Boyfriend's best friend is still in love with him; how to communicate I'm upset?

[neowulf]

It's one thing having an innocent crush.

 

But have you read the thread and how unbelievably out of control obsessive this guy is?

 

That type of obsession occurs after something went down, and obsessed person was rejected. It's the rejection that triggers the obsession. I mean crying "I love you" and "I miss you?" over and over?

 

This is no simple "crush" you can't even compare it to your situation.

 

It began on his part as a simple crush, but I assure you, it wasn't a "simple crush" by the time I had to cut him out of my life.

 

Unrequited love seems to drive some people bat **** insane. Really, you guys asked for another perspective and I gave it, as a straight guy who's experienced a similar situation with "crazy obsessive same sex crush nightmare". I get that from the outside you'd be incredulous, but people are complex.

 

I don't know. Not saying in this case the bf wasn't doing something on the side. I'm just saying that it's entirely possible he wasn't and you guys are unfairly jumping to conclusions. All you have to go on is the third party description skills of the gf. That's it. The bf isn't even here to defend his position.

Edited September 14, 2015 by neowulf

[Grumpybutfun]

Hi OP, glad you let your bf know your feelings. I can understand trying to not be controlling, but sometimes we have to let others know how things affect us.

Family dynamics can definitely have an impact on how your bf's friend was able to manipulate him for so long. As someone who has worked with young men in the military, I have definitely seen how twenty year olds can be extremely trusting, gullible and unworldly. This sounds like your bf s a fixer, compassionate and feels responsible for others feelings too much. His friend could have definitely made him feel needed and so he ignored the toxic relationship, thinking he was helping him when all he was doing was enabling a codependent attachment. Of course, we can none make a determination online, but to me, as a man, I have seen young men be emotionally manipulated enough to know that a gay friend propositioning them wouldn't have made them completely end a long term friendship. If you are concerned about a down low situation, talk to him and ask that he be transparent with you. There is no way of knowing if he is telling the truth except in knowing him and his character.

In the interim, make sure that your needs are being met and that you aren't internalizing his friends drama. Sometimes external forces can affect how we feel about ourselves and our relationships when they are toxic.

Good luck,

Grumps

[katiegrl]

It began on his part as a simple crush, but I assure you, it wasn't a "simple crush" by the time I had to cut him out of my life.

 

Unrequited love seems to drive some people bat **** insane. Really, you guys asked for another perspective and I gave it, as a straight guy who's experienced a similar situation with "crazy obsessive same sex crush nightmare". I get that from the outside you'd be incredulous, but people are complex.

 

I don't know. Not saying in this case the bf wasn't doing something on the side. I'm just saying that it's entirely possible he wasn't and you guys are unfairly jumping to conclusions. All you have to go on is the third party description skills of the gf. That's it. The bf isn't even here to defend his position.

 

What we are going on is common sense, and knowledge and **acceptance** of how these types of things can and do happen between friends, how young people often like to experiment with their sexuality, and acknowledgment of how completely and uncontrollably obsessive the friend's behavior is ...and that this type of over the top obsession does not manifest from a simple unreciprocated crush.....(unless the friend is severely mentally ill and delusional which is possible, and if that is the case, why isn't her boyfriend trying to get him some help?)

 

Something happened, whether awhile ago or more recent or both -- this is my opinion. You have yours I have mine, let's agree to disagree and leave it at that.

 

The OP will never know the truth, as her boyfriend will deny it no doubt, so at a minimum, if it were me, I would get tested..and again, use protection.

Edited September 14, 2015 by katiegrl

[gaius]

I don't see them having slept together as a certainty, but your boyfriend has to be enjoying the sexual and emotional attention he's getting from that guy on some level. Or he would just get rid of him despite their history. It's not like this was an overnight change. He was probably giving him sexual vibes for a long time before he actually verbalized it and your boyfriend was accepting of that, since he didn't get rid of him.

 

Whether that means he's gay/bi himself, or it's just an ego thing who knows. But he is having some kind of emotional affair at the very least so you have every right to demand he put a stop to it.

[Country_Girl]

It began on his part as a simple crush, but I assure you, it wasn't a "simple crush" by the time I had to cut him out of my life.

