If it went down like you described, I would have thought you weren’t going to date him so that I could, and then I would. You shouldn’t ever expect the other person to read your mind- if you want a specific behavior, you have to ask for it. If it wasn’t clear, you should’ve asked her not to date him in return for you not dating him.
And it’s really not that big of a deal, in the scheme of things. If your reason for not dating him was that you don’t want to lose a friendship over a guy, then why are you doing it? Be gracious to them, remain friends, and years from now you’ll all be grateful for it. Most important advice of all- if what you seek is a gentlemen friend of a romantic persuasion, go get one. Then you won’t be worrying about what they’re doing, you’ll be too busy doing your own thing.
I do agree that roommates suck- I wouldn’t have one if they paid me.
And no, you can’t kick her out, as one suggested. People have rights.
the situation dexcirbed in the OP is the stuff sitcoms and soap operas are made of. The OP was being selfless and on TV that person almost always gets the short end of the stick, at least until the last act when they finally get their due. Yeah, it sux royally when it’s a friend/roommate - imagine if it were your sister or (as happened to me) cousin.
As for how “twenty somethings act today”, they’ve always acted that way. It’s in the twenty-something’s handbook.
Lesson learned: go ahead and be selfish - pretty much everyone else is.
Can you blame him? If the Janet and Chrissy of this story were really cool, they’d both do him at once. Instead it’s gotten all complicated and hostile.
Fffft… women.
I am sure that after a couple of weeks this will have calmed down and she and I will be friends without an issue. I brought it to the bbq pit because I am angry, and as most women will tell you I have every right to feel that way, but after I have had a chance to calm down it will probably be all right in the end.
I don’t expect her to twist about to accomodate me, I just asked for the respect I showed her to be returned and she isn’t willing to give that. Now I know where her line is and I am better able to make decisions based on where our relationship stands. Next time I know not to turn down the guy for her because she wouldn’t do the same for me. It is a lesson well learned I suppose. Still sucks though.
I think i have to go with this answer. Many times, we expect people to behave the way we want them to without saying it! Did sleezy roomate actually SAY “cool, I’m not going to date him either”?
Thank doG, I’ve never had a man between a friend and I, figuratively or literally .
No, but he was very upset that she was interested in him at the time. He and I discussed how we couldn’t date because it would hurt her since she was really into him. He talked to her about not wanting to be with her and being sorry for that but he just wanted to be friends. She had no reason to say that she wouldn’t date him either because it wasn’t an option then, the option just appeared a couple of days ago.
We shouldn’t have to SAY everything that we expect from one another, common courtesy should be able to cover some things. After all, I have never SAID, “Hey, I promise not to take your half of the rent money you give me every month and get a bitchin’ tattoo instead of paying the rent and get us evicted” or “I promise not to use your leg razor to shave my pubic hair.” Just because I have never said those things doesn’t give me an excuse to go and do them because, hey, I never told her I wouldn’t.
Dating a guy someone else likes is hardly the same as blowing your share of the rent money. Maybe after he got to know her, he became attracted to her. It happens like that sometimes. If they discovered after becoming friends that they might could have something together, then it’s not like she stepped over your carcass to snatch him up, is it?
I’m not saying it’s right to go after a guy you know your friend likes, but what if it is true love? What if they could be together for the next 60 years and raise a family and have grandchildren and be perfectly happy? Real love isn’t that easy to find. It may not be worth ruining a best-friendship, but a roommate? I can understand that.
That’s the thing though, we are more than just roommates. We have known each other for years, been best friends for more than a year, and moved 1500 miles across the country together from Texas to NYC in June. We are essentially family as we have no one here in the city that we really know, save for a few friends we have made since we moved here. She isn’t just picking a guy over her roommate, she is picking a guy over a friend she has had for a long time, someone who trusted her enough to move across the country with her and helped pull her out of an abusive home situation. Due to an odd air conditioning situation we shared a bed for almost 3 months this summer. We are far more than just roommates. The odds of this guy being 'the one" are very, very slim and she is knowingly hurting me so she can have someone to hold hands with in the park. I guess it is better that I didn’t end up with an asshole who would do this kind of thing but it still hurts that she would feel that fucking me over is preferable to finding another guy. And if and when this relationship between them ends the odds are good she will lose him as a friend too, so she is fucking herself over twice.
I can sympathize with your feelings, but I can’t imagine a scenario where I would expect a friend to back off a guy I was into. If he’s not into me, and he starts being into her, I can then turn my attention to someone who could potentially be into me and have closure with the guy I was hot for. Because I have never seen the point in pining after someone who didn’t want me.
