Well, in my best judgment it was emotionally abusive, but I’m only human and I could’ve been wrong. In any case, now that I know that if someone wants to get repeatedly hurt, emotionally or physically, that’s their right and their problem. Unless someone’s life is in immediate danger, I just ain’t gonna intervene.
Well, then I hope she’s not like you in that regard. It’s not like I was trying to sabotage their relationship for shits and giggles. I was trying to watch out for my friend’s well-being and for my sanity. I realize now that’s not my place.
If he wants to come over, I know now that he has the right to, and I’m going to treat him as civilly, if not as warmly, as any other guest. If it becomes a problem, I’ll ask if she’s willing to move out. Not demand, just ask. If she’s not, then I’ll leave and let them be.
All in all I don’t think it’s a huge deal. I fucked up, we’ll all get over it. She’ll stay with him or she won’t, either way they’re both young and have plenty of time to figure out what they want.
What are your tenant commitments? Do you have a month-to-month rental, or a longer-term lease? Can either of you leave at any time with just 30 days notice?
You said the landlord considers you’re the primary tenant. Why can’t you kick out your female apartment-mate AND her boyfriend? If you leave, are you still going to be liable to continue paying your half of the rent? If she leaves, will she still have to pay her half of the rent (good luck with that)?
As most other have said, and you’ve agreed now, you were probably wrong to take your case directly to apartment-mates boyfriend; you should have taken it up with her.
But as only a few above have suggested, I think you definitely have the right to live without that drama. You would be completely in the right to ask your roommate to not have her boyfriend over, or to leave the drama at the door, or to move out. Sounds like that latter option is what you’re about to end up with anyway. So, it could end up a win-win for you after all.
I agree with most in that you should have taken it up with your friend before laying the law down on the SO. Your relationship is between you and her, not you and her and the other dude.
That being said, your house is your sanctuary and calm is needed there. If someone ‘damages your calm’ at your place then they should be asked to leave.
Be honest with yourself and determine how much worth the friendship to Jane is worth. Look at the drama Jane brings with her and determine is you should be close to her.
Without further knowledge this is how I see it: your friend is a drama queen.
There was drama at the house and the other dude tried to squash it.
If you are being reasonable;
And the Other Dude is trying to be reasonable;
That leaves one person being Unreasonable.
Take a critical look from all perspectives so try to see what is going on. Janes SO might be being a dick but that doesn’t mean the way he reacts is without reason.
Bottom line…don’t get involved in other peoples relationships because you don’t know everything that is going on.
Because the only way I could see a guy crossing the line like that is if he had feelings for her. Feelings that maybe he’s not willing to admit to himself.
I’m just saying, it would never occur to me that I needed to step up like that for one of my guy friends. (or platonic friends.) no matter how shitty the SO was being.
I think you still owe her an ‘in person’ apology. I understand doing it via email for timeliness, but you should still offer up a short, sincere, person to person apology, as well, when next you see her, I think.
Good for you on owning that you overstepped, by the way, well done.
I’m a dude. I don’t have feelings for her, although I can understand why you’d suspect that. Believe me, I have enough trouble with the women I DO have feelings for. There’s plenty of them to go around, and she is thankfully not one of them. I’m not going to go looking to create that kind of situation with a roommate, having learned THAT ugly lesson in college. If I had any doubt about my feelings, I wouldn’t have let her move in.
In this case it was more an immediate gut reaction of disgust – “Not this again! Not here at home, oh god!” I’ve known her for half a decade and this is not the first guy she’s had these sorts of issues with. And, you know, up to a point I think this stuff is just a part of life and no relationship is perfect. So I was willing to be her friend through it all because I thought that’s just what’s friends do. I would’ve hoped my friends would listen to me through similar situations, so I listened to her. I never actually expected her to heed my warnings, because people never do in these situations, but I figured she’d at least finally give it a rest with this one particular guy after she moved out of their place. It seemed, at the time, a huge, healthy step towards her self-respect. I thought she’d changed. I was wrong.
Anyway, I’ve only met the guy once before this incident. Both times he behaved totally fine to me, and was never a dick. In fact I kinda like the guy myself (we’re both gamers) and if Jane wasn’t my friend first, I’d probably try to get to know him better. It’s more his effects on her, and the inevitable change in her subsequent psychological state, that bothered me. With other friends, after the 4th or 5th time, I can just choose not to be a part of it anymore and disengage. With a roommate, well, that’s harder. I did not want a perma-angsty roommate and the situation seemed headed straight for that if he was to reenter her life. She wasn’t going to listen to me, obviously, so in the moment I thought I could preemptively deal with the situation by directly banning him at least from my home.
