My boyfriend and I have been fighting regularly about a friend of mine and I’m honestly at my wits end about it.
For context- I participate in local community theater. I’ve grown up in it and it’s a pretty big hobby of mine. This summer, I performed in a show with a company I haven’t worked with in a few years. During the show, I reconnected with an old (male) friend I did a few shows with years ago. We aren’t and weren’t super close or anything, but we would occasionally text here and there and chat at rehearsals. I honestly didn’t think anything of it, and thought I was just harmlessly catching up with an old friend.
In comes the issue-
As rehearsals were winding down, he at one point asked me if I could give him a ride to rehearsal. He lived quite close to the theater and I knew he didn’t have a car and often got rides from our cast mates. It was on the way for me, so I agreed, again, thinking nothing of it. I didn’t mention it to my boyfriend, which was perhaps my mistake. I picked him up, the entire thing seemed benign, and I moved on with my life.
Fast forward to a week or so later- my boyfriend borrows my iPad. Apparently, while he was using my iPad, my friend had texted me. My boyfriend got really upset, and inquired into why I hadn’t told him about my friend. He frankly started being a bit accusatory that this man was flirting with me and interested in me. He really heavily focused on the fact that I gave him a ride, and he claimed that it was extremely inappropriate for me to do that and that in not telling him, I looked like I was hiding something.
I tried to explain that the situation was totally innocuous. This is where it sort of veers into subjectivity- I really didn’t believe my friend was flirting with me, and I honestly believed that he was gay. (Admittedly, I’m wrong for this- he’d never told me that explicitly, but I knew he frequented gay bars and seemed to often be in the company of men). My boyfriend didn’t believe this. The show went on and my boyfriend increased his level of frustration about my friend. I scaled back the amount of time I would spend talking to him and didn’t text him much at all.
My friend attempted to call me out of the blue one evening. My boyfriend got super upset about this and I didn’t answer. I asked my friend what it was about- he wanted to gossip about some drama that happened at a drag show regarding some theater friends of ours, lol.
Fast forward again- the show is over. I don’t talk to my friend, a week or so passes. He calls me again out of the blue and I don’t answer. This time, me being tired of the constant fighting about this guy, I don’t tell my boyfriend. I was wrong for this, and I should’ve told him. My friend sends a message to my phone that’s just a sort of joke about me not picking up. My boyfriend sees this on my iPad.
All hell breaks loose. My boyfriend insists that I haven’t set firm enough boundaries with this man, he isn’t gay, he wants me, he’s trying to flirt with me, etc. I could be somewhat in the wrong here- I honestly didn’t talk much about my boyfriend to my friend. It never really came up, as we’d typically talk about theater things, mutual friends, etc. and my boyfriend isn’t part of that scene at all. However, if this man weren’t gay, I could see it sending the wrong message.
My boyfriend takes my phone and responds to him on my behalf, saying that I was “at dinner with my boyfriend.”
The friend answers, and makes an admittedly weird remark that seems to dismiss my boyfriend and kind of insult him. I don’t reply, kind of caught off guard. Hours later he sends a much longer text apologizing for being insulting. In this message he explains and confirms that he is gay and he struggles with female friendships. My boyfriend takes greater offense and views it as confirmation that the friend is interested in me, accusing him of lying about being gay and trying to manipulate me into feeling sorry for him. He’s insisting I need to be cruel or block this friend and cut him off entirely as he’s violated too many boundaries. I’m at a loss and I don’t feel like it’s reasonable to be outright cruel to someone like that.
TL;DR I have a (seemingly gay) friend who my boyfriend believes likes me/is hitting on me. He wants me to cut him off and sees him as interfering in our relationship and I’m unsure what to do.
Comments
> My boyfriend takes my phone and responds to him on my behalf, saying that I was “at dinner with my boyfriend.”
Not cool. Gross, actually.
> The friend answers, and makes an admittedly weird remark that seems to dismiss my boyfriend and kind of insult him.
Not cool either, super odd and while I was 100% with you up to this, I do have to wonder what’s actually going on here and whether there’s something you may have missed.
Do you have other male friends? Not acquaintances, legit friends that you hang out and share things with. If so, what’s your boyfriend’s attitude towards those friendships? Has he ever behaved this way before? Has he made snide/passive aggressive remarks about other male friends that may have slipped under the radar? To be clear, I don’t like how your boyfriend is handling this at all and my first instinct would be to tell you to not give in to his demands. If this is the first time he’s acted this way though I do have to wonder why.
