Relationships can be really difficult to work on sometimes, whether you are a part of one or somehow become involved. Everyone has different rules, boundaries, and decisions that they make with their significant other, but sometimes those lines are blurred or simply erased. This is my experience as the girl with the flirty friend who also has a girlfriend. The decisions that I’ve made in my friendship with him are completely my own and I understand that everyone can feel differently when they seem to be caught in a sticky situation like this.
I have a male friend who is one of the flirtiest people that I know. Normally it wouldn’t bother or surprise me that a college boy likes to get flirty with girls at parties on a Saturday night. Daniel’s* cute, charming, and endearing in the same way that Joey Tribbiani is on Friends. We became friends my freshman year and have gotten closer since then, but the flirting still continues. It was usually just a bunch of back and forth silly banter when we see each other at parties that, to me, was pretty much harmless. That feeling completely changed when I found out that he had a girlfriend. He was not the one, however, who gave me this news which made me feel a little suspicious of this motives.
I have to admit that even when I knew he had a girlfriend, I still founding the flirting to be fun and would always try to come up with excuses and reasons for why it was okay for him to be flirting with me, and for me to be going along with it. My view on the whole situation was so unfair and warped. I had no torn feelings about the situation because at the end of the day I could go home and the flirting would disappear and, to me, there were no real consequences because I didn’t even know his girlfriend.
Then one day, I became really good friends with Daniel’s girlfriend and everything changed. Everything suddenly felt more personal because I knew the person on the other end. The girl who was out with the friends, waiting to go home to her boyfriend who had been flirting with and somewhat inappropriately grabbing other girls all night. I think it’s hard to put yourself in this sort of situation because it’s too easy to think, “Well, it’s her decision to go out with him,” or, “she should know better by this point,” but the truth I, it’s not always that easy. The closer that the two of us got, the more she opened up about her relationship with Daniel. It was then that I realized that she had had a difficult time with trusting him, and that’s one reason that they went on a break for a while. She wanted to trust him because she loves him a lot and can be really forgiving of him. She even told me that Daniel said that I was one of his best girl friends and that he was happy that we’d gotten closer.
I was becoming such good friends with her that I realized just how wrong it was to flirt with Daniel while knowing he had a girlfriend. When you’re caught in that situation it’s hard to put yourself in the girlfriend’s shoes to understand the feeling, but it’s easy to put yourself in the position of your friend whose boyfriend is like Daniel. As a friend all you want to do is support your friend and be there to defend her, because she deserves that much respect and honor.
Whether you agree with my thoughts and decisions or not, this was how I handled this situation. It’s not an easy one to overcome. It’s nice to receive positive attention from a guy, especially when it is a friend of yours, and see the situation in a totally different light. Overall, I hope that this may help someone who is in a similar situation figure out what to do.
*name has been changed
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