My best friend and I (27f) are incredibly close. A lot of people have commented on our closesness (in a positive way) and have mentioned they wish they had a friend like we do.
My friend just started seeing a guy (29m) (like literally maybe it’s been two weeks since first date, if even) and he was jealous of our friendship.
He said somethings to my friend when they were alone (she told me later). Also we were all hanging out and even though the two of them were having private convos without me and going off on their own he said how he wanted to spend more alone time with her that night. He definitely spent more time with her alone then she spent with me and she was never just alone ditching him with me. She even mentioned that she wanted to come sit with me more but could tell he was feeling jealous so she stayed away. They had also spent the entire day together on a date before this.
This was my first and only time meeting him by the way.
He said to me “she wouldn’t stop talking about you the other day”. Which like we spend a lot of time together. So all our stories include each other and we’ve been friends for a very long time. So I don’t think it’s weird she talked about me at all.
I don’t exactly remember how this convo came up but somehow the topic of best friends came up. And he said something along the lines of “I think a persons best friend should be their partner”
Firstly I know from his part these are red flags (in my mind, I kindly voiced these to my friend, but despite these things I liked him overall and got good vibes from him and thought they got meshed really well, no one’s perfect).
But this has happened before. One of her exes was reallyyyyy jealous of me. Which is weird because him and I were friends so I know it wasn’t personal it was about my bff and i’s relationship.
My previous boyfriend have joked about how close her and I are but have never been insecure about it (or at least they kept that part to themselves). But I don’t usually date guys too long term so maybe it would have become an issue for them if we stayed together long enough.
We do prioritize eachother. But we are like family. Like yeah u love ur bf or husband. But you’ve known your sister forever. Sometimes your sister might come before you bf. Especially when you relationship is fresh to even 3 years. It’s a fraction of the time we’ve had together creating something and truly knowing and understanding each other.
Have you ever dated someone with a really close friendship? Did it cause a lot of turmoil in your relationship? What are your thoughts on her new guy? Or just the situation in general.
Is our relationship going to stop us from finding future husbands? Or r these guys just dumb?
We r both straight. Nothing sexual or romantic between us. Cause I’m sure someone is going to suggest this lol
TL:dr friend and I really close. Some partners have been jealous of it
Edit** we r not jealous of each other’s partners (like demanding more time from each other when we r in relationships) and when we r hanging with other people we usually don’t even talk to eachothwr too much because we already spend so much time together ** just thought I should add that
19 comments
Your friendship won’t stop you from finding wonderful partners who have healthy attitudes towards relationships.
I think you can give this guy a little benefit of the doubt here. It can be hard to land in the middle of your partner’s friend group and some people aren’t great at meeting new people.
However, ultimately, yeah, he has to be healthy about this. He has to be able to navigate parties without being attached at the hip to her, and he has to be not threatened by you. But if he’s not, that’s a HIM problem, not a YOU problem.
But also, they’re a new couple, and it’s very common for new couples to cave-up a little and be super focused on each other, to the short-term detriment of their friendships. As you get older it gets easier to be like, “I haven’t seen her in a few weeks, she’s off with a new boyfriend, we’ll spend more time together soon,” and not see it as a source of drama.
Some people will be jealous of it, yes.
There’s also just the matter of having enough space in your life for a romantic partner. Even if she were your sister, if you two are ALWAYS together and ALWAYS talking about each other, it’s hard for others to feel like there’s “room” for them in your lives.
Am I the only one bothered that if it’s true they only talked about each other the whole time? You’re supposed to get to know the person.
So this is a generalization about hetero men specifically, but men don’t tend to have emotionally intimate relationships. The only people they tend to be emotionally intimate with is their mother and then their girlfriend/wife. Its why men tend to have a harder time with breakups and have a harder time being single. They can’t call up their guys who will come over with ice cream so they can cry together and watch their comfort shows. Their partner becomes their only confidant, their therapist, their true best friend.
So yeah I think sometimes they might see a good f/f friendship even between straight women as threatening, because they want all their partners attention on themself. They’re isolated emotionally, think that that is the norm and the way thing should be, and don’t love that other people get that kind of attention and love from their partner.
Those guys r dumb if they consider you a threat in your friends relationship. If anything, thats a big sign that she’s found another asshole.
My rule for my husband (who has a lot of friends including a bff) is that he can cumulatively spend more of his time with other people, but no one individual should get more of his time and attention than me. I also have an expectation that I’m the first person he contacts when he has monumental news.
In practice, these really aren’t that much of a request because it’s just normal expectations in a relationship.
I think you have to accept that you and your bff can’t be joined at the hip anymore, but your friend’s bf sounds mad possessive if you’re not allowed to spend a normal amount of time together.
I’m a severe introvert and relish any time I can send him to his bff’s house to play with a car.
Sure, your bond won’t always be the same as y’all get older and whatnot, but you seem to be realistic about that.
But she isn’t there yet with this guy. They had their first date two weeks ago, and he’s acting weird about y’all? That’s something I’d definitely pay attention to.
It’s also maybe a little weird to me — depending on the context — that the first time he met his potential partner’s best friend, he was more interested in trying to spend time with her alone than to get to know you.
When my SO first met my bestie, he was focused on participating in the conversation, getting to know her (because he knew how important she was to me), and letting her get to know him (because he also knew how important her opinion of him would be).
I get being in the early honeymoon stage of a relationship, but I don’t like that he doesn’t want to spend time in any context but one on one.
Maybe. This guy being jealous at two weeks in has issues. He seems like the kind of person who might isolate her.
But yes a super intense and intimate relationship of any kind may not leave much time and energy for other relationships.
