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Flirting, Jealousy, Friendship, Oh My!
ege02
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The Characters:
Mike: One of my closest buddies. Have known him for five years. He's a social, funny guy, but has no confidence whatsoever when it comes to girls. He develops platonic interest in them and doesn't do anything about it.
Jack: Another close buddy of mine. The opposite of Mike: good-looking, confident... what I would call a "natural" when it comes to girls.
Lisa: Girl that I met in my freshman year, and lost touch with. Cool girl. Recently she got back into my circle of friends and all of us started going clubbing together.
Ashley: Girl that I met through Mike. Used to be Mike's co-worker but not anymore. Hangs out with us regularly.
Backstory:
Our group consists of eight or so people and we hang out regularly, pretty much every week. On weekends we go bar-hopping or clubbing together.
Now, the thing is, I am quite a flirt. Meaning I flirt with girls a lot, and most of the time my motives are friendliness and fun, rather than "omg I must have sex with her".
I flirt with both Lisa and Ashley. And both of them flirt back.
Jack does too.
And this is totally fine, because me and Jack talk about it openly, we talk about who we are interested in, and we have our own "code" of communication so we don't cockblock each other and cause drama.
The problem is, because Mike isn't good when it comes to girls at all, he is left out of the loop.
When me, Mike, and Jack hangout (the three of us I mean), sometimes Mike tries to open the subject and he mildly hints at his discomfort that we are "hitting on his friends and making things awkward." Whereas there is nothing awkward about it; it's friendly flirting, everyone (except Mike it seems) is having fun and there is no mind games or people fucking each other behind the others' back sort of drama, like in reality TV or something. We're all friends. The only person making things awkward is Mike.
At first I was a fucking idiot and I honestly thought Mike was worried that our flirtings were going to lead to drama and shatter or group of friends. I actually respected him because he's the sort of guy who always looks after his friends and such and tries to prevent such stuff. He's a great guy. And then...
The Problem:
On Friday night I was hanging out with Jack at a bar. We were talking about random stuff. He says something along the lines of how my flirting with Lisa is making Mike jealous because apparently Mike has told Jack that he likes Lisa.
So I get home and immediately message Mike on Facebook (it was late). I said, "hey dude, we should talk sometime." Because when a problem like this pops up I know how quickly it can become serious and I want to solve it before it happens. He says "sure. i get done with my final at 1030 gimme a call"
So anyway I was busy the rest of the day so I didn't see Mike until later that night when we got together with our group for our weekly clubbing session.
Throughout the night I was my regular self, dancing with Ashley every now and then (Lisa wasn't with us), flirting with her etc. but again, it's all friendly (and she knows). So we're all having fun and such, except I'm feeling this tension between me and Mike. And I know precisely the cause of that tension, but at that point I didn't think much about it. Then on the way back we (5 of us) were walking home (kind of a long walk), and me and Ashley were ten or fifteen paces behind the group talking among ourselves, and Mike was playing emo kid at the very front, glancing at us every now and then and stuff. Ashley didn't have a jacket with her so I gave her mine, and I think it killed Mike a little inside (I didn't notice this then, but now that I think about his behavior in retrospect, I get it).
So ten minutes ago Mike gave me a call, and got right on it. He said:
a) He doesn't like it when I flirt with Lisa and Ashley because he "kinda has a thing for both of them but he's going for Ashley". By "going for Ashley" of course Mike means he won't ask her out and instead wait, hoping things will somehow magically play themselves out like in movies.
b) He said there might be a tension between me and him as long as I hit on them, because he doesn't want me to fuck with them (I didn't quite get the connotation there, whether he meant fucking literally, or as in "mind fucking" because I'm flirting but only in a friendly way).
c) I assured him that I am interested in neither Lisa nor Ashley in a romantic way. He sounded satisfied but who knows.
The thing is, I know precisely how Mike feels because I used to be just like him up until a few years ago. I would develop romantic interest in girls and I would wait and wait and then get devastated with jealousy when another guy came and took them away.
And so I know precisely what he is doing here: he's feeling extremely jealous and is trying to cockblock me by making me feel guilty.
Even though I appreciate his honesty and straight-forwardness, what he said to me angers me greatly. He is basically telling me to back off because he is interested in both of them, and he is asking me to be someone I am not by ceasing my flirtations. What I think: Just because he is too much of a wuss to ask either one out (or even make it obvious that he likes them, for fuck's sake. I am 100% sure both Lisa and Ashley see him as friends and nothing more) does not give him the right to dictate how I should act.
