TL;DR – My best friend since highschool broke up with his ex and now wants everyone in our friendship circle to cut her off. Found out he’s a bit possessive over her and hasn’t been a bit nice and I don’t know what to think or how to help him.
My best friend and I [both 21M] are pretty close where we could talk about anything and he recently broke up with his gf of a year and a half. My partner and I bonded with him and his gf and we all became pretty close friends before the break up. To be honest the relationship was a bit on the rocky side to begin with but it’s just complicated our friendship circle because of the break.
Now I’ve heard from both sides why they broke up My best friend told me that his gf left him to hang out with her old school friends and to do drugs with them. Like we’ve all done drugs before but he keeps telling me that his gf chose drugs over him when in reality he just doesn’t want her hanging out with a bunch of guys. The only reasonable point in what he says that I’ve found is that those old guy friends used to be really weird and hate about my best friend and her being together, so a while ago my best friend told his gf to cut her old highschool friends off completely.
On the other hand, his gf told us that the reason why they broke up is because he wasn’t that good of a boyfriend sometimes to her. He would be a bit controlling sometimes like telling her off for eating certain foods or not being affectionate enough or making her completely cut off old friends or not doing certain activities with my partner’s friends. He would also get really jealous sometimes of her hanging with his and my friends (he even told me that). All this leads me to think that my best friend was being really possessive of her. She suffers from anxiety as well and she’s told us that he’s not the most helpful when it comes to hard times with her. Now I think it’s a bit fair to think that dating her is one of the first times he’s been exposed to mental health disorders and other issues so of course you’d have to react a bit different to what he usually would do and he didn’t know that I guess?
He expected all of us including my partner, his friends and my friends to completely cut her off cause he doesn’t want to think about her anymore but all of us seriously formed a close friendship with her and to cut her off without us having an issue being friends together seems wrong. He tells me all the time that it hurts him seeing us hang out with her after what happened, but is it just us being ignorant and not respecting his wishes or is him being a bit forceful towards us too. I’ve been hanging out with just him a lot recently and just the guys in our group to try and replace the times he and his ex spent together. I don’t want any of us to cut each other off but I also don’t wanna hurt him or want him to get pissed at me. Honestly I think he can be a little toxic as a boyfriend from what his ex told us like the whole controlling what she eats and who she sees is a bit much, but also I suspect communication on boundaries was lacking in their relationship. What do you guys think of this?
2 comments
[deleted]
Yeah this happens a lot man. I think all you can really do is try to talk him into being ok with hanging out with her. If it doesn’t work, you need to choose.
Did you ask him about the controlling what she eats thing? That’s pretty toxic by itself, but when a breakup happens, it’s common for both people to make shit up to make the other one look bad. Listen to what he has to say about it.