Some times a person needs to think a bit about the needs of a partner too. I’ve been you in intense friendships and in one case had to actually rein in my friend because she was inviting me along on plans without checking with her partner. He liked me, I liked him. He sometimes wanted time alone with her and I bet he wouldn’t want to come back to their apartment and see me there all the time.
This guy she’s been seeing is IMO the problem. But in other cases it may be your friend not making room for a partner in their life.
I don’t think it’s actual romantic jealousy on the guy’s part, it’s more likely he was feeling a bit like a third wheel. In my opinion during the early dating period your attention should be pretty much all on the person you’re dating, and yet you mention that your friend even outright said she wished she spent more time talking to you when the three of you were hanging out.
All in all, I think that this kind of friendship where one partner is attached at the hip with their friend might be tough to get over for a lot of people in their relationships because it makes them feel underprioritised.
Holy shit it’s a major red flag he’s showing this behavior so early. It’s actually kind of terrifying. Your best friend should be your partner? Um i get that sentiment when you’re talking a real long term relationship, not two fucking weeks. Your two week long partner isn’t even a friend at that point. I would’ve said maybe he’d have a point if it seems like they never spend time without you but this was literally the first time you met him. It’s pretty disgusting how bad he made her feel about talking to you or sitting with you. That was not the evening for them to go off/ be alone/ have private convos. I really would sit her down and tell her that you’re afraid for her with this guy because this will end badly.
Ya it can. I think that kind of energy should be reserved for your partner, so they feel special
I don’t understand his line of thinking honestly. I would be happy to know my SO had a best friend she could talk about like this. Like it means you have a very healthy relationship as friends. What did he just want her to shit talk everyone in her life but him?
He could just be very awkward but I’d keep an eye out. A new dude, not even a BF, who is trying to wedge a gap in a long-standing friendship that is important to his potential partner when he hasn’t even been seeing your friend for two weeks is 🚩🚩🚩 He wants to be her one and only and while that’s really cute in fuckin Disney movies that shit is unhealthily codependent.
Just my two cents but the only people that feel threatened like this don’t have friends of their own. I personally think it’s a great sign when someone has a bff or a close relationship with their siblings or parents. Tells me they have a support network that doesn’t just include me.
I have a best friend of 10 years that lives across the country and my partner and him play games together and we recently all went on a little ski trip together so they could finally meet.
It can, it really depends on the person you are seeing. I (31f) had a male best friend for over a decade, he was like my brother. I also have a partner of going on six years who was never bothered by this but as soon as he got a girlfriend a year ago I was cut out completely. It’s fine, I want him to be happy and it’s his choice, can I ask what you’re going to do if/when they break up and she reaches out?
I would say these guys are mostly dumb, and I would be a bit concerned about controlling and isolating behavior if he gets jealous of you and thinks HE should be her new best friend after only 2 weeks.
However… there is a difference between dating casually and marrying someone. By the time you marry someone, they DO need to come before everyone else in your life (aside from your kids), including your siblings and parents and BFFs, because what you are doing is establishing a new family with them, and telling the world and society that they are your closest person. And for people who don’t want to get married but want a committed monogamous relationship, you still have to agree to put each other ahead of everyone else in your life (aside from kids, of course) to make it work. “Chicks before d****” and “bros before h***” is great advice for high schoolers, but for adults, that only works with casual relationships, not with committed long-term ones.
So like… should she be ditching you and supplanting you and her other friends and family with him after 2 weeks? No. Are you still going to be each other’s #1 person after one of you gets married? Also no. There’s a lot of time and change that’s going to occur in between those two life stages, though, and again, it raises red flags for me that he’s jealous and possibly trying to isolate her THIS early in their relationship. This could be a valid complaint maybe 6 months in, IMO, but you’ve barely spent time with him – not nearly enough that he can actually notice a consistent pattern of behavior.
I’m a queer woman with a very close, fairly no-boundaries friendship with my (also queer, also female) bff. I’ve dated people who were very threatened by this friendship and people who weren’t, and I’m now married to a woman who thinks our friendship is great and adores my bff.
In retrospect, I think that a mistake I made was kind of implicitly believing that there was some objective standard of jealousy that would be reasonable or unreasonable for a partner to have, and anything reasonable I’d just have to tolerate and accommodate, and anything unreasonable they’d just have to get over. I obviously didn’t think of it quite like that at the time, but I think that was underlying a lot of how I tried to navigate this.
What I think now is that some people are going to find a close friendship threatening and some people aren’t, and what matters is not if they are right or wrong, but if they are right for me. Someone who wants to limit a nourishing and sustaining friendship that brings me a great amount of joy isn’t right for me, and I don’t need to litigate about whether their boundaries or feelings are red flags or normal or whatever, I just need to understand that they are not a good fit for me and my life. They are wrong for me in the same way that I’d be wrong for someone whose greatest joy was keeping pet tarantulas — not because there’s anything wrong with me, but because we wouldn’t fit well together.
Your friend’s bf is a controlling asshole and this is red flags for potential abusive behavior.
Her having an ex that was similar may be an issue of her and how she chooses her partners. Could be a subconcious thing. She may be attracting or attracted to controlling guys for whatever reason.
But it could be good to introspect and figure out if you two are spending too much time together. If she’s constantly prioritizing you over him then his feelings could be valid. If you feo are cuddling and having sleepovers that could be a reason too.
I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I have never had a friendship with a cishet man that didn’t end with him declaring some kind of feelings for me eventually. It’s sad, but it’s true. I have managed purely platonic relationships with pretty much every other kind of person, but never a man who was heterosexual and cis. And I’ve believed myself to have many over the years. It always ends with the same disappointment.
If he’s like the guys I have known, his experiences might be coloring his outlook.
(FWIW I do think your life partner should be your best friend…but like over the course of years. Not after a few dates….)