But, I like Mike. I respect him. He's a great guy, one of my best friends, and if it wasn't for him I probably wouldn't be where I am in life right now.
So I need a way to defuse this situation. As I told him I will not change my behavior towards either of the girls, unless Mike decides to finally grow some balls and make a move towards one.
The question is, until then, what do I do?
tldr; my friendly flirtations with two of my female friends makes one of my friends jealous because he is interested in both of them, and he told me this openly over phone.
Mike: One of my closest buddies. Have known him for five years. He's a social, funny guy, but has no confidence whatsoever when it comes to girls. He develops platonic interest in them and doesn't do anything about it.
Jack: Another close buddy of mine. The opposite of Mike: good-looking, confident... what I would call a "natural" when it comes to girls.
Lisa: Girl that I met in my freshman year, and lost touch with. Cool girl. Recently she got back into my circle of friends and all of us started going clubbing together.
Ashley: Girl that I met through Mike. Used to be Mike's co-worker but not anymore. Hangs out with us regularly.
Backstory:
Our group consists of eight or so people and we hang out regularly, pretty much every week. On weekends we go bar-hopping or clubbing together.
Now, the thing is, I am quite a flirt. Meaning I flirt with girls a lot, and most of the time my motives are friendliness and fun, rather than "omg I must have sex with her".
I flirt with both Lisa and Ashley. And both of them flirt back.
Jack does too.
And this is totally fine, because me and Jack talk about it openly, we talk about who we are interested in, and we have our own "code" of communication so we don't cockblock each other and cause drama.
The problem is, because Mike isn't good when it comes to girls at all, he is left out of the loop.
When me, Mike, and Jack hangout (the three of us I mean), sometimes Mike tries to open the subject and he mildly hints at his discomfort that we are "hitting on his friends and making things awkward." Whereas there is nothing awkward about it; it's friendly flirting, everyone (except Mike it seems) is having fun and there is no mind games or people fucking each other behind the others' back sort of drama, like in reality TV or something. We're all friends. The only person making things awkward is Mike.
At first I was a fucking idiot and I honestly thought Mike was worried that our flirtings were going to lead to drama and shatter or group of friends. I actually respected him because he's the sort of guy who always looks after his friends and such and tries to prevent such stuff. He's a great guy. And then...
The Problem:
On Friday night I was hanging out with Jack at a bar. We were talking about random stuff. He says something along the lines of how my flirting with Lisa is making Mike jealous because apparently Mike has told Jack that he likes Lisa.
So I get home and immediately message Mike on Facebook (it was late). I said, "hey dude, we should talk sometime." Because when a problem like this pops up I know how quickly it can become serious and I want to solve it before it happens. He says "sure. i get done with my final at 1030 gimme a call"
So anyway I was busy the rest of the day so I didn't see Mike until later that night when we got together with our group for our weekly clubbing session.
Throughout the night I was my regular self, dancing with Ashley every now and then (Lisa wasn't with us), flirting with her etc. but again, it's all friendly (and she knows). So we're all having fun and such, except I'm feeling this tension between me and Mike. And I know precisely the cause of that tension, but at that point I didn't think much about it. Then on the way back we (5 of us) were walking home (kind of a long walk), and me and Ashley were ten or fifteen paces behind the group talking among ourselves, and Mike was playing emo kid at the very front, glancing at us every now and then and stuff. Ashley didn't have a jacket with her so I gave her mine, and I think it killed Mike a little inside (I didn't notice this then, but now that I think about his behavior in retrospect, I get it).
So ten minutes ago Mike gave me a call, and got right on it. He said:
a) He doesn't like it when I flirt with Lisa and Ashley because he "kinda has a thing for both of them but he's going for Ashley". By "going for Ashley" of course Mike means he won't ask her out and instead wait, hoping things will somehow magically play themselves out like in movies.
b) He said there might be a tension between me and him as long as I hit on them, because he doesn't want me to fuck with them (I didn't quite get the connotation there, whether he meant fucking literally, or as in "mind fucking" because I'm flirting but only in a friendly way).
c) I assured him that I am interested in neither Lisa nor Ashley in a romantic way. He sounded satisfied but who knows.
