My friend is acting really weird with my girlfriend
My friend is acting really weird with my girlfriend
I've known Jack for a couple of years. He's kind of a loner but we always got along as we both have some geeky interests. We're both introverts but I'm somewhat more social.
My girlfriend is also an introvert and when I introduced them, years ago, it was awkward at first but they got along pretty well. We hang out occasionally the three of us.
Mostly we talk in a Facebook group, and I talk to him in private messages. A few times, when he went through a family problem, I knew (from my girlfriend) that he vented to her in a private messages. She was happy to help but felt the need to tell me and I was OK with it.
When we do something at my house, I always invite him but he always refuses. The few times he aquiesced was because my girlfriend convinced him. Sometimes he disables all his social media and we loose all contact.
The latest one has been going for a while. I tried to call him multiple times but he never answers. When my girlfriend messages him he answers immediately. We actually tested that when we were together.
Lately he's been sending her messages trying to chit chat and being somewhat insistent. She felt it was very weird, specially after her seeing he never answer my calls. This latest time she actually confronted him about it and point blank asked him if he was mad at me and that it was all very weird.
You know what I'm thinking...but I'd like to know your perspective.
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He's gay and closeted, looking for a friend, and it's easier to talk to a girl than directly to you.
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He has feelings for your girlfriend. This is not an issue, as long as you trust your girlfriend. Feel flattered that your girlfriend is so awesome.
It’s really impossible to know without more context, but some people just find it easier to talk to women. Even if he doesn’t have feelings for your girlfriend, he might simply find her interactions easier to process. This isn’t uncommon with people who are going through a lot of heavy personal trauma.
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Jack is not treating You and GF as a couple, but as different people with different levels of engagement.
Make of that what you will, but to minimize drama - Jack should be limited to group chats only, and no house visits... at least until Jack has an Significant Other so their romantic energy has a outlet.
This. Dude is lonely and with OPs girlfriend being the only girl that's nice to him he likely got a crush on her. If at all possible I'd try to encourage him to some form of external activity or hobby that could get him in touch with other people, with or without them. And if he gets pushy, have some real talk where boundaries are being set.
Edit: Reading OPs comments, last part is already needed. If he's disagreeing, cut contact.
It sounds like he has a lot of emotional issues that might be flying under the radar, and he might not be acting like this if everything was okay for him. Maybe neurodivergence? There's might be malice, but it's important not to assume that because there might not be (as hard as that might be to believe, seeing this behaviour firsthand like you are). Extreme isolation tactics like disabling all messaging for long periods are worrying as well; when I used to do that it was to see how people got used to me not being around in case I decided to not be around anymore.
There are reasons you're friends with him, right? If you can still list those off maybe it's worth trying to talk to him about it and work through it together. What was the response like when your girlfriend confronted him about it?
Both me and my girlfriend think something is off about him. We both asked him, separately, and he jokingly downplayed it.
If he's making the both of you uneasy and you don't feel alright pushing him to own up and talk about it, then absolutely remove him from your life. I'm sorry for you guys to lose a friend like that, I wish he were more receptive to changing, but you've got to protect you and her first. Jack can take care of himself (or, maybe not, but it's not your problem if you don't want it to be. And maybe losing a friend will be a wakeup call).
One suggestion I have to add on to a lot of really good stuff I hear is to communicate any boundaries in a group setting with your gf. Chat or otherwise. This way he knows both of you are on the same page and he doesn’t try to take an opportunity to appeal to her directly. At least it might lower that risk. It also helps maintain both you and your gf’s agency in this.
If it’s only you he could be emboldened thinking you’re being controlling of her and he starts trying even more of the “nice guy” thing.
That's not a problem at all. I absolutely trust my girlfriend and she is always very open with me. And I trust her judgement.
For sure, I’m not questioning y’all’s relationship, more just something to help avoid additional annoyance/issues with the individual for yall.
Sounds like exactly what you think it is. He likes your girlfriend and is probably jealous of you.
Obviously up to your GF, but she should probably say she’s not comfortable with it and cut contact. Maybe leave the door half open and say that both of you are happy to stay friends with him, but blanking just you is not on.
I’d say be firm but nice when telling him. If she keeps talking to him then he’s probably gonna get the wrong idea though, but again that’s up to her.
Talk to him straight without being cruel. Below is an example and not a script.
"Hey, I really appreciate you and our friendship. G/f and I are happy to be your friend. We also happy together. Please be respectful of that. I really hope we can continue growing our friendship."
He'll be embarrassed. You can choose the level of connection and space to hold after that. Immediate disconnection will feel awkward for him. But so will holding space. Only in holding space can he even begin to remember that being friends with you is a safe place.
Its not easy to reach out to a friend with low self esteem. But its something they crave for.
Can I ask, are you guys closer to your 20s or 30s? I had a similar situation, but I kind of outgrew it.
