The FUCK??? He’s been friends with her for a long time…known she was in a relationship the whole time…and you say now that she’s getting married he should cut her out of his life? That is fucked up. I can think of NO reason why he should be any less her friend just because she’s permanently in a relationship she was in in the first place.
It’s not like she’s his ex-girlfriend. It’s not like he didn’t know she was in a relationship. It’s not like he had a chance the WHOLE TIME HE KNEW HER.
Sure, he should probably get into some new activities, meet more people, drop the torch he’s carrying for her. But cut her out of his life? How fucking psycho.
For the OP: Are you really her friend, or are you some guy who’s hanging around waiting for your chance with her? How you answer that question (being perfectly honest with yourself, even if it’s unflattering) determines your line of action.
If you’re truly someone’s friend, you do nothing that will mar their joy. Even when it’s shredding your heart into a thousand tiny pieces, you summon up a smile and a hug and something good to say. And you find a way to take pleasure in the sight of your friend’s happiness. If you absolutely, positively cannot do that, you say to your friend, “Look, you know I’d do anything in the world for you, but I need a little time and space right now. We’ll talk later, after I get my shit together, but don’t be hurt if I’m not around much for a bit.” And you follow through with your promise to get together with her later.
Is it easy to do either of these things? Of course not, but nothing worth doing is ever easy. Sometimes watching someone you love have something you desperately want for yourself feels like someone reaching into your chest with a scalpel and cutting your heart into ribbons, and everything seems so incredibly unfair that it just makes your blood boil. Sometimes you might even open your mouth to say something about it. Then, if you’re lucky, you look at your friend and see the light in her eyes, the joy not only in her situation but in having you there to share that joy. And that joy washes away the pain and anger and jealousy and resentment, leaving you not with joy, but with contentment.
If you’ve just been having a few laughs while you wait for your chance, then you follow Manda JO’s distancing plan.
How about because it causes him a lot of pain to see her with someone else? Do Blalron’s feelings matter at all here? Or is her happiness all that matters? God forbid she should lose a friend just to spare said friend the lingering agony of a broken heart. :rolleyes: I’m particularly confused by your use of the word “psycho” to describe Manda Jo’s advice. Don’t you think it would be more psycho to hang around pining for her while she’s in a relationship with another man? Not everybody can just let go of these kinds of feelings so easily.
If I were Blalron, I’d take a good long break from her. Like a year with no contact at all. If at the end of that year, if we’d been destined to reestablish a friendship, then it will happen. If not, I’d be thankful for having known and loved her for as long as I did, and move on.
He’s her friend, and he cares about her. He just happens to care about himself as well, the selfish bastard. If he decides to follow Manda Jo’s advice it will be because he’s taken stock of his limitations, and realized he’s not willing to torture himself, not because he’s a bad friend or doesn’t take her friendship seriously.
Umm… no. Sorry, but friendship is not a promise to shred your heart into a thousand pieces just so your friend never has to experience any feelings of loss whatsoever. “Do nothing that will mar their joy”??? Somehow, if this woman is marrying a man she loves, I think she’ll muddle through without Blalron, however much she may miss him. Besides, what about her obligation as his friend? If it’s too painful for him to be around her, shouldn’t she let him go? If she’s really his friend, why would she want to see him in pain?
And Hamadryad, so what if it’s been like that since he met her? Obviously he could handle it before, and he’s reevaluating whether he can still handle it or not. If he decides he can’t, I maintain that none of us are fit to judge.
I’m rereading my last two posts, and I don’t like my attitude, young man. Sorry about the rolleyes, Hamadryad, and sorry about the “good fucking Christ”, CCL.
I’m not saying that you always have to tear yourself to shreds to protect a friend from any kind of pain. I’m saying that when some special, joyful event happens, you should hold in negative feelings and refrain from pissing on their parade when it won’t benefit anyone.
