The Vine: February 22, 2005
O Wise and Glorious Sars,
Love the site, love your advice. Need some assistance.
The story begins seven years ago, college. In one of those Greek group-mating rituals, my sorority was “paired” with a fraternity for a semester. I quickly became involved in an extremely unhealthy relationship with one of the guys, Fuckwad (lonnnnnng story short: we hooked up frequently, I spent tons of time with him and the other guys in the house as a result, but we weren’t “dating” because, I realized later, (a) he didn’t really like me for anything other than hookups, and (b) he was engaged to the girl back home. Oops).
After I found all this out, and moved halfway across the country to try to run away from the mess I had allowed my life to become — an ugly downward spiral of illness, both physical and emotional, and failure — I stayed in touch with one of the other guys, NiceGuy (who I’d become friends with as well). So fast-forward to last New Year’s. NG and I are still friends, I’ve gotten healthier and gotten over F, and NG ends up staying with me while traveling for the holidays. We end up having sex, I freak out, we talk a few days later, decide to try dating, and have been together and blissfully happy since. The only real problem is that we’re not in the same city right now, but we’re close enough for frequent visits, and he’s planning to move here later this year.
This is the relationship I’ve wanted all my life — my family loves him, he treats me like a princess, and he is absolutely the man I’m going to marry.
And then. Ever since we started dating, NG has teased me that he “knows” I was “secretly in love with him all along” and that’s why I stayed in touch with him, blah blah blah. Every time he’s brought up this joke, I’ve laughed it off with him, as it’s not true at all, and he knows that, and it’s funny. But this weekend, he said it again, and I got upset, and he wanted to know why, and basically pressed me until I told him the truth. Which is that the primary reason I stayed in touch with NG at the beginning was that I was hoping to hear shreds of news, gossip, whatever, about F. Obviously, that was not the reason I stayed friends with NG, but every time he brings this “theory” up, I think about how horribly I allowed F to hurt me, and how irrationally scared I am of getting hurt like that again.
I told him all this. He was upset, understandably, but we talked about it, he says he “got what he deserved” when he pressured me to explain, and I think he’s okay with it. I’m just terrified that now that I’ve told him this, he’ll begin to doubt our whole relationship and it will cause problems, somehow. And F will have passively managed to destroy this relationship too.
So, getting to the question(s) here: Am I obsessing over this because there’s nothing else to worry about (which I’m totally not used to)? Should I try to talk to him about it further, and attempt to ensure that there’s no residual resentment or problems, or just let it drop? Should I shut up already and forget the circumstances that brought us together, and just enjoy and be grateful for the end result?
Thanks for any advice you can offer.
Happier Than I Think I Should Be And Feeling Guilty About It, Maybe
Dear Probably,
In order: Possibly, no, and probably.
Why would you think you shouldn’t be this happy? Why, after seven years, would you still be giving F the power to destroy a relationship he isn’t a party to? Yes, he hurt you, and yes, it’s understandable that you’d want to avoid that kind of aggro a second time, but that has nothing to do with NG and everything to do with the fact that you don’t value yourself very much.
You’re still letting F define your worth — and not for nothing, but you’re letting him price you too low — and you need to stop doing that, both to avoid tangling up your current relationship and to be a happier person. You should maybe talk to a counselor about strategies for letting that hurt go, but in any case, it’s not NG’s job to sort you out there; it’s yours. “But he brought it up!” Well, sort of. He brought up an old joke; you chose to react by dumping a load of baggage on him that he didn’t even pack.
Which, whatever. It happens; I don’t mean that you should beat yourself up about it, but I do think you should remember that your issues with F aren’t things you should be working through with NG.
Dear Sars,
This is kind of an odd problem, and I’m afraid to ask anyone else because
they either know the principals involved and might gossip or will get
freaked out by the alternative-lifestyle elements of the problem. Your
advice is always open-minded and clear-headed, so here goes.
Husband and I have been married five years and have a one-year-old son.