 

Unrequited love seems to drive some people bat **** insane. Really, you guys asked for another perspective and I gave it, as a straight guy who's experienced a similar situation with "crazy obsessive same sex crush nightmare". I get that from the outside you'd be incredulous, but people are complex.

 

I don't know. Not saying in this case the bf wasn't doing something on the side. I'm just saying that it's entirely possible he wasn't and you guys are unfairly jumping to conclusions. All you have to go on is the third party description skills of the gf. That's it. The bf isn't even here to defend his position.

 

Why are people attacking Neowulf for stating his opinion and experience.

 

I know exactly where he is coming from because I have a gay friend that completely crushed on our mutual straight friend. The gay friend knew the guy was straight yet obsessed over comments he made, so the gay friend thought the guy might at least be bi-curious. In reality, straight friend told me later that he didn't want the gay friend to feel out of place. He didn't flirt with him, but he was always friendly. But the gay friend saw it as flirting, and thought the guy just hadn't come out of the closet. He obsessed over the straight guy for 2 years before he found a partner.

 

In the OP's case, sounds like the guy is a lifelong friend, and the bf never really had any boundaries with him because he wanted to be accepting. Unfortunately that acceptance has given him the wrong message.

[blackcat777]

Thank you, everyone, for the input, again, I appreciate it.

 

My boyfriend is an extremely giving person. If anyone would have accidentally left something behind, he'd drive god knows how long without a second thought at the drop of a hat to get it to them. He's done this for roommates with last-minute out-of-state moving situations. He put 30,000 miles on his car over the summer just to see me, when he got his own place down by school and I was stuck on a terrible summer school schedule and would have been waaay to exhausted to commute to see him and commute to school.

 

My boyfriend gives, easily, freely, a lot. He has a big heart.

 

His friend, however, knows this, and always uses it to his advantage. That's why it pissed me off.

 

My boyfriend wasn't breaking plans with me to go deliver the laptop. He would not have broken plans with me to deliver the laptop. I was at work the entire weekend, he told me about it when it happened, and decided to drop it off, and figured, "What the hell." He was SUPER pissed.

 

The friend "needed his laptop that day" to "submit papers for his externship final" or "he would fail out of his externship. Please, please, please Blackcat's boyfriend, your help is the only way I can stay in school and not fail out because I forgot my computer while I'm on vacation."

 

Not long after that, the friend left a bunch of other belongings purposely with my boyfriend, shoes, clothes, etc. Totally planted it on him. My boyfriend did not deliver anything to him.

 

The friendship, before last year, was pretty normal. The friend was always a little weird. Last year, after he moved away, the friend started to obsess--I think he became wildly obsessed in my boyfriend's absence. The friend can't make any new friends on his own. He fell into hard drugs, fell into selling hard drugs. His behavior has become more weird and violent. He randomly wrapped a shoelace around my boyfriend's arm and pulled hard enough to bruise him. My boyfriend was gobsmacked and too shocked to respond one way or the other.

 

After all these things started happening, my boyfriend did become transparent with me. He didn't know how to handle the friend (even after the laptop incident). It was hard for him to understand his friend really going off the deep end.

 

I never ask to see my boyfriend's phone and I'll never snoop. Since things like the laptop incident have gone down, any time the friend would be over the top with his declarations of love, my boyfriend would show me his phone because it freaked him out and he didn't know what to do. He'd show me pages and pages of his friend's emotional outpouring, to which *my boyfriend never responds.*

 

This still goes on. when the friend gushes and gets weird, my boyfriend ignores him.

 

He doesn't ever blow me off to be with the friend. he doesn't take his friend's calls.

 

The friend is definitely making my boyfriend slowly but surely distance himself.

 

It's been a learning process. My boyfriend's responses to the situation, though, are not alarming. The friend's behavior is alarming.

 

If my boyfriend hid his phone, disappeared, broke plans with me, etc., it would be a completely different story.