As to whether I would date someone my friend was into… probably, yes, unless for some reason I viewed the friend as emotionally fragile, someone I had to protect… or if the intensity of her feelings were unusually deep for whatever reason. This does not make me a bad friend… it makes me a realist about relationships. If someone said, ‘‘Don’t date Crush of the Week, I’m really into him,’’ I would question their ability to be a good friend. The unspoken sentiment seems to be, ‘‘If I can’t have him, nobody can,’’ ultimately denying the friend’s potential for happiness out of spite, and that’s just really immature.
If I were in the guy’s situation and you turned me down, I would absolutely pursue your roommate. We men have an understood “may the best man win” code that apparently you wimminfolk don’t get.
Yeah, it seems like a weird position to me. Setting yourself up to be in competition with a friend for a romantic interest is a sure-fire way to damage, if not totally ruin, a friendship. The only person it benefits is the guy who gets the ego boost of feeling that both women want him. I’ve been in the OP’s position before and it did severely damage the friendship, to the point where I moved out. It was a long complicated story; eventually we did speak again but we never regained our old closeness. The guy involved wasn’t exactly Mr. Right for her either; she ditched him shortly after I moved out.
The unspoken sentiment in the OP’s situation is “Please value me and our friendship enough not to do something that you know will hurt me.” It doesn’t mean that the roommate could never date the guy; just that waiting until the OP’s feelings had lessened would have been the thing that a friend who really cared would have done.
Well, I’ve never been in that position before, on either side, so it’s hard to say what I would do in reality. I guess I just don’t see why it would be a competition. As I said before, I have no interest in a guy once I’m aware he has no interest in me… or more interest in someone else. I don’t want to be with someone who doesn’t want me. So the instant the girl started dating some guy I liked, I would cease wanting him. I have been in THAT situation many times.
I lack sympathy for the OP’s roommate in this case. The unspoken sentiment seemed to be, ‘‘I’m a selfish backstabbing bitch with a friendship double standard who thinks if I act cute about it I can manipulate my friend out of being angry with me for betraying her.’’ That friend, once laying down the rules for her friendship, had a responsibility to live up to those standards herself.
Now if someone who was not a conniving bitch came to me and said, exactly as you posted, ‘‘It will hurt me if you date this person,’’ I certainly would think twice. I wouldn’t really understand it, but I’d think long and hard about the decision then.
I think you’re neurotic, but then I’m thinking about this logically, I dunno about the female emotional way of doing things so perhaps you have a genuine greievence.
Any way, you’re pretty lucky: I have a friend who’s into nlp and a “pickup artist”, this sounds like the kind of situation he’d engineer to create a threesome, so… Be careful.
I admire your ability to change your feelings like that, but I wonder if that’s a common capability. It doesn’t seem to be so for the OP, even without the added complication of having the guy around constantly, especially now that he’s dating her roommate.
I think maybe if the roommate had tried asking beforehand, then maybe the OP might have felt differently about the situation, or at least been better able to accept it. It’s one thing to have prior knowledge and be able to brace yourself, so to speak, and quite another to be blindsided in that manner.
And to pbbth, since you’ve mentioned that that isn’t the first time she’s gone out of her way to hurt you, are you sure she’s really someone you want to have in your life?
Damn, you’ve got a couple of winners here, don’t you? You better start looking around for a replacement room-mate for when she dumps you with two weeks notice to move in with him.
And do not let her stay with you while she’s looking for a new place after she finds out he’s cheating on her.
This is really difficult because she and I have always been so close. After the last huge blowup that we had (which was also the first big blowup, about 6 weeks ago) we set a bunch of ground rules we both had to follow if we wanted to remain friends. It took a lot of work and I was just now coming to a point where I could try to start trusting her again and then she pulls this shit. I don’t know if I want her in my life anymore but we are both on the lease until the end of May. Leases are fairly easy to break but honestly if I walk away from this I lose the only person I really know in the city and she essentially becomes homeless since I earn about 3 times as much money as she does and she could not pay the rent here alone. I don’t like screwing people over even if they deserve it and the fact that my moving would be the reason she had to illegally sublet a single room out of someone’s apartment in Spanish Harlem would bother me, but I don’t know if it would bother me more than living with someone I am growing to dislike and being uncomfortable all the time.
One thing I have learned, you are not screwing anyone over. If she was to end up in a rented room somewhere on Lenox, it’s HER choice. She chooses her behavior, not you. With behavior and actions come consequences. If you make shitty choices, you get shitty results.
Worry about yourself. She’s not going to worry about you paying all the rent if she runs out on you. Make sure that you are taken care of. That is top priority and NO it’s not selfish, it’s smart.
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