But I admit I jumped the gun. I crossed the line from intended chivalry (for someone whom I did not believe could stand up for herself) and self-defense (for the sanity of my space) to disrespect for my friend’s independence. For the former, you’ve convinced me that it’s inappropriate to act on behalf of friends in such a manner. Lesson learned. For the latter, I still think that’s my right, but I should’ve talked to her and not him. If she was unwilling to talk about it at that moment, I should have at least waited and tried to talk to her another time first. So I did not behave appropriately.
I will apologize if/when she comes home, I just don’t know when that is. I’m not being passive-aggressive by leaving her a text and a letter, I just don’t know how else to contact her. She deleted me from her FB, after all, and in my text I offered to email her the full apology if she wants it. She never answered, and I don’t have her email otherwise.
If she wants to move out immediately that’s her choice. I would hope she would at least give me the basic courtesy of a 30-day notice, especially since I trusted her not to leave a deposit. If she doesn’t, I’m not going to kick her out because frankly, she’s one of the best roommates I’ve ever had minus this thing with the BF. And besides, that would be totally unfair to her. If she accepts my apology and wants to stay, I’m going to give them a chance and see if they can truly leave the drama at the door. We’re all adults. If they can’t, I will ask her nicely to leave, and if she refuses, then I will leave. Because those of you who say “Is it worth it?” are also right. If the situation gets any more dramatic, I’m just going to disengage by removing the only variable I have control over – myself. I’m loathe to do that because I love this apartment, but if need be, that’s what’s gotta happen. Life goes on
I think there exists a range of emotion where men feel protective towards women in a way they don’t feel toward male buddies but do not feel romantically inclined. We have a name for these feeling–“paternal”. That’s why it’s condescending to act on them in a way that treats the woman like a girl-child.
I’m a bit mystified as to why on earth you would think that even the most dysfunctional woman cannot take care of herself, relationship-wise, if she wants to. Given that, I’m also mystified as to why you didn’t snap that this woman was the kind who thrives on this kind of nonsense, i.e., the POS boyfriend scenario.
You have been on the boards a while, and seem to have a bit of savvy…whence this sudden naivete?
Well, to be fair to Reply, it sounds as if the woman was acting like a girl-child. As do a lot of women when it comes to their boyfriends. I could see a female friend doing the exact same thing, if she thought things were getting out of control. No one likes mess in their house
Right, but Shakes was suggesting that Reply could only feel a sort of gendered response if he were romantically interested in the woman: that otherwise, he would have the same emotional response he would have for a male friend. I think it’s pretty normal to relate differently to different genders even if there is not a sexual component.
Indeed. I felt protective over her, more protective than I would’ve been towards a guy friend of mine. And that is admittedly sexist and disrespectful of her independence. In many ways (most ways, actually) she is a very capable women. In all other spheres of her life, she is doing very well and I admire her tremendously for that. But she’s always had trouble with relationships, much as I have had, and it’s something we’ve bonded over through the years – again, platonically. We’ve been each other’s shoulder to cry on a few times. It’s just never been as bad as it was with this latest guy “Bob” in particular, so I was terrified for her to expose herself to that kind of hurt again, when she’d finally seemed like she moved on.
But ok, I hear ya, not my place.
I’d been in her place once or twice, and a part of me then felt helpless and wished that one of my friends would’ve stood up to my SO for me when I couldn’t. They never did, so I don’t know what it would’ve felt like if they actually had. Maybe it would’ve felt paternal and condescending, maybe relieving, I don’t know… but in any case there’s a difference between treating people the way I want to be treated, and the way THEY want to be treated. She clearly values her independence in her relationships, and so it was not my place to intervene regardless of how I personally felt. My bad.
My best guess is this: I was raised in that ambiguous, post-feminist, pre-genderblind world where women are strong and independent but men are still expected to protect them. From what, I don’t know, because it’s an unresolved conflict in gender roles if they’re already fully capable of taking care of themselves. I also grew up in a different country and culture where gender roles were different, but that is not a defense for my behavior in this culture.