Husband is still friends with his best friend from high school and gets
along quite well with his friend’s wife of seven years. Friend’s wife and I
also get along although we don’t have much in common and are not close. All
four of us — Husband, Friend, Friend’s Wife, and me — hung out as part of
a large group of friends when we were young and unmarried. And of course,
being young and unmarried, we tended to be a bit more sexually adventurous
than we are now. For example, Husband and I once spent a very drunken
evening making out with Friend and Friend’s Wife, who is bisexual. However,
since we got serious about each other, Husband and I have been totally
monogamous.
One of the things Husband and Friend used to do is go to strip clubs
together occasionally. I think strip clubs are skanky, but I also think that
there are much worse things in this world than horny guys ogling dancers.
Since the club visits were infrequent and Husband never dated the dancers or
anything, I decided it was harmless. Even so, Husband has been only once or
twice since our marriage.
So, on to the problem. I had to borrow Husband’s cell phone yesterday and
noticed a message from Friend’s Wife on it. Expecting the usual
how-are-you-let’s-have-dinner-soon, I listened to it. Instead it was an
invitation for Husband to go out to lunch with Friend and Friend’s Wife —
at a local strip club. From some things that she said, I gathered that this
was not the first time they had met for lunch at this particular
establishment, but I had not heard anything about these past visits from
Husband. That in itself is not so unusual, as he often forgets to tell me
when he sees friends of ours because he is something of an absent-minded
professor type. And I don’t mind him going to the strip club, as long as he
doesn’t make a habit of it.
What bothers me is his going to the club with Friend’s Wife. Why does she
want him to go? She’s got her husband there, so it’s not like she needs
company. I think that she is somehow getting off on his excitement at
watching the dancers, and it creeps me out. I guess I am a little bit
territorial about our sex lives now that we are married, and I feel like she
is inserting herself into our private business. But I also fear that I may
be overreacting, especially since Husband and I have had some problems
sexually since my pregnancy and childbirth, although we are both working on
fixing them, and he has been very understanding. So I may just be too
sensitive to look at this stuff objectively right now.
So, I’d like to hear your opinion, Sars. First, should I tell my husband
that I listened to his message? Second, should I tell him that I don’t want
him to go to the strip club if she’s there? Third, should I just lighten up
and get over thinking this is some kind of weird intrusion on our lives?
Thanks very much for reading all this babbling. I love your writing and
think your sites are awesome, in case you’re wondering. I still send friends
that rant you made in the Dawson’s Creek recaps about Kerr Smith’s
Entertainment Weekly quote — that was the funniest shit ever.
P.A.
Dear P.,
Heh. Thanks.
I think you should tell your husband exactly what you just told me — you picked up the message thinking it would be something else, so you’re sorry if he feels intruded on, but that wasn’t your intent, and you can’t unknow what you heard in the message so you’d like to discuss it with him.
These discussions are tricky, because you kind of have to avoid ultimatums and so on, but again, I think telling him just what you said to me is a good idea, because you’re not accusing him of anything in your letter and you’re sticking mostly to “I” statements. If you talk to him about the issue in more or less the way you’ve phrased it above, asking what’s going on and saying that you feel uncomfortable about it but you’re not sure why or if it’s just you…I mean, give him a chance to talk, too, and see what’s really going on. See if the two of you can’t figure out a solution.
I do think it’s a little shady that Friend’s Wife is involved here — shady in a way that suggests she’s an attention whore. I suspect that if there were more to it than that, your husband wouldn’t have let you use his cell phone in the first place. Anyway: Talk to him. Keep it calm. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to know what’s going on; there’s nothing wrong with not liking what you think is going on. Get it cleared up or it’s going to fester.
Dear Sars,
I have a two-part question. I wanted an unbiased opinion and I usually
agree with you and your advice. I am a senior in college and was just
dumped by my boyfriend of two and a half years. Well, not dumped, but
told that he wanted to take a break that’s only going to be temporary
even though the amount of time is undetermined. I’ll call him X.