We are in our late 30s.
I've had something similar in my mid 20s. I was on the opposite end, I was the loner and my best friend was the one with a wife.
If you don't what to read the wall of text skip to the last paragraph.
I've never really engaged with his wife to the point of texting and being chatty with her and we never really got along that well, but I did admittedly act weird around her. It also gotten to the point where I was hesitant to enter their house when invited and also almost completely broke contact for several months right after their wedding. By acting weird, I mean I behaved like I always did with my friend - fart and shit jokes, hitting each other for fun, drinking beer, just general dicking around. He clearly had fun, otherwise he wouldn't invite to hang out almost every weekend. In my eyes, she was still fairly new to his life and I've been there for more than a decade (this was way before their marriage). But through the years it became clear that this wasn't one of his fleeting relationships and she was there to stay, so I tried to treat their relationship with more respect, but you can't really change first impressions, can you? In the end it was just small miniscule things that slowly wore me down. Small gestures or phrases that stuck with me and rang in my head for years.
When we were younger and still partying she was often our designated driver. And not the straight edge at the party, but more of a get a call asking to pick us up at 3am kind of designated driver. And since I was the usual suspect in these endeavors, I clearly fell even lower in her books. And I'm a pretty self aware drunk, I still know what's going on around me but I feel like a puppet with loose strings. So one night my friend, another friend and I are out late again and he calls his wife to pick us up. Understandably, she gives him shit for that and they argue over the phone. In the end she agrees. After he hangs up he rolls his eyes, shakes his head, looks at me and says "think twice" in the context of me being hopelessly single.
Those two words stung like a bitch, it's probably the meanest thing my friend has ever said to me without even knowing, I'll probably never forgive him for that. He didn't even know how good he has it, even just having somebody to call. My friend doesn't even know what loneliness feels like, he has a great family on both sides, he always had back to back relationships and generally gets along with everyone. So this personified Golden Retriever is basically telling somebody who's starving to be picky with their meals. At the time I thought 'Fuck him', but that was probably the alcohol getting to my head.
So as we grew older, clubbing slowly turned into grill parties and evenings playing board games. I didn't have my own place so those were mostly spent at their apartment. But every now and then I put in the effort to invite them to my parents house. Till this day she hasn't said 'yes' once. There are always excuses not to come to my place. Mind me, I wasn't a basement dweller, my parents house was in a nice suburban part of town with a cozy little garden. Over the years I probably invited them over 30 times and her suspicious absence always led to me and my friend just watching TV and drinking beer. So one time I asked him straight up why his significant other always declines my invitations. He chuckled and said 'She's afraid of you.' For him it was probably a joke, for me it wasn't. Like I know I'm far from prince charming and have a face for radio, but an actual woman being afraid of me was fucked up. I never made any advances towards her, I have literally zero attraction to her what so ever. I was always as friendly to her as you would be to a colleague, at most I was maybe rude because of my social retardation. So not knowing what I did to scare her I tried to minimize contact with her as much as possible, to the point of not wanting to be in the same room as her, which given that they were living in a studio apartment meant that their whole place was essentially of limits.
But I also started to grow weary of her through the years. She was constantly ridiculing my friend for his hobbies that didn't include her, she complaint that we hang out to much even though we maybe spent one Friday evening per month together, she dragged him in her family affairs, whether he wanted to or not, you know the usual girlfriend shit.
The more time passed, the less time I got to spend with probably the only person I would genuinely enjoy spending time with. I'm very introverted, so finding somebody that doesn't make you feel lonely but also doesn't drain you is very special. I can also admit that I was always living life though my friends. It's not that I wanted my friends relationships to fail in favor of me, it's that their increasing lack of presence in my life shined light on my loneliness and mental issues. Things that I didn't want to deal with. Their wedding was probably one of my lowest points mental wise. I understood that afterwards they will want to spend a lot of time together as newly weds do. So I congratulated them and left them alone. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. I almost came to accept that this was probably it for this friendship until a third friend brought us all back together. I've acted like everything was fine and we caught up on the last few months. Afterwards the friendship retuned back to normal. We still hang out as much as we can, I've come to accept that his wife don't have to be besties and that for him she will always come first. Like I said, I kind of outgrew the whole situation. It is what it is.
So in retrospect I can say that most of this comes down to my own issues. The fact that my friend found a significant other just slowly drove a wedge between the only one who was tethering me to a social life. I wasn't jealous of him having her, but him having a life I've never had. I've also learned that sometimes it's small throwaway lines or gestures that you don't think about that will hurt people the most. I don't think there's anything you could actively do to help this. I had years to think about it and there's nothing my friend could've said or done to help me either. I'd say it's has something to do with mental maturity and self acceptance, but since you're older than me, it still might be a coin toss.
This person is not your friend.