Such an upbringing affected my snap judgment because we default to preprogrammed patterns absent careful preconsideration. And in this case, that programming was to stand up for somebody I did not believe could.
I was wrong, and in the future I will let both men and women proceed as they please in romantic relationships. I will give my opinion if solicited, within reason, and if my opinion and their action continue to mismatch over time, I will say “Just leave me out of this, then” instead of confronting anybody about it.
I’m sorry, I don’t understand what this sentence means? Does “snap” mean to “understand”? As in why did I let her move in at all if she’s prone to this type of behavior?
Well, then my honest answer is I just didn’t consider it very thoroughly. My last roomie moved out and I needed somebody to fill the space. It was her idea to move in and it seemed like a good fit to me, and in every other way it has been. I hope this can be resolved and it can continue to a good living situation for both of us because it’s been great otherwise.
EDIT: And it’s just never been this bad. She had troubles with previous BFs, but nothing overly unreasonable, and they never treated her the way this guy did. I never acted in this way before this incident. I won’t again.
Yes, I’ve been here a long time, but I definitely don’t have a lot of people-savvy. If I did I wouldn’t need to ask for interpersonal advice from strangers on the Internet. I’ve grown and learned a lot from the SDMB over the years, through my own share of emotional and relationship issues (you can look up the threads if you really want to, but they’re not very exciting). And I am thankful that there ARE strangers on the internet willing to share their own experiences and opinions in an honest, but not cruel, way. I try my best to heed people’s advice here, and by and large I’ve been more successful at that than not, but I’m flawed and error-prone as much as anyone else.
Yep. If she feels you’ve given her notice to leave then so be it. It’s one thing listening to a friend and their drama, it’s another to have it on your doorstep.
Nothing substantial to add, but it sounds like you were coming from a good place. You sound like a good friend, and I hope it gets resolved for you and your roommate.
OP - your heart was in the right place, but like everyone else is saying, you way overstepped the boundaries here. She’s an adult, she’s paying her half of the rent, you can’t unilaterally deny her the freedom to make her own choices, even if they’re totally crappy ones.
So first thing, of course, is apologize. Profusely.
Second thing is, wait. Presumably this iteration of her relationship with Bob will run its course after a few months, and she’ll be crying on your shoulder again.
**That **is the point where you get to say what you should have said at the beginning: that when you let her move in, you really assumed that this was the end of the Bob drama, and you really wouldn’t have been OK with it if you’d thought that the drama might be back, only under your own roof. You’re not trying to run her life, just your own place, and you really want your own place to be a Bob-free zone from here out. If that’s OK with her, then great; if not, she really needs to find someone else to room with.
The problem isn’t that you felt protective of her - friends do get protective of their friends, regardless of sex; that’s normal. The problem is that you decided to deal with him, rather than with her, even though she’s the one you actually know and the one whose actions actually affect you.
In other words, you acted like this was a problem for the men to sort out between themselves, while the girl stayed out of the way and waited to hear their decision about her life. This probably isn’t how you felt, but it’s the implication of your actions. Not cool.
You had every right to say to her, ‘I don’t want to see you get hurt again, I don’t want to deal with this guy and the drama, so we can’t share a flat if he’s going to be calling around.’ What you didn’t have a right to do was dismiss her from the conversation altogether.
A friend of mine was going through therapy and he shared this with me from what he was learning. When I remember to take a mental step back and analyze drama, this is a really helpful tool. I am a fixer. As such, I tend to gather broken people. And then get sucked into their drama. It has been enormously helpful to me to be able to look at the triangle and say to myself “you can’t fix this, you shouldn’t try” and to step out of the triangle altogether.
Yes, this is correct. You needed to tell HER that you didn’t want him around anymore; that she was, of course, welcome to stay as your roommate but that Bob wasn’t welcome in your home. As for the argument that it’s her home too, well, tough. Roomates have to compromise, the compromise should benefit both parties, and this isn’t a compromise you’re willing to make. If she wants Bob so much, she can live somewhere else. (Yeah, I’m a hardass about this kind of stuff. Home is a retreat, a haven, a sanctuary. Anyone who makes it a battle ground is unwelcome, in my book.) As for her moodiness because he’s back in the picture, well, if she stays, you’re just going to have to learn to ignore it. That’s just one of the many downsides of living with another person.