The thing is, I know precisely how Mike feels because I used to be just like him up until a few years ago. I would develop romantic interest in girls and I would wait and wait and then get devastated with jealousy when another guy came and took them away.
And so I know precisely what he is doing here: he's feeling extremely jealous and is trying to cockblock me by making me feel guilty.
Even though I appreciate his honesty and straight-forwardness, what he said to me angers me greatly. He is basically telling me to back off because he is interested in both of them, and he is asking me to be someone I am not by ceasing my flirtations. What I think: Just because he is too much of a wuss to ask either one out (or even make it obvious that he likes them, for fuck's sake. I am 100% sure both Lisa and Ashley see him as friends and nothing more) does not give him the right to dictate how I should act.
But, I like Mike. I respect him. He's a great guy, one of my best friends, and if it wasn't for him I probably wouldn't be where I am in life right now.
So I need a way to defuse this situation. As I told him I will not change my behavior towards either of the girls, unless Mike decides to finally grow some balls and make a move towards one.
The question is, until then, what do I do?
tldr; my friendly flirtations with two of my female friends makes one of my friends jealous because he is interested in both of them, and he told me this openly over phone.
ege02 on
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No, he's asking you to back off from a girl he's attracted to. Just back off. This isn't rocket science.
His being your friend gives him the right to ask you to act in a way that doesn't make him uncomfortable. That's what friends do. Basically, what you're saying here is, "I don't give a fuck what my friends think of my behavior."
Make the sacrifice by ceasing your flirting behavior, but make sure he knows that you're deliberately doing it so he'll go in and make a move. Play it cool for a few weeks, and if in a month he hasn't actually made his move, just say, "Look, man, I gave you plenty of time. I'm not going to wait forever, and neither will Ashley. You've got to shit or get off the pot someday."
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
You are not in the wrong here, he is.
No, he is asking me to stop hitting on both of them, not just one.
My friendly flirting does in no way block his moves, precisely because the girls know I am not trying to fuck them.
He is being selfish, and that's not what friends do. He is asking me to stop because he's too much of a wuss to make a move (and I have said this to his face on various occasions when I was trying to hook him up with his past romantic interests). He is basically seeking blame for his own shortcomings in me.
I guess this makes sense. I can give him some time.
Tell him that you guys all have fun together and that if he wants to date someone, anyone, he needs to ask the person he wants to date (not you). Ask him what "waiting" is going to accomplish, and then tell him that if he waits 2 weeks, he'll see what happens (nothing! nothing changes if he waits!).
Apparently after the group dropped me off at my place last night, Mike asked Ashley out, and he got blown off, and then complained about it the rest of the night.
I don't know the details of how he got blown off, but he may be blaming me.
Maybe try to help him get with Lisa, just to really know that you are on his team.(I'm sure you've tried to help him with girls before though)
Good luck
hope your pal grows a pair
I have tried to hook him up with his romantic interests in the past.
The difference was that back then, he came up to me and asked for my help.
Right now, he's telling me to back off.
If he came up to me and said something like, "hey dude, you're on good terms with Ashley/Lisa, and I sort of like her. Can you pave the way for me?" I would have gladly helped. His selfish, confrontational attitude however basically eliminated that possibility.
That way, he gets over his lack of confidence (since all that ever is is the fear of failure, and once you have either succeeded or failed it goes away) and everything is swiftly sorted out one way or another. People who are worried about such things just need to be pushed into it a few times, whether they fall down or not, they'll soon learn that its no disaster to fall.
However, if he has already asked her out then the only reason he can have for being angry with you is if this is how the conversation happened...
"Oh, girl X whose name eludes me right now, I love you so. Let us go on a date!"
"If only I could noble Mike, for until last week I loved you dearly and were simply hoping for you to ask me out!"
"Then what is the problem girl X?"
"The bold flirtations of ege02 at our last clubbing session proved too manful for me to resist and now I desire only him! If only he had stopped his flirting 1 day earlier then I would go out with you!"
If thats the way it went down, then he gets to be upset with you. Otherwise you can happily maintain the moral high ground.
Without pressure and fear of embarrassment from you he may never overcome his perverse desire to be nice to women and care about their feelings
Beautiful.
I feel like I need to have a face-to-face talk with him first though.
You should point out that while he's your friend, the 2 girls are your friends too. And point out that you wouldn't ask HIM out, because you're not into him like that, and you wouldn't ask them out because you're not into them like that either. It should at least make him laugh, and help point out that she just wasn't into him like that.