X’s reason was that he did not want to be in a serious relationship
anymore and he just wanted to have fun with his friends during our time
left at college, which is until June. I understand that he wants to have
more time with his friends, and to live out his last days of freedom
before entering the “real world.” I think this is a very college thing
to go through and I would rather he deal with it now instead of later. A
lot of people I know have been in similar situations recently. However,
my situation is more open-ended since we are viewing this as a break,
but with potential for us in the end.
After we broke up, we decided to be friends still. We were best friends
for about a year before we started dating and it just seemed logical to
keep talking. It’s hard for us to not talk to each other. But we do not
see each other, as it is too hard to for both of us to do now. I let him
do the initiating with talking, simply because this was his idea and I
am giving him his space. I trust X more than anyone ever before, I love
him and I feel like I could spend my life with him and be happy. I plan
on giving him time to deal with his problems. I am not going to actively
seek out like, love, or lust, but if an opportunity arises I will not
ignore it. I do not, however, plan on waiting forever. I figured if X is
still doubting us and his love for me (which he still does) after a
period of time, I will have no choice but to forget him.
I told my
friends this and they immediately made me doubt myself. They said it
seemed like he was just keeping me on hold while he had sex with random
girls. I know X, and he is the most honest person I ever met. He thinks
the idea of keeping information from people because it might hurt them
or affect them in a bad way is ridiculous. (Example: A close friend’s
mom discovered she needed life risking surgery, but did not tell friend
until after final exams passed. X deemed this insane.) I asked him to
tell me if his feelings changed and he said he would. He told me ending
up with me was the best-case scenario for his life and not his fallback
plan. I do not believe he is just using me and he would tell me if he
met someone because of his history with honesty.
Is this too long a
letter? Yikes. Okay, my question is do you think it is ridiculous for me
to wait for him until we graduate in June? After that, I will no longer
be living in the same apartment building with him on the same college
campus and will be able to be completely free of him. This is my
deadline for holding on to him and an idea of us. It seems unreasonable
to me to give up before that, but other people have said I should just
let go now.
My second question involves money. His father was going to take me and X
on a trip, but for reasons involving X and passport issues, we could not
go. I now have a $1000 airline voucher that only I can use. If X and I
were to use them, we would have to plan our trip in the next month and
then fly within the year. I do not want to owe him anything. I never
have. When the trip first fell through, I wrote a check and offered it
to his father, but he told me to keep it because we would go eventually.
Now that that does not seem true, I want to pay him the money as soon as
possible. My question is should I even bother talking to X about the
trip’s potential or should I just mail his dad the check with a note
saying thank you, but no thank you? I don’t want to waste the money, but
I don’t think his father should have to either. I also don’t want to
guilt X into dating me again because of an airline voucher.
Thank you for any help,
I can’t think of a humorous closing…
Dear I Can, And It Involves Your Foot And X’s Ass,
I’m with your friends. He’s keeping you around as a Plan B while he plays the field before graduation. “Have fun with his friends” does not mean “sit around and play poker in his boxer shorts.” It means “get laid.”
“But — but he’s so honest!” I’m sorry, but I don’t see what this has to do with anything. So if he’s truthful about meeting and hooking up with some other woman, it’s going to hurt less, or make him less of a pantywaist for refusing to just break up with you outright? Um…no. It just makes him insensitive to boot.
He wants to sleep with other people but keep you in reserve. This is not something you will want to look back on and know that you tolerated. Tell him you get his full attention or none at all, and if he waffles, break up with him. I know it’s hard, I know you love him, but I have been there, and I have played it both ways, and believe me, you need to ankle him but good, right now, because 1) it’s not going to work out, the waiting, because it never does, because it wasn’t your decision and because, trust me, if he didn’t already have another bird in the hand he wouldn’t have initiated this; and 2) you need to know that at least you stuck up for your bad self. Again: the whole thing sucks. I feel you. But knowing that, when it came down to it, you thought enough of yourself to tell him “love me or bite me,” is actually pretty comforting.
You deserve better than this aggro. You should have fun with your friends and not spend the rest of the semester waiting for Little Lord Unfaithfuleroy to decide you’re good enough for him. Force his hand. And send that voucher back to his dad; don’t deal with that at all. It’ll just complicate things.
Tags: boys (and girls)