 

His friend is a sad, lonely individual who can't make friends on his own. He's in denial about his sexuality. My boyfriend was the only other person he ever really connected with in life. They used to live together in high school. Now my boyfriend has his life together, has a serious girlfriend, the friend almost never gets to see him, and he can't stand not having my boyfriend as his #1. He's acting desperate, immature, and psycho, and sadly, it's pushing my boyfriend away.

 

I have told my boyfriend that if anyone can get his friend to rethink some of his self-destructive actions, it is my boyfriend. My boyfriend still cares and doesn't want to see his friend shot to death in the ghetto over crack rocks.

 

Do you abandon someone who was there for you your whole life when they're in a bad place and start acting really weird? Tough call.

 

My boundaries are no disrespect to our relationship and no disrespect to my boyfriend's well-being. My boyfriend knows that. He's on board 100%.

Edited September 14, 2015 by blackcat777

[stillafool]

 

The friend is absolutely 100% in denial of the fact he is gay and madly in love with my boyfriend.

 

.

 

How can this be when you said in an earlier post that the friend wanted to force oral sex on your bf and watch him have sex with a girl? That is hardly denial. I believe your bf has had some sort of sex with this guy and that's why he's so emotionally attached to your bf.

[katiegrl]

blackcat.... please be clear, I am NOT suggesting your boyfriend is having an affair with his friend, or even ongoing sexual relations at this point in time. Or that your boyfriend even has romantic feelings for him.

 

 

Obviously he is devoted to YOU, and in love with YOU, and does not want that change.

 

 

All I am suggesting, and that you at least consider, is the possibility that something might have gone down between them at one point in time....a one time thing.... that your boyfriend rejected further advances which catapulted his friend into a very toxic obsession. Believe it or not, this type of sexual exploration between young people is NOT uncommon. It does not mean that one, or both, are gay.

 

 

I only suggest this as a possibility because if something did happen...it would be wise to get tested... and until the results are clear....use protection.

 

 

That's all...

Edited September 14, 2015 by katiegrl

[Gaeta]

...until the friend insisted on giving my boyfriend oral sex and begged him to have a threesome with another girl so the friend could watch my boyfriend having sex. This was a week or so ago.

 

Lets reverse this for a moment.

 

If your dear female friend made graphic sexual innuendos to you, if she wanted to give YOU oral sex, if she kept telling you she's in love with you, she misses you, you mean you would keep the friendship going? You would also spend alone time with her including nights over alone? Really, allow me to doubt it.

[preraph]

I don't want this to particularly alarm you, but there is a very good chance that at some point when they were teens, the gay friend did talk your bf into at least trying it or being on the recieving end of oral sex. This guy is very confident about knowing he can pull your bf's strings, and I bet he holds this over his head. He sounds like a jackass (and I'm not at all antigay -- I've lost a half dozen close gay friends to AIDS in the 90s and still miss them). He just sounds like a manipulative jackass, and I've seen more women who act like that than men. For your bf to fall for his tricks, he is either too naive or he doesn't want to make this guy mad. The only way there will ever be a break is if your bf gets good and mad at him finally and lays down the law. Doesn't sound like he's anywhere near that yet. You should insist on being with him every time this guy is around, just like you would if it was a woman who was after him -- and you should tell him as much. Be sweet as pie to the friend without letting him "in" far enough to start calling you in private and trying to manipulate you too. You can't be mean to him or you will look like the culprit. That's how these manipulative jerks work their magic.

 

I would tell him, "I am regarding your friend the same way i would any woman who was after you, and I expect to be present anytime you see him, just like I would if this were a woman. If you continue to let him manipulate you to get you alone, I'm going to start dating other people, because at that point, it would seem to me that we're no longer exclusive."

[blackcat777]

Katiegirl: My boyfriend has been tested and we're good there.

 

preraph: I've dated a few guys who are definitely 100% straight and have experimented otherwise in the past. My boyfriend and I have discussed experimentation, and he's an open book with me. I don't want to know every single detail about his sexual past, but he always tells me anything I want to know I can know. It doesn't make sense that he'd hide something just concerning the friend, but be open about other same-sex experimentation.

