thephoenix
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Hey guys,
I'm mega frustrated by my best friend and hoping to get some objective opinions. He is experiencing a bit of deja vu as his marriage is again falling apart. He and His gf married, lasted about 8 months and then she cheated. They divorced, he and I get really drunk and fool around. For the rest of the summer his life was drinking, drugs, and anonymous sex. He was cheated on so he deserved it was his reasoning. Anyway, he and his ex-wife kept seeing one another despite being divorced and she ended up pregnant, so they remarried.
He straightened right up and has been the best dad. But his wife cheated...again. She left him and now the divorce is much uglier since there is a child involved.
Anyway, flowing just beneath the surface of all our dealings is the connection he and I share. She picked up on it very early into their relationship and she immediately pegged me as her nemesis. To make matters worse, my friend would go out of his way to aggravate tension between she and I because it made him feel "wanted" if she was jealous of me.
I guess she had every reason to be jealous of me. I was completely in love with him. Powerfully lost. But I didn't disrespect her or their relationship despite wanting to and being in a position to do so. When I look back, it blows my mind to see all the "relationship cues" he and I shared. For instance, we checked in with one another if we were traveling separately to make sure we arrived safely, we would go to dinner and he wouldn't let me buy, instead of his gf he took me along to parties or ceremonies, he would change the oil in my car, check the tires before I went on a trip, he bought "us" a car, he was living out of state for a few months and he bought a plot of land back home near his family and started construction on a small house for me (and him when he came home on weekends). He paid all my bills and we argued about money.
I mean in hindsight I feel so blind and stupid because it was so obvious! And I remember being offended by his gf not liking me, but now I just feel so awful...she had every right to hate me.
All this while he tells me that he loves me (and not to take that the wrong way) and when he'd get drunk he would proclaim his love for me to everyone. After they were engaged I came into the knowledge that he was flirting with guys online and he told me how he had fallen in love with a guy he dated while he was living out of state and that he was a struggling bisexual. And that was the last it was ever spoken. He stopped acknowledging that that conversation took place and stopped being himself. He acted like more of a straight bf that a gf would want, and so was fairly distant to me.
I was kinda brokenhearted at first, but I got over it especially after it had been made clear that that kind of relationship between us wasn't in the cards. Then they divorced and he and I fooled around. I thought I'd be the one struggling with it since he had said it would be a one time thing. But I was fine, he acted all weird going so far as to refuse to drink around me at all. I kinda got the impression that I was getting the blame for what happened. We kind of had a falling apart, but we came back together.
Okay, so now he's going through this brutal second divorce, and he decided the other day that he wanted to go drinking and he wanted me to go along. So, I did and he got completely drunk. I mean buying everyone's drinks, flirting with girl after girl, etc. I was just kinda sitting there keeping my eye out for trouble. Well, my friend noticed me and started in on how great I was and how much he loved me and how lost he would be without me. And I was just nodding along not really listening. At some point a drunk guy comes up to me and decides he doesn't like me and calls me a "douche bag." Well, I was prepared to assert my alpha status, but before I could my friend slammed dude's face into the bar a couple times and demanded he apologize to me. I told him to get off the dude and that it wasn't worth all that and he told me that everybody in that bar WOULD respect me and that anything was worth it for me.
I kind of feel stupid for kind of going mushy towards him when he did that because a) I can handle my own affairs and b) my friend by the very state of his obnoxious inebriation was disrespecting me himself.
Anyway, the rest of the night was more of him telling me how much he loved me, how his wife had kept us apart, and how lost he'd be with out me, etc. He became very touch feely (like hugs and rubbing my thighs) and he'd rub my forearm and sit close to me and call me 'baby' and in between all that he threw in that he'd "never be like that" and that he was so sorry because he loved me so much and kinda cried.
Honestly, there was a time that I did have romantic feelings toward him, but I got shot down, so I focused on being a friend to him, and I got over it. I do love him, but not that way.
Once he sobered up I sat him down to set some things straight, so to speak. I told him I loved him as a dear friend, and that I had been putting up a wall in regard to him so that he would misread my intentions and I felt he had done the same so I wouldn't misread his. I put out there that since what he himself called the problem (wife) was no longer in his life that we resume our close friendship, but only friendship because that was all I could offer him. I basically told him I didn't have those feelings for him nor would I ever have those feelings, so he didn't have anything to "worry" about. Being sober changed his attitude completely because he was looking at me like I was a moron and told me that he was very uncomfortable.
Now he's acting all weird. But for the first time in a long time I felt like there was something substantial coming from him. I hate that he's torturing himself, but there isn't really anything I can do about that. I was just watching this ashamed guy tell me how he was a dad now and was a Christian now, and it was like I could clearly see him for the first time in a long time, and I just wanted to make it all better for him.
It just makes me ill that men can still be such scared little boys.