When my best friend got married five years ago, that left me as the only unmarried one in our group of friends, and it was going to be another four or five years before DrJ and I could get married. And we’d been together a lot longer than any of the other couples. It wasn’t fair, and being closely involved in the wedding planning was a sometimes terribly painful close-up of what I couldn’t have. I had three options: I could say something to her about it and suck a lot of the joy out of her experience to no long-term benefit for either of us, I could quietly distance myself from her and suck a lot of the joy out of her experience and damage a valuable friendship to no long-term benefit to either of us, or I could smile and ask her what else she needed help with.
I’m sure you can guess which I chose. And every day I’m thankful I didn’t say or do anything to make that light in her eyes die.
And, frankly, the fact that all this pain seems to have suddenly cropped up right after her engagement makes me wonder if the OP hasn’t been harboring some fantasy of being the one to pick up the pieces after this woman’s relationship went bust. You have to admit, the timing’s a hell of a coincidence, and it’s a possibility worth consideration.
To me, true friendship in this sort of case is summed up by a line from The Color Purple. “If she come, I be happy. If she don’t, I be content.”
Right, but the way you posted, it was as if it was a new development and he was newly heartbroken over her new relationship. It’s not a new relationship. She’s been with this guy the whole time he’s known her.
If a male friend of mine cut me off when I got married, I’d really wonder if he’d actually ever been my friend at all, or if he’d just been waiting for the opportunity to get in my pants and had bailed as soon as it was obvious he never would.
Life is unfair when a child contracts Polio or when grandparents get lost in a cornfield and get taken out by a combine. It’s not unfair when young love is unrequited.
This is a blessing. Out there somewhere is the woman who someday will be perfect for you. You’re not ready for her yet, nor is she for you. She’s still maturing, developing in part from unrequited relationships of her own.
Someday the two of you will meet and all the experiences that define the two of you will help you both realize just how perfect the other person is for you.
Don’t be depressed by this gal that’s marrying another. Be thankful for the friendship, grow stronger from it and bring it to the table in relationships down the road.
[sub]Thanks Derleth – Shana yes I was referring to kambuckta and not to you – his (her? can’t recall, sorry) advice trumped yours for badness by levels of magnitude. Derleth said for me what I’d have said to you (thanks again D (and Xanthas))[/sub]
And I think I agree with Hama. Particularly… ‘If a male friend of mine cut me off when I got married, I’d really wonder if he’d actually ever been my friend at all’. Although I think there’s merit to the point of view that maybe this is the wakeup call Blalron has needed all along to finally realize that he’s not getting his shot with this person… and if he can honestly say that he would be happier without her in his life, there’s no sense blaming him for that. As long as, like Manda said, he doesn’t pitch a fit or make a scene about it. I mean you gotta do what you gotta do, right?
Geez. I came into this thread to pat a ‘There, there Blalron, life is never as bad as it seems…’, with a touch of cynicism thrown in about the state of marriage nowadays. What sort of ‘advice’ are you MEANT to offer to someone who has just had a self-described kick to the guts like that? You give them a hug, and tell 'em that life ain’t all bad and to look for a silver lining.
Folks, I was NOT being serious about waiting around for his ‘beloved’ to fall on hard times. That sort of stuff only happens in Hallmark novels for gawdsakes. I had my tongue very firmly planted in my cheek with that comment, and I assumed it would have been taken in the manner I intended.
If I have really offended anybody, I do apologise.
Fuck. I think I just failed American Culture 101. I was trying to translate our Mills and Boon into something that you Merkins could recognise. And I fucked it up.
So, please read Hallmark as Harlequin in my last post.
Because it’s killing him by inches. Because over time he will start to resent her for not being the person he wants her to be. Because he will never get over her–never learn to be content on his own or meet anyone new–if his heart and mind and soul are filled with thoughts of her every day. And if he sees her every day, the process of reinventing himself will never start.
