The Threatening Female Friend (And All The Hateful Stuff She Said About Me To The Guy I'm Dating)

“I’ll forward them to you” he said, and in response, my entire body cringed. You see, I’d been dating this guy for a while now, and he had just told his best female friend that he couldn’t speak to her anymore, because of me. She reacted with a string of very pleasant emails that called me everything from a psycho bitch to a complete mental case. She told him that he needed to break up with me, and was livid that he wasn’t defending her. And by livid, I mean she said “FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU.”

So basically, it was a lot of fun.

Photo Credit: Giphy.com

Now let me back up for a minute and say that yes, I’ve been seeing someone. I waiver back and forth between discussing it on here, and not discussing it on here, and I guess what it really comes down to is that I feel like I’ve displayed so much of my dating life online, that I’m feeling a bit vulnerable at the moment. You’ve watched me go on good dates, and horrible dates, you’ve seen me fend off creepy men that I wasn’t at all interested in, you’ve seen me start to fall for people, and you’ve seen me get my heart broken when it didn’t work out. You’ve watched me break a few hearts, and you’ve seen me struggle to date while trying to find the balance that still puts my kids first. You’ve also watched me try and figure out if monogamy or polyamory was for me, and you saw that I landed somewhere undecided.

I’ve basically bared everything from the inside of my heart to the inside of my bedroom, and I don’t know… I guess I’m just feeling a little shy this time around because I’ve already eaten so much dirt while the whole world has watched, that I'm a little full of dirt at the moment.

So to be vague and yet somewhat concrete, yes, at this point I am seeing someone monogamously. Where this will end up, I really couldn’t say. We aren’t living together or anything like that. There is no secret engagement, my kids aren’t calling him daddy, he isn’t paying any of my bills, but we are together. We have been taking things at a snail’s pace (there are kids involved here!) and how this proceeds from there, only time will tell. But as I said, I’m just feeling a little vulnerable these days, and honestly I’m not sure how many more times I can have my heart broken and still find a positive spin on it while I put myself back together. I think, at this point, that I’d almost rather grieve the loss of another relationship privately if it were to come to that, and I hope that you can all respect that. So until I’m a little surer of the unsure, vague it is.

But what I will say, is that so far things seem to be going well… and that is much to the dismay of his close female friend, whose emails were the ones he was forwarding to me.

Allow me set the stage for you:

Shortly after I started dating this guy — who we will now refer to as The Guy (I know, I’ve gotten so creative with these names lately, haven’t I?) — I learned that he had a very close female friend. Aaaannnddd… I’m not going to lie; my radar signals went up. He hadn’t given me any reason to suspect anything and I’d like to think that I’m mature enough and secure enough to handle my man having a close female friend…. but let’s just say that I’m not always that mature.

Photo Credit: Giphy.com

But I didn’t let him know that. Nope, I didn’t say a word because mature Eden, secure Eden, well she was still trying to make a very mature and secure impression on The Guy. I mean can you fault me? OBVIOUSLY if this poor guy had ANY idea of what he might be getting himself into with me, he never would have stuck around for a second date.

Plus, mature-and-secure Eden certainly didn’t want to be the girl who has been cheated on by EVERY SINGLE GUY that she has EVER had a serious relationship with and now has trust issues. Nope, she didn’t want to be that girl and she certainly didn’t want to drag all of her past baggage into a new relationship and dump it onto some poor guy who hadn’t even had the chance to do anything wrong.

I didn’t want to be that Eden, so mature-and-secure Eden was in full force to be understanding of this somewhat unsettling friendship between The Guy and his very close female friend.

But the radar was on, oh yes it was.

Photo Credit: Giphy.com

Which PS, if I can just interject here for a minute: this is all weird to me. I’ve spent a good deal of my time being poly and being TOTALLY alright with my men dating — and even sleeping with — other people. Hell I used to help the men I was dating, plan dates with other women! But when The Guy came along and requested monogamy from me, and I shocked the hell out of myself by obliging, well the rules changed and threw me for a loop. Figuring out monogamy was hard enough for me, but when you throw in this close personal female friend… let’s just say I was confused and unsettled.

But anyway, I was mature-and-secure, (RIGHT GUYS? RIGHT?)?

