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Should I end our friendship? Long but interesting...


Orange8

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Hiya, I don't know what's going on between me & my male friend. We've known each other for nearly a year now. He has a girlfriend of 5 years but they do not live together & I'm single. We met at work. He left within a few months.

 

Our friendship is purely platonic & he treats me with complete respect, however I don't know if I should continue this friendship or just end it once & for all as I've tried ending it with him a few times but he won't allow it to as he tells me to go & rest as a way to fix the situation & it never gets mentioned again.

 

Even though we get on well, communication has always been a big issue as the majority of our contact is by text, with just a handful of telephone calls. He knows this as well as when we used to work together he would randomly blurt out 'Communication is key' and I would tell him likewise. I am mindful that he does have a girlfriend so I do not really initiate contact with him as I feel like I may be intruding. 80% of contact between us is initiated by him. We do get on really well as friends but lots of things are not right:

 

* At the beginning of our friendship he used to talk in general about his girlfriend but after a month he no longer mentioned her unless he felt forced to by others at work if we were in a group setting but even then he would wait for me to leave then answer their question about his girlfriend & show them her picture. [i would see this from afar]. I do not understand why he has to be so secretive around me though.

 

* If he meets up with his girlfriend or goes away for the weekend, if he feels like telling me he's going somewhere he'll always say that he's going with friends then I'll hear from another mutual male friend of ours that he went so and so with his girlfriend. If he does mention about his weekend after it happened he still never mentions that he was with his girlfriend. Again, I do not understand why he has to be so secretive.

 

* He always asks me what my "plans are for the weekend" but never initiates anything if I have nothing planned and he has nothing planned. This makes me think why bother asking me the question. This is a weekly occurrence. He even texts me early on Saturday/Sunday mornings around 9am to ask me the same question but when I say I have nothing planned and I ask him what his plans are for the day, if he says nothing as well, he does not initiate anything but the majority of the time he will not respond to that particular question but will continue the conversation. For me, that more or less kills the conversation as there is nothing to expand on.

 

We've met up about 4 times in person always with this mutual friend in tow as it seems that he is unable to meet me on his own. We went out on some day trips. Mutual friend tells me that my friend always wants to meet me up with me but he tells him to give me space, then I think space for what?

 

This mutual friend is always meddling in our friendship as well as he says that he feels left out when the 3 of us are together. He texts me all the time so he can't be intimidated of me as the reason why he can't see me on his own. It baffles me especially as I can't have a conversation with him when our mutual friend is there as our mutual friend dominates the time we spend together by re-telling the same stories over & over again.

 

I haven't seen him for 3 months now but he still keeps on texting me at least 3-4 times a week, sometimes everyday. I've since found out from our mutual friend that my friend goes to his house twice a week. They live a 10 min drive apart. I live a 20 min drive away. Our friend takes great delight in telling me these things as he knows that me & my friend don't meet up.

 

I'm at the point where I have had enough of this so-called friendship and want to end it. I recently decided to ignore him which I did for about a week, but he kept on contacting me to find out if I'm alright and if there is there anything wrong so in the end I responded as I felt bad as he's always so nice to me and always responds instantly and I felt that he didn't deserve to be treated like that by me but he doesn't seem to have the same consideration for the way he is treating me. I just told him that I had been really busy as I don't feel that I can tell him the real reason.

 

How can I carry on being friends with someone when I can't ask him any questions to form a conversation that will need any mention of his girlfriend as he won't respond to it or I'll be told untruths? How can I continue to be friends with him if he texts me all the time but does not make any effort to meet up to talk or go somewhere? Why is it that he is so secretive of his relationship with his girlfriend around me when there is no need to be when he initiates contact with me 80% of the time?

 

I need to know that I'm doing the right thing in my next attempt to cut him out of my life. All my other male friends are open with me about their girlfriends and wives, but this particular friend is so secretive around me about it. Surely he's aware of what he's doing. Our mutual friend says that he does not agree with the way my friend is treating me as he said that he thought all 3 of us knew the same things about each other. He said he didn't realise that our friend was keeping things related to his girlfriend away from me and finds it strange that he does that but still contacts me all the time.

 

Any insight is appreciated.

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He's stringing you along to be a soft place to land, if it doesn't work out with his gf.

 

I've seen people do this over the years--and it's not cool.

 

I'd bet his girlfriend doesn't even know about his friendship with you--otherwise, she would've expected to have met you by now.

 

Put yourself in her shoes for a moment--if you had a long-term bf, wouldn't you want to be included in a friendship he had that involved daily texting?

How would you feel a bf kept that a secret from you?

 

The fact that your friend clams up about his girlfriend around you is a red flag.

 

A truly platonic friend , wouldn't want to keep you separated from his girlfriend---he'd want to share that with his friend, AND his girlfriend.

It does look like he has ulterior motives....

 

I would ask him to lay it on the line with you. Then make a decision whether or not to keep investing your time & emotional energy into the friendship.

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'I am mindful that he does have a girlfriend so I do not really initiate contact with him as I feel like I may be intruding. 80% of contact between us is initiated by him. We do get on really well as friends but lots of things are not right:'

 

Do you have feelings for him? It sounds as if he has gained your attention.

 

I feel that he's got strong feelings for you, but doesn't want to leave his girlfriend. Well, he can't have both.

 

Stay away, this sounds pretty awkward.

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