 

Gaeta: if the reverse were true and a woman were after me, absolutely, I'd shut her down on the spot. But if it had happened when I were 20? Definitely not. I'd be angsty, uncomfortable, and conflicted, and would probably continue into a bad situation, because I hadn't developed my boundaries and especially had a problem with being a doormat.

 

A friend of mine told me, years ago, the purpose of each relationship (not just romantic) in life exists to teach you something about your personal boundaries.

 

I'm not justifying my boyfriend's response, but I also don't think it's fair for me to expect him to a) do everything how I would do it or b) always know the best answer to every situation immediately. Those two expectations are the death of a LOT of age gap relationships. I really try to take a deep breath, think about my boundaries, and then allow my boyfriend the space to do what he needs to do at his pace to learn, as long as it's not violating me in any way.

 

There was another issue with my boyfriend and learning boundaries this summer when he dealt with a terrible boss who wanted to ride him like a pony. It was an incredible job opportunity in the science field... but the boss had no respect for my boyfriend, the time he put into the job, the effort he made. My boyfriend was pulling 60 hour weeks. During finals, the boss expected my boyfriend to come to work at 4am, commute 30 minutes back to school for class, then commute back to work and stay until 6 or 7 at night. My boyfriend suffered an eye injury where he was NOT ALLOWED TO DRIVE and the boss wouldn't have it. My boyfriend gave (IMHO) *way* too much to that job... and eventually quit. But not before enduring excessive personal torment.

 

He stayed because he had the mentality that he wasn't a quitter, it was a commitment he made for a certain amount of time, he loved being trusted with the responsibilities of the job.

 

He takes giving up on something *really* hard and feels like he failed, feels guilty. I'm still trying to understand this part about him. If circumstances are beyond his control and he's late, I have learned to be extremely patient (rather than annoyed... urgh, I hate when people are late ) because he hates feeling like he failed or let someone down (even if, in reality, he hasn't failed).

 

I don't feel the need to police his decisions or be present with the friend (I can't be fake, and let's be honest, I'd rather throw up than hang out with the friend at this point). When the friend returns for the holidays, I'll have a refresher chat with my boyfriend about what I expect. He already knows what I expect. I'm okay with him hanging out with the friend as long as he strictly enforces friendship-only conduct. Based on the actions my boyfriend has been taking, I feel like I can trust him to do that.

 

I made the original post over a month ago, and since that incident, my boyfriend has taken measures to keep the friend in appropriate territory. Last week was when he finally had a huge talk with his friend about how ridiculous he's being... and lectured him hard about the drug use, too.

 

Whenever the friend makes a ridiculous request, especially after the sex and laptop incidents, my boyfriend tells him no directly, rather than ignoring him. I explained to my boyfriend that not being firm and clear about his own boundaries allows the friend to interpret them differently in his head. My boyfriend previously would ignore or brush off annoying or uncomfortable situations (he's very slow to anger), but he's been getting better at saying no. The friend randomly told him he was coming down last weekend at 1:30 in the morning, and my boyfriend told him no. The friend told my boyfriend he expected him to drive 6 hours to a $300 music festival on short notice, and my boyfriend told him no. He used to just ignore, ignore, ignore.

 

My boyfriend has an older family member that he seeks counsel from, and I know something is weighing on his mind whenever he tells me he goes to visit her. He went to see her after the friend insinuated he wanted sex and I told my boyfriend I felt too disrespected to let it go. She helped my boyfriend realize that the whole proposition and discussion of threesomes was also disrespectful TO MY BOYFRIEND (I love this lady! ). After my boyfriend thought about it and gained some perspective, he won't let a discussion like that fly ever again. Before, he just ignored and tried to change the subject because it made him so uncomfortable, it surprised him, and he wasn't sure how to deal. But my boyfriend is LOUD AND CLEAR on the sexual boundaries now, not just for me, but for him.

 

Which is the way it should be...

 

There haven't been any problems since, and my boyfriend has much improved how he deals with the friend. So we'll see...

 

Holidays will be the last time friend is home for a few weeks before he moves far away forever.

 

I'll keep everyone updated.

 

All the varying perspectives have given me much to think about, which is why I love posting here.

[neowulf]

...and that this type of over the top obsession does not manifest from a simple unreciprocated crush...