Any thoughts?
I'm mega frustrated by my best friend and hoping to get some objective opinions. He is experiencing a bit of deja vu as his marriage is again falling apart. He and His gf married, lasted about 8 months and then she cheated. They divorced, he and I get really drunk and fool around. For the rest of the summer his life was drinking, drugs, and anonymous sex. He was cheated on so he deserved it was his reasoning. Anyway, he and his ex-wife kept seeing one another despite being divorced and she ended up pregnant, so they remarried.
He straightened right up and has been the best dad. But his wife cheated...again. She left him and now the divorce is much uglier since there is a child involved.
Anyway, flowing just beneath the surface of all our dealings is the connection he and I share. She picked up on it very early into their relationship and she immediately pegged me as her nemesis. To make matters worse, my friend would go out of his way to aggravate tension between she and I because it made him feel "wanted" if she was jealous of me.
I guess she had every reason to be jealous of me. I was completely in love with him. Powerfully lost. But I didn't disrespect her or their relationship despite wanting to and being in a position to do so. When I look back, it blows my mind to see all the "relationship cues" he and I shared. For instance, we checked in with one another if we were traveling separately to make sure we arrived safely, we would go to dinner and he wouldn't let me buy, instead of his gf he took me along to parties or ceremonies, he would change the oil in my car, check the tires before I went on a trip, he bought "us" a car, he was living out of state for a few months and he bought a plot of land back home near his family and started construction on a small house for me (and him when he came home on weekends). He paid all my bills and we argued about money.
I mean in hindsight I feel so blind and stupid because it was so obvious! And I remember being offended by his gf not liking me, but now I just feel so awful...she had every right to hate me.
All this while he tells me that he loves me (and not to take that the wrong way) and when he'd get drunk he would proclaim his love for me to everyone. After they were engaged I came into the knowledge that he was flirting with guys online and he told me how he had fallen in love with a guy he dated while he was living out of state and that he was a struggling bisexual. And that was the last it was ever spoken. He stopped acknowledging that that conversation took place and stopped being himself. He acted like more of a straight bf that a gf would want, and so was fairly distant to me.
I was kinda brokenhearted at first, but I got over it especially after it had been made clear that that kind of relationship between us wasn't in the cards. Then they divorced and he and I fooled around. I thought I'd be the one struggling with it since he had said it would be a one time thing. But I was fine, he acted all weird going so far as to refuse to drink around me at all. I kinda got the impression that I was getting the blame for what happened. We kind of had a falling apart, but we came back together.
Okay, so now he's going through this brutal second divorce, and he decided the other day that he wanted to go drinking and he wanted me to go along. So, I did and he got completely drunk. I mean buying everyone's drinks, flirting with girl after girl, etc. I was just kinda sitting there keeping my eye out for trouble. Well, my friend noticed me and started in on how great I was and how much he loved me and how lost he would be without me. And I was just nodding along not really listening. At some point a drunk guy comes up to me and decides he doesn't like me and calls me a "douche bag." Well, I was prepared to assert my alpha status, but before I could my friend slammed dude's face into the bar a couple times and demanded he apologize to me. I told him to get off the dude and that it wasn't worth all that and he told me that everybody in that bar WOULD respect me and that anything was worth it for me.
I kind of feel stupid for kind of going mushy towards him when he did that because a) I can handle my own affairs and b) my friend by the very state of his obnoxious inebriation was disrespecting me himself.
Anyway, the rest of the night was more of him telling me how much he loved me, how his wife had kept us apart, and how lost he'd be with out me, etc. He became very touch feely (like hugs and rubbing my thighs) and he'd rub my forearm and sit close to me and call me 'baby' and in between all that he threw in that he'd "never be like that" and that he was so sorry because he loved me so much and kinda cried.
Honestly, there was a time that I did have romantic feelings toward him, but I got shot down, so I focused on being a friend to him, and I got over it. I do love him, but not that way.
Once he sobered up I sat him down to set some things straight, so to speak. I told him I loved him as a dear friend, and that I had been putting up a wall in regard to him so that he would misread my intentions and I felt he had done the same so I wouldn't misread his. I put out there that since what he himself called the problem (wife) was no longer in his life that we resume our close friendship, but only friendship because that was all I could offer him. I basically told him I didn't have those feelings for him nor would I ever have those feelings, so he didn't have anything to "worry" about. Being sober changed his attitude completely because he was looking at me like I was a moron and told me that he was very uncomfortable.
Now he's acting all weird. But for the first time in a long time I felt like there was something substantial coming from him. I hate that he's torturing himself, but there isn't really anything I can do about that. I was just watching this ashamed guy tell me how he was a dad now and was a Christian now, and it was like I could clearly see him for the first time in a long time, and I just wanted to make it all better for him.
It just makes me ill that men can still be such scared little boys.
Any thoughts?
