When your boyfriend’s female friend doesn’t like you, it is out of jealousy.
There are many relationships that are seemingly platonic but underneath the surface, passion lingers.
Someone has feelings for another and those feelings are craving reciprocation.
Your boyfriend’s female friend likes him in a romantic sense.
She has liked him in a romantic sense for a while.
That female friend has waited it out just hoping that your boyfriend comes around to liking her.
Now you step in and mess everything up.
She doesn’t like you.
In a scenario like this, this female friend has deep emotions.
She has developed a deeper bond with your boyfriend over time.
For a while, before you showed up, she was working on their relationship, intent on guiding it into a romance.
She had hope.
For so long in their relationship, they have jinxed each other.
When she was single, he wasn’t.
When he was single, she wasn’t.
Finally, they are single at the same time.
She thought that it was only a matter of time before he asked her out.
Then you show up out of nowhere, ruining the work she has been doing towards transitioning their friendship to a romance.
In this reality, this is a friend who has strong affection for your boyfriend.
That emotion is challenging to satiate when it hasn’t received its prize.
That prize being your boyfriend.
Avoid the temptation to get into verbal or nonverbal arguments with his friend.
This is what she wants.
To instill doubts about you in your boyfriend’s mind, this female friend constructs hostile situations to put you in, to bait you into getting upset.
The idea is to have you experience so much discomfort, you complain to your boyfriend about your dislike for her.
Your boyfriend hears you repeatedly saying stuff like that about a girl he has loved as his friend long before you came into the picture and gradually grows to detest you.
This puts a strain in your relationship which climaxes in a breakup you never desired.
Now, that female friend has achieved what she wanted.
As long as you are no longer in the picture, she is happy.
You lose.
Don’t let this happen.
Be kind to her.
There is truth to the phrase, “Kill them with kindness.”
Don’t get entangled in any of her verbal or nonverbal games.
She throws everything at you to disrupt you and you absorb it in stride, while focusing on what you are supposed to be focused on, building a healthy relationship with your boyfriend.
In treating her kindly, you don’t give your boyfriend a reason to detest you.
Inevitably, that female friend realizes that her efforts are having no effect on you and stops her shenanigans.
You win.
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This IS logical. However it is overlooking some variables. Time and energy, for starters. Do you really want to deal with this woman for however long it’s going to take for her to accept you? That’s assuming it ever truly happens. Is the boyfriend supporting you or protecting his “innocent” friend? If the guy rejected the girl at some point, he must know that she still wants to be with him…so why is she still around? Why are we dealing with this situation instead of the man? He should either marry her or keep her at a distance. Otherwise he will always have this issue in his serious relationships. Unless of course, a woman who is willing to follow this advice comes along. She will win…but at what cost? I would rather find a man who protects me. That’s a better prize and a lot less drama.
Hi Hanna,
You are right in that this female friend may never truly accept you. Hence, it would be more prudent not to invest your time trying to appease her.
That would only keep feeding the fire.
The boyfriend may feel like he has to both support you as his girlfriend as well as protect his “innocent” friend. He may feel a strong sense of guilt if he didn’t do both because he may value both relationships tremendously.
If he rejected the female friend at some point, there is indeed a good chance that he knows that she still wants to be with him. However, she may still be around because he values her friendship.
They may have been friends before feelings started to develop on her part.
It would be more difficult for him to get rid of a girl who started off being his friend than a girl who started off as a person who just happened to be attracted to him.
He may not want to marry her nor keep her at a distance.
If he truly wants her around as a friend, it would be difficult for him to do either one.
True, he may always have this issue in his serious relationships. Then again, over time, he may learn how to handle it better or his female friend may eventually accept the fact that she will never have him and move on.
I would hope that a woman who follows the advice wouldn’t look at this as something she has to win or lose at. That’s setting an expectation or some kind of target in mind.
This will only make her feel more competitive with the female friend which is the last thing she should be.
Her mindset should be one that focuses on her relationship with her boyfriend.
The less willing she is to get into any entanglements or competition with the female friend, the less likely she will experience drama or sustained drama.
No need to stoke the fire when she already has her prize.
Totally agree.
I only referred to the situation as win-lose because in the blog, you stated that if you get upset and it effects the relationship with the guy, she wins. In a way, you’re right.
In my personal non-situation, we are actually both friends of his…but I became sick 7 years ago and isolated myself from the world, while they became very close during that time. His looks have nothing to do with why I care about him. (I actually found him more attractive when we met than I do today.) I do value his friendship but given certain factors, it would be difficult to maintain at this point. We may have love for each other but nothing strong can be built on that if only one person wants to do the work. His actions have shown that he will continue to support his other friend over me, rather than support the both of us. Given this, it is not logical for him to expect me to be friends with the both of them, let alone try to build a relationship with him.