Even when she would text him while we were on a date, asking him things such as “do you think that this outfit is too sexy?” I retained my composure (even though I was practically choking on my tongue). I was also mature when he went to a party with her (that I wasn’t invited to) and I saw a photo of them both having a great time together (although I almost needed to visit a dentist for jaw pain after clenching my mouth shut). I was still mature when she would refer to him with a cutesy little name, and I was even mature (and admittedly less secure) when she used him as her personal sounding board for all of her marital issues.

I will admit, from everything that I had seen in their encounters with each other — whether it be on the phone or whatnot — his responses were no more interesting than how any guy would interact with even a male friend. And although I tried to read into them and see something that would have felt almost vindicating to my unsettled feelings, I didn’t see anything from his end that would be cause for alarm. But then something happened, (of which I will not specify at this time, but is in no way meant to insinuate he did something scandalous), and I became decidedly less secure with the situation. Or rather… I became more mature.

I decided that this was not something that I was comfortable with, and you know what? That’s OK. You don’t have to be comfortable with everything, you just don’t have to be.

So in a sit-down conversation, I told him how I had been feeling. I told him that I trusted that nothing was going on from his end, but that I couldn’t help but be suspicious of her motives. I’m telling you guys, I’m the first one to not trust someone, and for once, maybe in my entire life, I really did trust him. But I didn’t trust her; something just didn’t feel right, and from what I had seen, I had reason not to trust the situation.

I explained to him that I was really struggling to know how to handle this because I was trying to balance the scars of my past with giving him a clean slate, but that he was putting me in an awkward position that I was no longer comfortable with. I told him that it’s a pretty well known fact that most affairs occur between someone who is having relationship issues, and the person that they are confiding in, and that it feels unsettling since I felt like she was sucking him into her life as a stand-in for her husband, and I didn’t feel like he was seeing it.

There was no argument, it was all very cordial. He told me that he had always had female friends and that he believed that as long as no sexual boundaries were crossed, that he really didn’t think there was anything different about him going to a party with her or over to her house, than if he were to go out with one of his guy friends or hang out after work. He explained to me that they were just friends and that is all that they had ever been, but sensing that I was upset, he asked me if I wanted him to stop talking to her.

You guys, I felt SO guilty. And un-evolved. And immature. And sexist. And like some kind of failed feminist.

So, I told him no, that I didn’t want him to stop talking to her.

LIES. ALL LIES.

Photo Credit: Giphy.com

He asked me if I was OK, and then in his defense, he did make an effort. He immediately stopped talking to her about her marital issues, and he stopped making plans to see her unless I was invited as well.

But my unsettled feelings didn’t abate, and if anything, they increased. I was just really, really, uncomfortable with her being around, and I was equally as terrified to do anything about it. Not because I thought he would break-up with me if I said something, but because I felt like if I did ask him to stop seeing her, that I would be letting the past get the better of me.

I also felt like I would be accusing him of cheating, when I really did not believe that he was.

The tension in the situation mounted, and for anyone who knows me, my truth comes out in more of what I don’t say, than what I do say. I wasn’t saying much about it, but he knew. In his attempts to calm my fears, he wanted to show me his phone, Facebook, email account, whatever I wanted and anything that might prove that he was not making any sexual advances towards her, but I firmly told him that I wanted no part of that; that I already have two kids to watch over and I didn’t want to be put in the position of having to watch over my man as well.

So there we were, him wanting to know what he could do to ease my mind, and me not even sure what I should be worried about.

I’m sure that at this point in this post you must be envisioning some huge, drama filled situation that heavily plagued us on a daily basis, but I promise you it wasn’t like that. It was more like a constant and somewhat inaudible level of annoyance, that was still very much there, and would occasionally turn the volume up until we paid it some attention.

But that still doesn’t mean that it ever went away.

Photo Credit: Giphy.com

***************

In a totally new concept for this blog, this particular post will be spread out in a series of three separate posts; a trilogy if you will. Basically what happened was I finished writing the post, realized that it was eight pages long, and had pity on those of you who attempt to squeeze a blog post in while you are riding the train to work or taking a five minute break from your kids. Dumping eight pages on you seemed unnecessarily harsh, so, stay tuned for part two which will be up in the next few days!

****************

If You Liked This, Here Are A Few More Relevant Posts!

“Well That Was An Interesting Turn Of Events”

“You Deserve It Too”

“Trust: A Four Letter Word”