 

You are very, very wrong about this.

I'm glad you've never had to experience that kind of crazy first hand.

[katiegrl]

You are very, very wrong about this.

I'm glad you've never had to experience that kind of crazy first hand.

 

Well I did follow that comment by saying unless he was mentally disturbed...which IMO anyone who becomes "that" obsessed with another human being definitely has a few screws loose upstairs. :)

 

 

But yeah, I AM very lucky... because that would be quite scary.

[Timshel]

You are very, very wrong about this.

I'm glad you've never had to experience that kind of crazy first hand.

 

I agree neowulf. I have had close female friends show a crazy and 'inappropriate' affection.

 

I did not dismiss them, tried to work it out. I think it's a situation you are in and try not to blow the friendship out of the water over. One, I am still friends with, the other not.

 

Your bf may have indulged this guy or he may be trying to salvage a long time friendship.

 

You are not someone to tell blackcat777. You're a smart cookie so you tell us and either way....there will be no short of support.

[blackcat777]

The friend definitely could benefit IMMENSELY from therapy, but will probably never go, at least not at this point in his life.

 

The whole bruising my boyfriend's arm with a shoelace was definitely not right. He lacks healthy coping mechanisms. The decline in his behavior coincides with a huge consumption of all kinds of substances, notably stimulants, which can exacerbate paranoia, aggression, and many other mental issues.

 

That's why I'm scared for my boyfriend to party too hard with him... I don't know what this guy might try if he's whacked out of his mind on something.

 

My boyfriend took that concern of mine seriously, too. When they had their talk not that long ago, they didn't even drink.

[Timshel]

The friend definitely could benefit IMMENSELY from therapy, but will probably never go, at least not at this point in his life.

 

The whole bruising my boyfriend's arm with a shoelace was definitely not right. He lacks healthy coping mechanisms. The decline in his behavior coincides with a huge consumption of all kinds of substances, notably stimulants, which can exacerbate paranoia, aggression, and many other mental issues.

 

That's why I'm scared for my boyfriend to party too hard with him... I don't know what this guy might try if he's whacked out of his mind on something.

 

My boyfriend took that concern of mine seriously, too. When they had their talk not that long ago, they didn't even drink.

 

Alright. That's enough. I assume you are sharing this thread (he is aware of) with your bf.

 

No matter. NC is my advice immediately. Violence or the threat of/self harm or the threat of is an immediate end. I apologize for missing this part of your thread. My fault.

 

No Mas, the end, done blackcat777. This is not a fun. Cut all contact except to a person close to this dude to let them know he is in trouble and in need of assistance. Do not try to personally intervene. This goes double for your bf.

 

End, the end. If he has any keys to your residence, change your locks. Block all calls and social media.

 

Sorry I missed that. Any contact should be a restraining order. Both of you stay on the same team for this and make zero compromise.

[Gaeta]

The whole bruising my boyfriend's arm with a shoelace was definitely not right. He lacks healthy coping mechanisms. The decline in his behavior coincides with a huge consumption of all kinds of substances, notably stimulants, which can exacerbate paranoia, aggression, and many other mental issues.

 

That's why I'm scared for my boyfriend to party too hard with him... I don't know what this guy might try if he's whacked out of his mind on something.

 

I would not have that person in my life even if he was a sibling so even less a childhood friend. Your boyfriend's attitude toward this 'friend' is dysfunctional. If they keep on being in each other's life it's because they both getting something out of it !! and we know what it is.

[katiegrl]

I would not have that person in my life even if he was a sibling so even less a childhood friend. Your boyfriend's attitude toward this 'friend' is dysfunctional. If they keep on being in each other's life it's because they both getting something out of it !! and we know what it is.

 

Yup...and OP keeps making excuses for him, like he's some child with a learning disability or something.

 

Denial denial denial all the way...

[stillafool]

Katiegirl: My boyfriend has been tested and we're good there.

 

I don't want to know every single detail about his sexual past, but he always tells me anything I want to know I can know. It doesn't make sense that he'd hide something just concerning the friend, but be open about other same-sex experimentation.

 

So your bf has had sex with men before?