Sometimes our friends get into a predicament and need our help, even if they don’t typically accept it.
We think that maybe this will be the time that they’re finally going to take the advice they’ve solicited from us and we give it another go.
My friend has a guy problem. Her favourite guy friend is moving to British Columbia and although she’s had an on and off spiritual and physical connection, he’s off to be with the woman in B.C. whom he’s apparently loved for years but couldn’t make that kind of commitment.
She’s sad for herself but happy in some way that the issue of her and him being together seems to be a thing of the past.
She has another guy friend that she gets to hang out with when her ex has her kids, and oh, and by the way her other guy friend is married.
Stop right there, Your Holiness; this isn’t the place for moralizing. Or at least that kind of moralizing. Not right now. Let he or she who is without sin cast the first stone.
My friend and this now-married guy dated each other for a couple of months in university before she met her eventual ex-husband and kept in touch every so often. Paths would occasionally cross socially but she hadn’t heard from him in years until she was separated.
“No, he doesn’t want me like that. We’re just friends,” she said when he first messaged her on Twitter when he saw her great aunt in a television news story for turning 100. I bet her a dollar that he wasn’t and it was the easiest dollar I’ve ever made.
The first meeting was friendly with a hug at the end. The texts back and forth got flirtier and more like what you’d send to a woman you’re interested in.
The second meeting was not so platonic. The only real issue is that he’s married, apparently happily, and the wife apparently doesn’t know anything about this. All he has to do is say he is ‘working late’ and apparently he can get a few extra hours to meet with my friend.
She’s been hanging out with this married guy friend for over a year now in what is clearly a non-platonic situation, and because they live about an hour apart, it needs a bit of planning to even meet. So a couple of times a month, one will go to the other’s city and they’ll do whatever they do and then split up till the next time.
So the other day she texts me that she had asked him about their future but he never really answered. Because why would he?
He gets the cake of being a married guy and the ability to eat it too that my friend provides. There is no future for her, certainly not at this point. If he’d had the desire to move on from his spouse, he certainly would have done it by now instead of a trip to California together that he and his wife had (and my friend got a lot of texts when his wife went to bed).
My friend said this guy is the nicest, most moral guy, except for the cheating on his wife part. Which seems like a reach no one should ever, ever make.
The biggest difference between being the ‘mistress’ and being the spouse, especially when there’s an hour’s drive there and back, is space. He gets to miss her, and tell her all about missing her, without seeing the imperfections in the cold light of morning.
He gets to text her about how he feels about her until his bedtime, and use all the flowery language in the poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning times infinity, and then go to sleep with his back to his wife. He gets to tell my friend all about the kind of things that annoy him about his wife and then go out for coffee with same wife and talk about normal household stuff.
A relationship that has any kind of actual love attached to it means ‘I know you and I want to get to know you more’, and they’ve never even spent a full night together.
He’s had over a year to figure out if he actually wants to leave his wife (his second wife btw) and he hasn’t lifted a finger to move.
I’ve told my friend to forget about him and move on to an attempt at a more serious relationship with someone else if she’s ready for that. I have a feeling in a few weeks I’ll be getting an update that he still won’t talk about any future with her. And I’ll have the same advice ready to be sent once again.
That’s what old friends do for each other.
