The Vine: April 10, 2007
O Wise One,
My best friend/roommate, I’ll call her K, works with this guy J. We all went to a lot of the same parties so J and I got to be friends and eventually started going out. Everything was going fine and a while later J and I had sex. I had asked him not to go around telling a lot of people, because I wanted to be the one to tell K and I wanted to do it in my own time.
After a while, the things that I thought were cute about J turned out to be annoying. Plus, I started to realize that he wasn’t really into me specifically, he was just into having a girlfriend. Do you know the type of guy I’m talking about? He would talk for hours and never once ask me how my day was. When my mom was very sick and in the hospital, he never asked me how she was doing. I was going through a lot, and if I was going to have a boyfriend, I needed one that could listen. I’m very willing to talk to him on the phone for an hour and listen to his problems, but I need my time to talk, too.
So, I decided to break up with him. I talked to K about it. By this time, I still hadn’t told her that J and I had sex. It seemed like a moot point now, and so much time had passed that I didn’t want her to think that I was hiding it from her, and it had nothing to do with my reasons for breaking up with him. She thought I was in the right and said that I should do whatever I needed to do. I told her that I respect their friendship and I don’t expect her to stop hanging out with him on my account.
Well, he didn’t take the break-up so great, but he and K maintained their work relationship. He talked to her about his side of the story, but K just told him that she didn’t want to get in the middle of it. Once, he had texted me an invite to come over to his place for dinner. I replied that while it was a nice gesture, I didn’t really feel comfortable having dinner with him one on one, but if we happen to be at the same party, I don’t want things to be awkward and would have no problem hanging out with him in a group setting.
Five months later, I find out from a mutual friend that J had told K that we had slept together, and that I told him not to tell her. K hasn’t confronted me about this yet, but I know she is going to.
I should have told her when it had happened. I mean, we are best friends and don’t normally keep things from each other, but it was a sticky situation with them working together. Those are all stupid excuses, and I don’t really know why I didn’t tell her. Maybe because best friend or not, it’s really not any of her business, and J should have respected my privacy and kept his mouth shut. I’m over it. I’m sorry that he’s not, but the only reason for him to tell her now is to make trouble for me and to get K on his side.
So far, besides the text message, I haven’t said a word to him. I figure he’d rather have me angry at him then have me feel nothing, and this is just a stupid ploy for me to confront him.
So the way I see it I have a few options:
1) Deny that we had sex. K gets mad at J for spreading rumors, but ultimately, I’m still a liar and J was right.
2) Confront J and give him what he wants.
3) Tell K that it’s still none of her business, but that in itself is still an admission of guilt.
4) Fess up and tell her that I don’t really have a good reason why I didn’t tell her.
I guess that I should probably pick option 4, but I know that K will be mad at me. Even if she really has no right to be mad, she still will be, and getting K mad at me is the last thing that I want (I love her, but she can be a real bitch when she’s mad and it would make living with her for the next few weeks kind of tough). Plus, it bothers me that J would resort to this, and I don’t want this fact to change K’s opinion that I was not a bitch for breaking up with him.
I think I know what I have to do, but you always give the best advice, even if it’s what I don’t really want to hear.
Signed,
This is why I like cats
Option 4. Explain your reasoning, but don’t elaborate or over-apologize, because you did have a valid reason for not telling her, and if she chooses to get mad, you can’t do much about it. Just say you didn’t like keeping this from her, but you were trying to respect her relationship with J by not putting her too much in the middle.
If you make too big a deal about it, or say you’re sorry too many times, you sort of confirm for her that she’s right to get pissed — and she isn’t, really. It’s not her business, strictly speaking. Don’t make too big a deal of it, and don’t contact J. You’re done with him, and rightly so; stay done.
Tags: boys (and girls) friendships
I don’t get it. How is YOUR sex life HER issue? I can see if you hadn’t “dated” this guy at all. Sure, you slept with a roomates co worker. Tsk Tsk! It could make things uncomfortable for her! But you didn’t do that, you had some sort of relationship with a roomates co worker. And in relationships? People routinely have sex. I must be missing something here.
Comments on the Vine columns. Interesting …
I think I’m missing something. If a close friend of mine were dating someone and didn’t say she/he had sex with the person, I wouldn’t assume anything one way or the other. Finding out about it — or never being told — wouldn’t feel like a betrayal. Is there some reason to believe that she thinks she’s owed this information?
I don’t get it. Why is who you have sex with anybody’s business? You can tell who you want, or not. If she asks tell her you are attempting to learn discretion.
In addition, I think if you have to expressly tell someone you’re sleeping with not to tell everyone they know they are having sex with you, that might actually constitute your wake-up call that they’re kind of a jerk. Because in real life? Grownups don’t generally make a big announcement when they have sex with someone. I still don’t get why K, who knew you were dating J, would expect to be informed about your sex life with him, and honestly unless she brings it up, I wouldn’t. If she does, Option 4 looks best to me, although I’d say rather than not having a good reason why you didn’t tell her, there wasn’t any good reason TO tell her. Unless, you know, she’s sleeping with him , too. In which case I would think the dating would bother her quite enough.
I would agree with many of the others. YOU had a thing with J, not your friend. If she gets pissed off, then she’s too invested in your personal business. Also, I would echo another poster here – you had a relationship with the bloke. Often, relationships are laced with sexual activity. That activity is nobody’s business but yours. Fret not, overthinking things like this is a pig, we all do it, but you don’t need the aggro, surely.
“Is there some reason to believe that she thinks she’s owed this information?”
Yeah, I don’t get it. The only time you usually see this sense of entitlement to information about a friend’s life is in adolescent-girl friendships. Unless K’s under 18 it’s a pretty immature expectation, and even if she is she needs to learn sometime that other people’s sex lives aren’t always her business.
Don’t say anything until she does, and then use the old Sars strategy of seeming confused about why she expected you to tell her so she has to clarify to the point that she sounds like an idiot. Works every time.
Perhaps the reason that “K” has not confronted you about this bit of gossip from “J” is because it is a NON ISSUE. There must be more to this story (e.g. K had a crush on J, etc) for you to be so concerned.
I understand wanting to tell your friend yourself, but I agree with Lesley, no announcement necessary. But dude, it’s not just YOUR sex life. He’s not telling a secret about your life with someone else, it’s his sex life, too. He has every right to talk about his life, even when it intersects with yours.
if you were dating him and seem to be in your twenties, wouldn’t she assume you’d slept together? i’m confused.
I give you Option 5:
Say nothing, to either J or K. At all.
If, as you suspect, K actually asks you if you slept with him, you can say “No.” It will be a lie, but you can still say it. Or you can say “Yes,” because that’s the truth. There is no “admission of guilt” here – of what are you guilty? Having sex? No. No on “guilty for having sex.”
After you say “Yes,” (if that is your choice), and K gets all blustery and indignant and “Why didn’t you TELL me,” you can look at her and ask, “Why would you want to know?” – and that’s an excellent question, in and of itself. There are other ways to finish it – after the spluttering that ensues, just shrug and say, “It was no big deal.” That should finish J off nicely.
I don’t get it either. She mentions breaking up with him, which would seem to indicate they were dating. In which case, why wouldn’t K assume that they were sleeping together?
The only thing I could see K getting pissed about is that she specifically said not to tell K, but still. None of her business either way.