So, what is the guy like, besides friendly and cool?
I think this thing is fraught with way too much drama, but that’s the nature of the beast I guess. IMO you should have dated him from the get-go, or made a pact that neither of you would date him.
Heh, something like this happened to me in the role of the guy - only I didn’t know it for something like a decade.
Went like this.
I knew two women in university, one in a class I was taking, and the other I met in the pub; I was interested in both. Unknown to me, they were friends outside of class, and they were comparing impressions.
One day, one of the women decided she was going to have a party at her dorm, the purpose of which was to invite the guys she was interested in, and some of her friends. She went over in great detail with her friend - the other woman who knew me - the list of guys she didn’t know very well whom she wished to invite - I think there was something like four. Allegedly, I was at the top of the list. 
Anyway, her friend approved the list, with the exception of - me. She raised all sorts of objections, mainly that I was “too wierd” in my interests and anti-social to invite, I was unattractive, there were better guys available … after some persuation, the first woman decided not to invite me after all.
The second woman then held her own party, and invited me - which was her purpose all along. We ended up dating, and now we’ve been married for twelve years.
The first woman was furious when she found out she’d been duped in this way, and they never spoke again.
I never knew this until nearly a decade later, when my wife told me the story. It was oddly machavelian behaviour for her, usually she is truthful to a fault.
There was other drama attendant on our meeting. This woman (now my wife) was accompanied by a fellow who more or less claimed to be her boyfriend. I certainly though he was at the time. She said, on the contrary, they were just friends, and that he had come increasingly to assume on that friendship. It was he that first introduced himself to me, and we shared an interest in seeing some live Jazz, so he invited me out - and her. That night the three of us had some drinks in her dorm room, when he basically annouces he was sleeping over that night - I assumed of course he had every right to do this (but he didn’t - he was pushing his luck, and spent the night on the floor). Suffice it to say he did not react well to our going out.
Ah, drama.
Y’know, I was on the guy side of this in another way back in college–to make it very short, a buddy of mine had met a new girl and was trying to slowly worm his way into a relationship with her. She wasn’t into it, but she WAS into me, and we started dating. The guy in question actually stopped talking to EVERYONE in my circle of friends over it, not just me, and it has remained thus even after she dumped me and vented some wild accusations about me all over the internet.
So what? You find out who your real friends are (or at least who your mature friends are) by how they react to pedestrian, everyday stuff like rejection by a third party. IMHO you should have just dated him to begin with, you’re being unfair by thinking HE’S doing something wrong, and frankly you need a better class of friend, preferably one who acts like an adult instead of a catty high school kid.
i think this may be a slightly, uh, major point? Presumably she was a willing participant in hearing out this guy talk about how awesome you were, how much he wanted to be with her, and how much it was too bad it was HER fault that you weren’t together. Uh. What did she have to say about this?
It really looks like you had a perfect opportunity here and didn’t take it. That said, your roommate isn’t particularly innocent if she knew all this, agreed you shouldn’t be together, and now is. But really, he was admittedly smitten with you and even then the two of you couldn’t come to an agreement that ended with you two dating? This problem started WAY before it ended in this.
I agree with enigm4tic that it’s a major point. She’s second banana, and she knows it. She is now never, ever going to be secure with him around you, and whether she intends to or not, she’s going to find lots of ways to further sabatoge her relationship with you because of that. Mark my words.
Why the rolleyes? Sorry, but finding the right lifelong partner is hardly something to rolleyes about. For many, it’s the most important thing in life, to find someone to love and be loved.
Maybe it is “true love”. Maybe they are perfect for each other, will marry and have an awesome life together.
I care about my friends, but those feelings are nothing in comparison to my love for my spouse. Why do you expect her to blow off the chance at lifelong happiness, for you?
How can it be true love if he really really wanted to date pbbth first? That’s what gets me. It’s strikes me as odd and more than a little weird.
Love can sometimes be odd and a little weird.
So what if, at first, the guy thought he liked pbbth best? Now he’s gotten to know the other woman a lot better and possibly they are truly right for each other. If it really is the start of a deep, true love, is the friend really expected to dump the guy anyway and possibly miss out on lifelong happiness with the man she loves? Just to make some roommate happy?
I just think the rolleyes and the childish “twoo wuv” comment were rather immature.
Because no matter how great the guy was, a relationship founded on acting like a worse person than you want to be is something that would never sit right with some people. I wouldn’t completely blow off “the chance of lifelong happiness” for someone else, but if I thought the guy was “the one” and that it was that important, I’d talk to my friend about it rather than going behind her back. For some people “all is fair in love and war,” but to me it just seems like a way for people to justify their own horrible behavior. It’s disappointing to find out that your friends aren’t who you thought they were and don’t care about you the way you care about them.