I'm no pyschologist, but from experience I would speculate that it's precisely because he's a Nice Guy that he thinks this way. He's afraid to make overt advances towards a girl, and thinks he can make it happen with nothing but little subtleties, hoping to get them to like him enough to close the gap. It can work, but the odds of success are low and it sounds like it already failed with Ashley. He probably feels like your flirtations are completely overshadowing his advances and making him look bad in comparison. Nice Guys feel inadequate in the presence of really outgoing people and thus grow to resent them. It's a self-destructive cycle and he really needs to break out of it as soon as possible.
If he's really your friend then you should help him get over this rather than just doing as he asks or blowing him off. He needs to realize that even if you stop flirting with them, plenty of other guys won't and it's not going to help him overcome his insecurities. If things keep up like they are there's a good chance he'll fall out of your circle of friends.
His previous title did as well. Ege you are good looking so in this case its a strike against you because he feels threatened. Not only are you good looking but you're naturally flirtatious (this is not a bad thing) so you're really rubbing him the wrong way but that's his fucking problem. Tell him if he likes either of them he needs to shit or get off the pot. Don't change yourself because some wallflower is scared. Friend or not he's acting a fool.
Shogun Streams Vidya
Hell, I've been this guy before.
He'll never make a move, and he knows goddamn well nothing is happening between you and the girls, but is jealous because his relationship with them doesn't allow the same sort of friendly flirting and contact as yours does. It sucks, but it's his problem, not yours.
Although, you might want to try and help him realize this, I don't think it's fair of him to ask you to essentially alter the way your friendship with the girls works because his relationship with them is less than he wishes it was.
You probably know this site but you should tell your friend to read it and go between being who he is now and about a mile and a half before the line that this guys at. ('cos this guys a cock but he has confidence like a motherfucker)
I fucking hate people like that. They try to cockblock you via emotional blackmail. That's worse than being physically cockblocked, because it's pretty sinister.
Honestly, I would have told Mike to shove it. I don't know your relationship with him but I don't go for that kind of shit. I would have told him to shove it the first time he brought the subject up when it was just the three of you guys.
Yeah I read TM regularly, but that stuff will go right over Mike's head.
I mean, Mike is too much of a nice guy, and he's basically a "I’m not going to be an asshole, but I am going to complain about women loving assholes" kind of guy, like explained in the link Cat gave.
I gave him a copy of Neil Strauss' The Game to read, in the hopes that he would maybe learn something*, but he couldn't get past page 10. He's too close-minded, too noble, too much of a nice guy to realize that one does not have to become an asshole to be successful in dating. I doubt he even has the self-honesty necessary to realize he needs to change.
I am completely fine with calling dibs on girls. Me and Jack to it all the time, as I explained, and it works because we operate on a tacit "code" of wingmen.
Like you said, it is a problem because Mike not only called dibs on both, he also emotionally blackmailed me... AND on top of this he's too moody about the whole thing to either do anything about it, or be successful if he did.
Just want to reiterate how awesome that link was. Frankly, that link headed up with some sort of explaination that you're not actually out to cock-block him and that "this link will probably be helpful to you, it's from a feminist blog" may take care of the whole thing. Pointing out that it's from a feminist blog is key.
That's the other thing that pisses me off. I'm no "alpha male player" or anything, but I know too many guys that cockblock for the hell of it.
Here's my rule: don't cockblock unless you have the wherewithal and inclination to actually try and do something. But actually fucking try. If you try, I won't care. If you try and fail, fine, at least you gave it a shot.
But if your cockblock becomes a roadblock, then fuck you, buddy, you are immediately and permanently written off.
I hate people that will wedge themselves between you and a girl that you are eying or chatting up and will then spend the whole night chattering about old girlfriends or whatever the fuck nonsense they think makes for good conversation just to deprive you of an opportunity.
Anyway, back on topic, calling dibs is okay within reason. But Mike isn't acting within the bounds of reason. I may be an asshole in this, but I think he's being an asshole and has this self-righteous perception that really pisses me off, so I'd flirt with them at every opportunity and rub it in his damn face.
Maybe you'd be doing him a favor, giving him an opportunity to step up to the plate instead of pandering to his babyish nonsense.
Huh, maybe my reading comp. went out the window, but it sounds like you think I'm blaming ege when I'm fully blaming Mike. I know people like Mike, at least how ege describes Mike, and I said people really disgust me.
