Your best friend is practically your soulmate, your second mother, your protector, and your rock all wrapped into one. She’s the one whose there for you when you’re feeling sad or just need a late night Princess Diaries movie marathon. She’s brutally honest with you, and she will be the first person to hold your hair back while you puke after having one too many. She’s pretty much perfect, the sister you never had, and you would do absolutely anything for her. Then she starts dating this guy, and as hard as you try, you just can’t befriend him. In fact, you actually hate him.
If you’ve been in this situation before, it’s one of the toughest places to be, I know. You want to support your best friend’s choices no matter what, but it’s incredibly difficult to like her boyfriend when the two of you just don’t get along. I’ve been there- I am there- and this is how I deal with it.
First off, you have to be completely frank with yourself: are you jealous? In my and my best friend’s friendship, I was always the one skipping from guy to guy, never committed to one for any significant period of time. So when she got into a long term, serious relationship, I honestly sat down and contemplated whether or not I was jealous of what she had. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that no, I was truly happy that she had found someone she wanted to be with. I wasn’t jealous of anything (well, except maybe her hair), so that wasn’t the problem.
After that was out of the way, I tried my best to get to know her boyfriend. And boy, did I try. I tagged along with the two of them, texted him one-on-one, even made fun of her with him from time to time. At the end of the day, though, the more I got to know him on my own, the more I disliked him. He was everything that she wasn’t, and I truly didn’t understand why she was so head over heels in love with him. I would actually glare at the man when neither of them were looking, wondering how in world she put up with him and how she could possibly admire him. He was arrogant, callous, full of himself, mean, controlling, and possessive. How could she not see it?
The longer they stayed together, the more obvious my feelings toward him became. I’m not exactly what you call “subtle”, so my emotions were always written on my face. Not to mention she’s my best friend, so she knows me like the back of my hand. On several occasions, we talked about how him and I didn’t get along (unfortunately, he wasn’t a huge fan of me, either). Whenever they fought, I was quick to jump to push her to break up with him, thinking she could do soooo much better.
What made me angry, though, was that she never listened to me. God, why wasn’t she taking my opinion into account? Didn’t she value what I had to say and what I saw in the guy that maybe she couldn’t? It sometimes felt like she was swinging me around with the two of them, yet ignoring me when she finally dropped me. It was so frustrating, and she felt it, too.
As time went on, though, I saw the toll that my feelings took on her. She couldn’t come to me and vent about him without receiving a grimace or unwarranted insults toward him. I was no longer her confidant, but a selective advice-giver. The thing is, with us girls, sometimes we just need someone to listen to us bitch about our significant others. Even more, we need our best friends to remind us of why we’re with them to begin with, and what they bring to our lives. I didn’t do that for her.
That’s when I realized why she loved this guy so much. I was just like him. I was arrogant, controlling, possessive, and every other bad name I’d used to describe him. I was pressing my own opinions onto her, almost trying to pressure her into making a choice. I loved her so much that I thought I knew what was best for her. I was doing everything that he was because I wanted to protect her and make sure that she had everything she deserved…just like him.
I was shocked, to say the least, at my behavior. Because at the end of the day, there wasn’t anything wrong with the guy. He wasn’t a cheater or a liar or a fraud. He was just someone I didn’t get along with who happened to also be someone that made her happy.
If her happiness truly meant the world to me, I knew I had to push my feelings for him aside. I had to try my best to get along with him, be civil toward him, because she loved him. That had to be enough for me, because I know it would have been enough for her.
So that’s exactly what I’ve done. My dislike for her boyfriend is no longer voiced, and I truly try to look at their arguments as objectively as I can. Once I started doing that, I actually figured out I was on his side more than I was on hers. I’m the only person in the world who can tell her that I love her more than life itself but that she needs to apologize, and that wouldn’t be the case if I hadn’t stopped being so selfish. I see little qualities about him in myself, both good and bad. It’s really no wonder she fell for him, because we’ve said many times that if we were lesbians, we’d be married by now. He just completed her, in a similar way that I did, and she completed us both.
That’s all that really mattered.
If you don’t get along with your best friend’s significant other, please ask yourself why. If there is nothing morally or ethically wrong with them, then try your hardest to keep your feelings quiet in order to support her. If things go badly between them, she’ll need you to lean on. If they get married, she’ll need you to make sure she gets down that aisle. In a best friendship, sometimes it’s not about you or your feelings. It’s about hers, and it’s just that simple.