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Awkward third wheel situation
Oboro
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Going to massively paraphrase here-- unrequited love of some time, we'll call her Mary Jane. She liked me, but then I moved into the best friend as I transitioned from male to female, at which point she stopped liking me because she is not a lesbian and could no longer fathom a relationship with me.
So, when I finally realize how deeply I cared for her, she was no longer in the market to reciprocate. Regardless!, we remain best friends, and I walk her through a lot of hard times and rough boyfriends. She never went to college after high school-- she was way too depressed.
After a lot of prodding, I managed to get her interested in going to college across the country in California; we're in New Jersey currently. We're putting together the plans, she's getting distant and secretive, and then she flat-out disappears for about a week and a half.
Turns out, she hooked up with some guy in Illinois she met over the Internet. Tossed with him too, and they're committed to some sort of enduring relationship.
Mary Jane, after coming clean to me on what was up with who we'll call Peter, said that Peter also has expressed interest in going to California.
So, we come to the crux of it--
Mary Jane and I planned to go to California for the coming fall semester; heck, we were going to go there in the summer so we could get better-situated and get some work experience on the west coast. We have an apartment lined up and everything!
Now, Mary Jane is asking me for help to get her and Peter through the rigamarole of the move. Mary Jane and I are still great friends!, but I'm still very emotionally enamored and also attracted to her. 'Breaking the habit' has been a bit hard, I guess.
I don't have anything else to commit myself to. I'm headed out to California, but now they're headed to California too as a unit.
If the three of us lived together, I'm sure something will go wrong. I, of course, am up for it! But that seems sensible. Mary Jane is still being very secretive, but it's crunch time for applications and dropping deposits and putting up resumes, and I'm not sure on the etiquette.
She said that Peter and her were in the market for another roommate, but given that she knew I was in that market also but avoided asking me if I wanted to...
I assume I would be stepping on toes. Am I reading into this too much? What's the dang etiquette here? I don't have any other friends in California; especially not a best friend. The timing of this all is just rather poor; I'm sure, given time, the three of us could iron out our feelings and she'd be more comfortable writing me into their plans.
But they are rushing things, and I'd feel guilty intentionally slowing their plans so that-- on the side-- I could work myself back into them. Just the same, I feel backstabbed and abandoned for how she's taken a dream we shared, a plan we came up with, and just plugged some guy's name in instead of mine.
Stepping on toes seems bad. I don't have a lot of real-life friends right now. I don't want to overstep a boundary and have her cut ties while we put the bridge back together via mutual silence and time apart. Anyone have ideas on what the third wheel's to do in this situation?
So, when I finally realize how deeply I cared for her, she was no longer in the market to reciprocate. Regardless!, we remain best friends, and I walk her through a lot of hard times and rough boyfriends. She never went to college after high school-- she was way too depressed.
After a lot of prodding, I managed to get her interested in going to college across the country in California; we're in New Jersey currently. We're putting together the plans, she's getting distant and secretive, and then she flat-out disappears for about a week and a half.
Turns out, she hooked up with some guy in Illinois she met over the Internet. Tossed with him too, and they're committed to some sort of enduring relationship.
Mary Jane, after coming clean to me on what was up with who we'll call Peter, said that Peter also has expressed interest in going to California.
So, we come to the crux of it--
Mary Jane and I planned to go to California for the coming fall semester; heck, we were going to go there in the summer so we could get better-situated and get some work experience on the west coast. We have an apartment lined up and everything!
Now, Mary Jane is asking me for help to get her and Peter through the rigamarole of the move. Mary Jane and I are still great friends!, but I'm still very emotionally enamored and also attracted to her. 'Breaking the habit' has been a bit hard, I guess.
I don't have anything else to commit myself to. I'm headed out to California, but now they're headed to California too as a unit.
If the three of us lived together, I'm sure something will go wrong. I, of course, am up for it! But that seems sensible. Mary Jane is still being very secretive, but it's crunch time for applications and dropping deposits and putting up resumes, and I'm not sure on the etiquette.
She said that Peter and her were in the market for another roommate, but given that she knew I was in that market also but avoided asking me if I wanted to...