Then again, I think emotional blackmail is one of the very worst things you can perpetrate against another person. There are levels of severity, sure, but I think mental abuse (which is what emotional blackmail amounts to), is worse than almost any level of non-sexual physical abuse (sexual abuse is both physical and mental, and that's an irrelevant tangent, but I just wanted to qualify my comment before someone comes in and says "lookee here, Drez is saying cockblocking is worse than rape!")
The end result of Mike's attitude and actions are that Ege's mental state is impinged on and utility in the group is ultimately decreases. Mike is doing it to himself, yes, but he's also affecting (or trying to affect) the utility and mental process of others in the circle of friends.
I really fucking hate people like Mike.
I'd say tell the guy that you mean nothing by it and try to explain to him the basics of what your (and normal) social interactions are like.
I'm actually completely against Mike on this, people who play his role always distance themselves from social interaction but then try to get you or the people you enjoy being around outcast as a result of them trying to gain what they want.
You could say that you should be his friend and back off, but fuck that noise, he shouldn't force you to change the way you act around the girls just because he likes them if you've assured him that you want nothing to happen between you and the girl.
Those girls are your friends aswell. Why can't he go for the girls whilst you're still flirting/laughing around with them?
Although, I can't really be definite on that because in effect you may be sending off negative signals towards mike in the way you are flirting with the girls, without you even noticing it.
I'd say now that thegirl rejected him try to just make it water under the bridge and go on.
Tucker Max is a douchebag. More importantly, I don't think it's productive to try to learn from someone who is at the complete opposite end of the spectrum from yourself. The Cat's link is much more useful.
I don't understand where you got the impression that Mike is a manipulative bastard who is trying to control his friends for his own benefit. He sounds more to me like a nice guy that just doesn't know what the hell he's doing with girls, clearly has a different(less realistic) perception of girl-related social interactions than ege, and is letting his insecurities get the better of him. I don't think he understands that what he's asking isn't reasonable. I also think that ege is overreacting and that you're reading the situation to be worse than it is based on that.
All I can do is respond given the information ege has presented.
Given the information, Mike is being manipulative. Consciously? Subconsciously? I don't know and frankly I don't care.
Nice guy? Absurd. It is patently un-nice to:
1) Call your friends up and try to make them feel guilty about flirting with girls you are not romantically linked to. This is manipulative. This is emotional blackmail.
2) Decrease or deplete the utility of your group of friends because you don't like the way reality is bending.
Perhaps you disagree that these items do not make Mike a bad person, but hopefully you can understand where my perspective and interpretation is coming from given the facts at hand. The fact is, Mike told ege and ege's other friend that it bothers him that they flirt with the two girls.
That action, to me, is manipulative, negative, selfish, and obnoxious.
Actually there is more to the story in regards to that book.
Basically, not only did Mike not read past the second chapter, he also started judging me by the shallow, partial messages he got from the few parts he read.
Because he saw the book as "a bunch of guys womanizing", which is of course against the Nice Guy Code of Honor or some shit, he started seeing my interactions with the opposite sex in that light.
The entire fucking irony of the situation is that because he did not finish the book, he did not get what it was about: that the best way, the only way, to be truly successful with the opposite sex in any meaningful way is not by using pick-up techniques or routines or openers, but to be your best self and to have confidence in that self.
Mike is, overall, a great guy. He's smart. He's social. He puts his friends' needs before his. But he's also a judgmental prick (I have said this to his face very often). And he is judging me, wrongly at that, and because I can't for the life of me convince him to finish the book and see it in the same light I see it (and the author meant it to be seen), I cannot change my perception in his eyes.
And you're ony allowed to do this in situations of both physical and romantic attraction to the girl, which definately vetoes you from having 2 girls in this situation at once!
Im still intrigued to find out why Mike was angry at ege02. This whole situation sounds like the set up for a terrible romantic comedy.
apparently my brother's friend liked this girl before dating his current gf but she was either busy working in the summer never around etc. now he is beefing with my bro about it even though he has been dating this older girl for a year now and obviously wasn't going to drop her for this old flame.
i thought it was unreasonable as you don't have a right to call dibs when you're already in a relationship. growing up my best friend's girlfriend broke up with him and a year and a half later we were dating and he was cool with it. if you never made a move and aren't going to but 'still like' the person i saw that as a ruthless cockblock not to mention being excessively possessive with women...