TL;DR! my best friend drunkenly admitted his “love” for my fiancé one night. How do I approach the situation while still respecting my fiancé’s wishes?
I’m not exactly sure if this is the best sub for this, but I’m going for it. Names changed for privacy.
Background: my best friend (we’ll call him Chris M33) and I have been best friends for some years now (I’d say 8 years). The start was we met on deployment (we’re both military) and we had a successful run together in that assignment and have continued a strong professional and personal friendship. Since then, we’ve spent a ton of time together, even holidays. I’ve even begun helping him start a business and I was incredibly excited about the project. Since I’ve known him, he’s been with his girlfriend (Megan F34) and he has been helping raise her son, Jack, who is now school-aged. Megan has always been slightly salty that Chris hasn’t proposed yet, but he admitted to me he is waiting until they resettle in a different state next year. She doesn’t know this, or at least not the extent of it.
A couple years ago, I met my now fiancé, Valerie (F31) and it’s admittedly been the best years of my life. She’s amazing and we’ve been in love since we first met. We trust each other fully and have very clearly established boundaries when it comes to trust. She met Chris early on, and I distinctly remember both Chris and another buddy of mine commenting on “how did I bag that girl” referring to Valerie. She is objectively incredibly beautiful (at least that’s as objective as I can be about her lol I digress). I felt lucky that Valerie and my friends got along so well.
About a bit less than two months ago, Chris and Megan had us over for a bonfire. There were a couple other couples there as well. I’ll admit, the majority of us got absolutely trashed. That’s not a regular thing; we just knew it may be the last big get-together in the warm weather. Everyone got home safe (no drinking and driving) and I thought nothing of it for awhile after. We had a big “board meeting” coming up for Chris’ business and I was particularly busy with my normal job. We had normal communication during this time. It’s also worth mentioning Chris is a big jokester and has a sense of humor I enjoy. This comes into play later.
Two weeks ago, Valerie asked to sit down with me for a serious conversation. She told me that at that bonfire, she went to go get our SUV started and was waiting on me to grab some stuff out of Chris & Megan’s house. Valerie told me that Chris came to the car door and opened it, bumbling over words and visibly very very drunk. She said he admitted he was in love with her. There was more said, but she couldn’t remember the details and said the jest of the interaction was that he was admitting his love for her. She thought, due to him having a massive sense of humor, that he was joking around with her. Especially since he was just out in the driveway with Megan in earshot. Valerie just laughed and slammed the door on him. Nothing else said – he doesn’t have her number and doesn’t have her on social media so there would be no other interaction besides what happens in person. Mind you, this isn’t the first rodeo. We’ve been on vacations with them numerous times and have drank around them a lot.
Valerie at first did not take it too seriously but she said in hindsight it was very very odd and made her uncomfortable. Because of our friendship, she was questioning for a few weeks whether to tell me or let it go. Since then, she said he hasn’t bugged her at all and she could not think of any instance over the past couple years where Chris did anything remotely similar or made her uncomfortable. She has since changed her opinions of him and honestly some stuff has been adding up for me that I’ll try to briefly explain.
The fact he has not yet proposed to Megan seems to be a problem. I had no idea why, but Megan did approach Valerie & I a year ago complaining that he found questionable conversations with women on Chris’ phone. We don’t know what happened with that. But I did confront Chris and he told me that Megan is just a bit insecure about him having friendships with women. Additionally, he has told me that he cannot trust himself to drink in public when Megan is not around. I asked him to explain, but he wouldn’t. I knew what he was insinuating. Writing this all out makes it clearly seem like has questionable intent but over the years we’ve known each other, he’s been exceptionally selfless in many ways and has been an excellent father figure for Megan’s son. Not to mention, he’s helped me through a ton of issues over the years.
I’m so beyond hurt by this. Valerie doesn’t want me to confront him – she strongly believes he was just extremely drunk and doesn’t want to see me throw away our friendship. But honestly I don’t know if I can stay friends with him at this point. Since then, he has treated us normally and Valerie doesn’t have that uncomfortable feeling around him when he’s sober/lightly drunk. I’m currently low-contact with him as of the last two weeks, and I don’t really interact with Megan that much outside of Chris. I am extremely confused and hurt. I have no idea what to do!
How do I confront the situation and potentially confront Chris/Megan?
I will be completely honest and say I’m heartbroken to lose what I thought was an amazing friend. Is this friendship salvageable?
Was there anything that could’ve gone better with Valerie? Should I be concerned she doesn’t want me to confront him?
7 comments
Sorry this happened OP. I would be very _very_ low contact for an extended period. Your ‘friends’ behaviour is extremely disrespectful to both you and your partner.
There are so many fish in the sea, that your friend thinking your fiance is the one he should go for, is kind of stupid and disrespectful.
Would he screw you over and if he could for Valerie?
In my opinion you, and Valerie really need to talk about this with Chris alone and really set some boundaries just so something like this doesn’t happen. Also him confessing his love is not only disrespectful to you but to Megan aswell and I’m sure this gives a hint to what his conversations are like with those other women. Also if this does happen again especially after setting clear boundaries then he’s not really much a friend and you should tell Megan. As for Valerie she could just be a non confrontational person and is worried about how the talk would go.
Valerie handled this as gracefully as possible.
Chris is a fucking cretin. I feel awfully for his fiancée but honestly she has absolutely nothing to do with this situation Chris created with Valerie. Is Chris really someone worth keeping in your life OP? I really hope that you allow yourself (and more importantly, your partner!) some reflection and self respect. Cut him out of your lives and please know that you don’t owe this creepy entitled person anything
That’s a lot of smoke. Might not be fire, but that’s still a lot of smoke.
Drunk confessions don’t come from nowhere, and the fact that he hasn’t shown any signs since kinda suggests he’s either really good at hiding things, which means things bubble up and explode occasionally… or he’s volatile enough that this is an occasional occurrence.
I would suggest putting in firm boundaries and severely limiting time spent with this person. Bad things have a tendency to coalesce and happen otherwise.
This happened to me years ago with my now husbands best friend who is also a great friend of mine. One drunken night he made some weird comments about how we should be together. I told my husband but we decided not to address it. I genuinely don’t think the friend even has a recollection of it and it’s never happened again.