You know, Polymer, I get your point and if they marry and have a happy life together good for them. I hope they do make each other happy. However, she is 19 and has never dated anyone before (well, anyone she ever met in person…she has had a couple of “boyfriends” online that she never met or spoke to on the phone, one of which she suspects of actually being a woman. But that is a story for another day.) so somehow I am not seeing a relationship with a 32 year old man who decided she was good enough to come in second as her first ever real life romance coming to any kind of fruition.
I’m not saying that she for certian isn’t in love with him, but the last guy she “dated” through an online relationship it lasted 11 days and she spent all 11 of those days and 5 weeks afterwards sobbing about how much she loved him. She got a ring out of her jewelry box and pretended it was a wedding band so people would think she was married to this guy she never actually met. Her relationship experience is very, very limited and the way she approaches “love” leads me to believe she is blindly groping for affection and the fact that he knows her well enough to know this and decided after he couldn’t get me in bed that he is into her just screams to me that he has lined up to be the one to pop her cherry and discard her when something better comes along.
I have encouraged her to see a therapist and she had her first session last week. I was hoping she would get a chance to work through some of her love/relationship stuff with the therapist before she started dating anyone seriously because of all of this and a history of sexual abuse from her childhood but she doesn’t feel the same way, obviously.
Agreed, pbbth. Now that we have “the rest of the story” I would agree w/your take on the situation. Apologies for calling your post immature.
It’s okay, I can see where it would seem immature and to be fair I am not feeling real mature about much of anything right now. I am fantasizing about all the horrible things I could do to cause them both severe physical and emotional pain. I am not actually doing any of these things though, so I like to think that I am being just the right amount of immature. 
2 words: Casual sex.
One more: Threesome.
You’ve crushed this guy’s fantasy about a 3 way with 2 hot roomies, or you could have at least taken turns jumping his bones.
I don’t know why more people don’t ask me for advice on all matters sexual.
:eek:
Back away, not today, disco lady.
Just out of curiosity, how old are you? It seems kind of odd that a 32-year-old man would be in “Three Musketeers” situation with a 19-year-old. Unless you’re referring to the candy bar, of course, as the gentleman appears to have a bit of a sweet tooth.
All I have to say is:
God DAMN I’m glad most women I know aren’t this batshit insane. Sorry, pbbth, but girls who think like you and your roomie are what drive guys to drink.
If you don’t do anything to them and instead are completely friendly and polite, they will drive themselves crazy wondering when the blow will fall. I recommend this course of action, as it’s fun.
I am 25. I knew moving in with a 19 year old would be tough but we have been friends despite the age difference for a while. Our families and friends have known each other for a long time and she has always seemed really mature for her age but I suppose being away from home for the first time messes everyone up a little bit. I guess I just figured I would be dealing with her wanting to be drunk on the weekend and trying to make sure she doesn’t spend her money on a $600 Gucci purse instead of rent. I didn’t take into account all the rest of the crap that went along with the age difference.
And Sofaspud you are more than welcome to have a cold one to deal with the pain of not understanding women. I can’t really understand I suppose because men are never confusing or backstabbing or do anything to upset the delicate balance of relationships with the opposite sex. :dubious:
We’re not confusing. If you simply remember that men don’t think ahead, you’ll easily understand 95% of what at first seemed confusing about us. 
Seriously, though, I would argue that guys in general are a lot less confusing to other guys than women are, which is what I was getting at. It makes no sense to me that you would be in this situation. Were it reversed, you can bet the guys would have said “Dude, if I can’t touch her neither can you, 'kay?”
That’s not to say that guys don’t backstab, etc, whatever; however, we don’t rely on telepathy to get the point across, generally, which makes it much more obvious when someone’s being a prick. They can’t claim ignorance, after all.
Well, knowing her ripe old age of 19 certainly explains alot. It also explains why you did something honorable because you knew better and her immaturity and misguided infatuation did not permit her from honoring her end, but it’s not totally excusable on her part.
A 32 year old male friend…hanging out and just being “friends” with two young, nubile haughties of 19 and 25? It’s like Jupiter tugging on two asteroids and sending them into unstable orbits, either to crash into the Sun, itself, each other, or worse yet…being flung outward into empty space. Whatever may happen, the three of you are not gonna co-exist much longer in this dynamic. Someone’s gonna get hurt.
As for the guy, if you both held your pact together, he would have already left you guys alone awhile back. He’s not there just to be friends forever. Have you ever thought of that, or did that not matter to you or your roommate? I ask that question in seriousness, I’m not being snarky about it.