of the test: am I cool asking HER what she thinks about this girl I met through okcupid and how should I handle some situation with her. If that’s the case, this girl and I are pals. I have many friendships with women like this.
  2. If I am attracted to a woman, and I want us to be going out, and it becomes clear to me that she is not into it, OR yeah it’s theoretically possible that she might be into it but that it is going to require WAY TOO MUCH EFFORT on my part to get to the point where we are dating, then bail. “Don’t chase, replace” there are other cool funny attractive women out there who are going to be into you. There won’t be a big crazy drama about it. They will just be into you, and it will be cool.

I didn’t express my point very well when I said I have female friends who could call me “darling” or whatever, and I wouldn’t care. To me it doesn’t matter whether she says that to your other mutual friends (I mean it doesn’t matter for the point I’m trying to make)

What I was trying to say was, the fact that it bothers you when she does that says to me that you are still kind of into her. Nothing wrong with that. Happens to me all the time that I am into someone and I wish she were into me, but she just isn’t, or just isn’t ENOUGH into me.

It took me approximately 1Billion years to learn this lesson and I still have not internalized it, but both you and I must memorize and repeat this to ourselves:
If a woman is not into dating me, I will respect her decision that she does not want to have that kind of relationship with me. AT THE SAME TIME if I want to be dating a woman and do NOT want to have a friendship with a woman instead of dating her, then she should respect that too. We each get to set the terms of what we are looking for, and if the other person is not into those terms, so be it.

As Msmith said above, just because you don’t want to get played for a chump does not mean that you are a jerk.

Just be done with her man. Move on.

35

missed edit window, wanted to add:

Look, she is not going to change what she is doing. Here’s why. If you tell her “look Jane (or whatever her name is) this is kind of hard for me to get into, but it kind of gets me all confused when you say “darling” and stuff like that to me, and frankly I feel like you should know that, and if you were my friend I wouldn’t even have to say this to you. You would just get it.” Or whatever you tell her along those lines. See, a couple of things then happen, none of them good (from your perspective). One is that there is a strong possibility that she sort of denies it, or makes fun of you (in a way that she tells herself is playful) or says “wow, I didn’t know it was such a big deal. SORRRRY. I’m going through like the worst period of my life right now with Dirk, and I was trying to just joke around to try to lighten the mood. If you were really MY friend you would know I’m going through a tough time and you wouldn’t get all bent out of shape about a harmless joke” or other dumb nonsense. Then that conversation just spirals downward from there.

The other thing is look, maybe her cerebral cortex gets it, but her lizard brain doesn’t. Her lizard brain is getting nervous that she’s going to get dumped by Dirk, and so she is putting out feelers to make sure there are other men out there interested in her who will ride to her rescue. So, when you give the big speech about how it kind of bothers you that she’s talking this way to you, then the lizard brain part of her says “hurray! there’s a guy out there who is into me.” So, no matter what her cerebral cortex says, her lizard brain just got a big food pellet by pressing the lever. So her lizard brain will keep it up, in subtle, or not so subtle ways, and you will keep getting into the same situation with her.

Just be done with her man. Move on.

36

This is a pretty accurate synopsis by constantine, however, I think you are missing a grand opportunity for some entertainment and a great behavioral modification experiment. I think you really should get over the “darling’ stuff, and let her gab. When she starts her boyfriend bellyaching just say, “Man… I can’t understand how he’d do that to a sweet piece of ass like you”. If you’re half the ride I imagine you to be I’d never want to get out of that sweet saddle.” and similar endearments. Be as blunt as possible. I think the “darlings” will stop. Sure, you’re being a jackass, but her reaction should be worth the price of that admission just to see what happens.

37

I 1,000,000% agree with astro here. IF you can pull this off, I think you should do this. (this is kind of what I was getting at in my option 2 ‘act dominant’ scenario.) I’m not kidding. I think you should do this, because it will be like a cool experiment. #1, she will cut the bs with all that “darling stuff”. #2 something interesting will happen.

I don’t know astro, so don’t know if he is kidding, but I’m not. I’m 100% serious.

38

Part of this is going to sound sexist, and it probably kind of is. But if ever it was deserved…

On the whole, I hold the female gender in equal but different regards to males. Both have their stellar and tragic examples. Both have their relative strengths and weaknesses. I am not a woman hater, but I have to say that your description of this woman does not make me too sympathetic to her.

Repeat after me, and then repeat the following to her. Don’t just repeat it. Understand it and embrace it:

“I refuse to be your emotional tampon any longer.”

I am in complete disagreement with astro. This is not an opportunity to be drole. It’s time to get very serious about this, not to turn it into a contest of frivolity. Do or die. Put up or shut up. You’re letting someone toy with your emotions, and emotions are not a theme park.

Fuck that. Shit or get off the pot. This ain’t Disney World.

39

It is not being a jerk to stand up for yourself and expect to be treated with considertion and dignity. I think she is jerking you around because it makes her feel wanted and attractive at a time when her confidence has taken a hit. That is not fair to you.

I would just break off contact, if she asked why, I would tell her that I don’t have time for her games. That’s not being a jerk, that’s be an adult.

ETA: she knows exactly what she is doing.

40

*Excerpt. Interview (page 32) Rolling Stone - Why Sven is Of the Jungle:

“The only time I like to be called ‘darling’ and ‘my love’ is when my cock is being sucked. Getting an emotional hand job from someone who once made my heart pound just doesn’t count. Trembling knees does not a knee-trembler make.”
*