Your boyfriend isnt allowed to make boundaries for you. He can make them for himself, and he is free to make decisions regarding his own boundaries. But it’s wildly inappropriate for him to put boundaries upon your friendships, especially when literally it doesn’t sound like you or your friend did anything at all.
Make your own boundaries. Tell your boyfriend to stop being so weirdly controlling and insecure
Your boyfriend is being unreasonable. But I doubt there’s anything you can do to fix that.
Have you seen his texts. Guys who are suspicious like this often turn out to be doing something sketchy.
You tell your boyfriend no and that you’re done fighting about this.
You should have nipped this in the bud right away. When he FIRST saw that you had texted with this guy, it was fine for him to have questions, but not accusations.
If he wants you to tell him things like when you give a person a ride, that’s fine, but he’s not allowed you define that as a crime against your relationship retroactively. In a healthy relationship, when something like that happens, the reaction is something like, “Hey, that makes me feel a little weird. Can you make sure to let me know when you give a guy I don’t know a ride?” and you say “Sure” and that’s the end of it.
Getting a text or a phone call from a friend is not something that should upset your boyfriend.
And you’re not “wrong” for assuming that a guy who goes to gay bars regularly is gay. As a straight dude, I’ve been to gay bars a few times, but basically no straight men do that regularly. You are allowed to use your judgement – including about a man’s sexuality – when determining what boundaries are appropriate. If your boyfriend disagrees with that judgement, you two can discuss it and mutually agree on boundaries, but, again – that discussion does not start from a place of treating you like a criminal.
Your boyfriend is allowed to want you to have stricter boundaries. You’re allowed to say no to those requests – boundaries like this are a negotiation because your desire to have friends and socialize with them and do things like give people rides home are just as important as his desire to feel unthreatened by your choices – but he is NOT allowed to impose his boundaries on you, nor to treat you like you’ve done something wrong by crossing a boundary that you never agreed to.
And this is a breakup worthy issue, because the thing about his type of behavior is that it doesn’t get better when you give him what you want. If you agree that a friend calling you is a crime against your relationship, you’re feeding the jealous and controlling part of your boyfriend, and making it stronger.
Should your friend have said whatever he said in that last text? I doubt it – but don’t let your boyfriend retroactively justify his earlier unreasonable behavior. Your boyfriend had been being an ass towards this friend for quite some time already, and I suspect that the friend knew it, which probably motivated his response.
Ohh, the gay friend insulting your boyfriend for no reason was a twist I didn’t see.
Ok…your boyfriend is wrong. He’s being incredibly insecure. I didn’t think anything you or your friend did was wrong, until he unnecessarily insulted and dismissed your boyfriend via text.
You don’t necessarily have to, but one way you could have stopped this problem is to have your friend and boyfriend meet. That could have possibly gotten them on the same page and eased your boyfriend’s nerves.
I think you need stronger boundaries with your boyfriend. He shouldn’t have any access he wants to your personal messages, through iPad or phone or whatever.
Your boyfriend has trust issues. Up to you if youre willing to put up with that. The situation is admittedly a little weird from the perspective of the boyfriend, but he either trusts you or he doesn’t. At a certain point in the timeline of these events you should be able to just say “I’m telling you this is not a problem, do you trust me or not?” And that should end it. It’s a bit insulting in my opinion to go back and forth like this basically accusing you of cheating when you haven’t done anything. I would make a certain amount of room for it because it is a weird looking situation, but at the end of the day we are supposed to be adults. You drove a friend home one day and he texts you sometimes. He is gay. A normal man gets over this quickly.
Also, taking the phone and replying for you is really lame. Like just high school tier boy stuff.
Your boyfriend sounds crazy. Giving a cast-mate a ride isn’t a crime and doesn’t need to be cleared with your bf. Your bf is now accusing your friend of pretending to be gay to try and get in your pants – take a step back and think about how irrational that is.
Your bf acted like a jealous and controlling freak. Then, to try and avoid unnecessary conflict over nothing, you chose not to mention a call and stuff like that. That’s not you betraying your bf. That’s you trying to protect yourself from a borderline-abusive boyfriend. My advice is to keep the friend, ditch the boyfriend, and find somebody who loves that you are into theatre and is happy for you to talk to and spend time with your friends.