I really appreciate your timely response and the truth in what you said here. Thank you.
You are welcome Hanna.
Indeed, both parties have to be equally willing to work on the relationship for it to work.
Undoubtedly, that period when you became sick and isolated yourself from the world affected the closeness of your relationship with him.
Now that the other friend has gotten closer to him, he may not be willing to go back to how it was between you.
You seem to have accepted that and that’s a good thing.
I haven’t really accepted it.
The nature of my illness affords me limited emotional energy. I’ve worked extremely hard to get to where I am today, the point where the illness is not noticeable. I literally cannot afford to risk my stability by investing my mental resources on a negative situation that MAY change.
I need to make decisions based on the circumstances that exist right now. Right now, I need to invest in myself first.
Investing in yourself first is a great thing- there is always a return.
Thank you
Hi Hanna,
If you haven’t really accepted it, perhaps in time you will.
Your approach by investing in yourself first is a good idea.
Life is a continuous learning and challenging experience.
It always helps to keep growing as a person while making sure that you keep yourself in a positive environment and positive frame of mind.
I just want to start of saying that I really appreciate this thread! I really do – I am currently going through a difficult time with my ex-partner (we just recently separated his choice). His best friend is also his ex-girlfriend and their relationships didn’t last, he’s known her since he was a child and they have a lot of history, he has told me many times that she also was huge factor is helping him with is bi-polar condition and that he owes her a great deal in supporting him during a time in his life where he was very low. I completely understand that, and I am not the type of person to make people choose, because it’s unfair and everyone has a person in their life that means a lot to them, however when we first started dating – and she found out, she immediately didn’t like me, bear in mind she hasn’t even met me. He assumes she annoyed at the fact he was so quick to let me in life, I literally became so involved in his life from beginning and to her she found that he wasn’t thinking rationally and perhaps was unwell from his condition. That obviously hurts because he was well and I made him happy, however we were dating nearly 1 ½ years and she was constantly involved in our relationship, she always made it pretty clear that she knew him better than me, such as birthday presents, things he likes to do etc. I appreciated her help and I took the approach of being the girlfriend who doesn’t nag and certainly doesn’t make him choose, I am the new one and I don’t want to push him away, so my tactic was to let her make a fool of herself and majority time she did. But the way she would constantly call him, and get really upset when he was with me, is basically what you would expect a girlfriend to. It just made no sense to me at all, and her interaction with me was just absurd, I met her once and it didn’t go well, she was quite rude and just spoke to him the entire time, and he noticed it and he told me he told her off. But there were times in our relationship were she would call him when we were on holiday in Mexico and would be crying down the phone because they once spoke about going together when they dated many years ago, this went on for about 2 hours and he felt he had to be there for her, and yes it hurt because I was like “where do I stand in all of this?”. On a number of occasions I explained to him that I understand you are best friends with her, I am really good mates with my ex – however I hear from him once a month and that’s it. I have explained on many occasions without trying to upset him or push him away, but I know 110% he will always pick her because of loyalty. And I recently became very jealous of her, because he is no longer in my life and she has him all to herself, but the more I see it – I see that she is a comforter, just like a comfort blanket that children keep, and everyone will tell you that a comfort blanket isn’t a good thing, – it’s always there, it’s a bad habit and short term happiness fix. It also holds a routine you don’t move on from, so the more I see it in this way, I become less and less envious.
I tried the approach to not complain, build a relationship with her, understand why she may be stand offish, cold or whatever, but she’s just a controlling person who wants him to herself. Also he has been single for long time prior to dating me, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she played a part in that! And I have mentioned to him, that if she really cared and loved him, she would want you to be happy not trapped in some crappy triangle.
So conclusion is because she knows him very well, and his condition she really holds that against me – she has told me that the reason he cut me out of his life was because he doesn’t need drama or issues, and that I am the drama/issue. I will say however, this taught me a lot about him, he is aware of her behaviour and attitude towards me and in all honesty I believe he was loving the fact two girls were trying to get his attention. So even though he dumped me, and yes it hurts so badly – I am slowly seeing that he did me favour. Because they belong together, they can comfort each other for the remaining time of their lives, but I know he will never see her in a romantic way (he broke up with her, she become to comfortable – ironic hey).
One thing I will say is that if you are the person trapped between both people, really try and put yourself if the girlfriend/boyfriend shoes because it’s not easy, more so when the best friend/ex is a nasty piece of work and makes it pretty obvious. I know history and going through something traumatic is a huge factor in life when you share this event with one person, however you will also share many events in the future with that new loved one, such as marriage, children’s, traumatic life issues – so the past is great but the future is just as important. I will say don’t be an option B, because it sucks and it hurts and you always feel you don’t get them, because that option A will be around to make that pretty clear.
I am currently leaning I am priority and in time I will look back and laugh at this post! x