Right, Which means thta for years he hasn’t been able to get over her even when he knew she was out of reach. This cycle–him wanting her and she not wanting him–will never, ever change until the pattern is broken.
If I had a male friend who I knew was desperatly in love with me, who I knew ached with pain and lust and longing whenever I was near–if I saw that friend distancing himself from me and building a seperate life, I’d be happy for him, and I’d sure as hell understand why he had to do it.
Some relationship are just destructive, even when the people involved are all good people. This sounds like one of those. As I said in my OP, maybe latter they can be friends, but not while he’s still in love with her, and he will be in love until he gets some distance. Love doesn’t go away if you stay in close proximity to your beloved.
Crazycatlady
But that was something that will end–it was the wedding that was saddening you, not the marriage, and staying friends with her wasn’t going to prevent you from ever planning a wedding of your own. He’s been in love with her for years. He’ll stay in love with her for years to come if he doesn’t get some distance. That’s not a fair pressure to put on her, and it’s not a fair pressure to put on himself.
Friendships wither all the time, and thank god they do–if they didn’t we’d never have time to make new friends. All I am suggesting is that its time to let this friendship slide into hibernation–a state it may or may not ever awake from, noone can tell–and spend his time developing other relationships.
Blalron, I feel your pain even more than you do, my amigo. Take solace in the fact that you are young. Me, I’m 33 and just got the speech this week, too.
She “trusts” me. I’m “one of the two or three best friends” she has. I’m “such a wonderful person.” She’s “never met anyone like” me.
And she wouldn’t date me if I had a twelve-inch chocolate penis.
Hell, she says she’s still in love with the alcoholic. I’d be inclined to say it’s just her, if it wasn’t for the fact that pretty much every woman I’ve ever met thinks of me in the same terms. Three billion women, every damn one of 'em wanting me for a brother.
At least she didn’t put in the standard boilerplate about “you’re going to make some girl very happy someday;” at my age, it’s increasingly fucking apparent that the only chance of that is finding someone looking to escape the third world and marry anything with a US Visa. Hopefully she’ll be a good enough actress that I’ll enjoy the five years before she gets citezenship and dumps me for some guy with naturally hairless arms.
The advice you’re getting here is right: just walk slowly away.
And you bet your ass life is unfair. Get used to it, “nice guy”
Actually…this does push me toward the “back off” camp. It sounds as though you’ve been terribly unfair to her. It seems as though she’s been in the position of trying to be friends with someone who she likes plenty, but who is so far into denial that he doesn’t even want to acknowledge that her life EXISTS, outside of himself. She’s having to keep an entire - very important - part of her life around wraps around you just to keep from hurting your feelings.
Her fiancee must be a really remarkable guy, to not object to her friendship with someone who doesn’t even want to acknowledge that he - the person she wants to spend the rest of her life with - even exists.
IMNPFHO, you’re being extraordinarily childish about your entire friendship with her, from what I’ve read.
By all means, what a lot of other people said: cut her loose, but not to spare YOUR feeling; do it because she needs friends she can have IN her life, not just on the safe, comfortable, emotionally-insulated fringes.
So…you’ve just been having some laughs with her while deluding yourself that you’ll eventually have a chance. Oy.
If you’ve deliberately blocked out that big a part of her life (and, by extension, a big part of who she really is), odds are damned good there’s a lot of other important stuff you don’t know about her. In other words, you don’t love her, you love your idea of her.
You have two options: get to know this man she’s marrying as a person, and get to know them as a couple, or cut yourself out of her life entirely. Anything less is unfair to both of you. It denies her the ability to share a vital part of her life and future with someone who claims to be her friend, and it keeps you mooning about in denial.
If you get to know this guy, it might help cement in that a) she’s really, truly, completely, without question unavailable, and b) they’re happy together. Seeing them together on a regular basis will at least give you a chance to determine whether or not you can learn to love her in her entirety…as a friend, and only as a friend.