I assume I would be stepping on toes. Am I reading into this too much? What's the dang etiquette here? I don't have any other friends in California; especially not a best friend. The timing of this all is just rather poor; I'm sure, given time, the three of us could iron out our feelings and she'd be more comfortable writing me into their plans.
But they are rushing things, and I'd feel guilty intentionally slowing their plans so that-- on the side-- I could work myself back into them. Just the same, I feel backstabbed and abandoned for how she's taken a dream we shared, a plan we came up with, and just plugged some guy's name in instead of mine.
Stepping on toes seems bad. I don't have a lot of real-life friends right now. I don't want to overstep a boundary and have her cut ties while we put the bridge back together via mutual silence and time apart. Anyone have ideas on what the third wheel's to do in this situation?
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Oboro on
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If you have a good reason of your own, then go by all means -- the fact that they're going too shouldn't be any sort of impediment to you. If you're just going to go to California in the hope that you and your friend can hang out (in whatever capacity -- platonic or otherwise) you should prepare yourself for possible disappointment.
I'm not sure that there's a written etiquette. Do what makes you happy, but not at the expense of your friend's happiness. I guess that's as close to formal as I can get.
Good luck making up your mind.
The thing that's making me really upset, above and beyond the romantic entaglement that's spun out, is that I really dread going there alone. I don't have a family that I can even just pick up the phone and talk to casually about my life; I'm excommunicated from most all contact, and I've been living on my own for some time now. Outside of Mary Jane, I've got one other go-to friend and he's just a long-distance guy in Tennessee. Everyone else? Once I stopped taking classes with them, they stopped putting any energy into maintaining contact over a distance-- and those friendships dried up.
I don't have a lot of friends, then. It's hard to make new, enduring friends, too!-- not just because I can be a tough person to be a friend to, but because I'm hard on myself and that makes it tough to find new friends. I know that a lot of this is my own fault, but... I'm working on it, ya know?
Heading out across the nation by my lonesome is an option, yeah-- but when I think of me doing that, I just sort of picture myself ending up crashing on their couch within a few weeks after I've gotten myself into any number of bad situations. It'd be a much smoother transition if I waited until the autumn and was just able to settle right into a dorm, but my current status on the east coast is that of a drifter, and I don't like that.
She's going to head out there with him, and their random roomie, and I'm going to be caught crashing on couches for another couple of long, smelly months on the eastern seaboard. It's just not a desirable place to be.
You've been forced to be a drifter, due to your lifestyle. That's sad, really, but it doesn't have to be tragic. You're the only one who can change your situation, when it comes down to it, and it looks like you're going to be doing it w/o Mary Jane. But it's like someone waking up in the morning and saying "Well shit, I guess I've got what I've got and I better make the most of it." If you have the funds and the gumption to move, do it. You say you're stuck where you are, and you don't have a support network no matter where you live. Use that to your advantage rather than dwell. A lot of people stay stuck in poor situations due to some family ties and an inability to move away. You don't have to be stuck anywhere. So be optimistic about it.
is there a good site for meeting people who are seeking roommates? I won't have anywhere to crash in an interim, so I'm going to have to shake some roomies and a room out of a tree before I fly the several thousand miles. :P
Depending on how much money you have or can scare up, and what town you're planning on moving to, you might be able to find a couch-crashing situation on CL.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
They're moving across country and starting college. If they didn't find new people and grow apart I'd be worried about them.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I'll check CL tomorrow, once I get back to somewhere with Internet-- have to swap couches again in the afternoon! Better to be prepared, I guess.
My ability to do this will probably be dependent almost entirely on how well I gel with whatever potential roomies I can find. Making the move with zero encouraging support puts a shake even in my scrapper's knees. If I don't find anyone I'm comfortable taking the hand of for the leap of faith, I'm probably going to just try and find a better solution than drifting on the east coast-- undesirable as that is, but that's another conversation entirely.
I don't understand why your friend is...well...screwing you over as bad as she seems to be. Have you tried talking to her about this? It seems to me that you and your friend really need to have a talk about things, especially about the fact that she is changing all these plans that you two made together.
Does she hold that fact that your gender-swap has ruined (in her mind) your chances of a romantic relationship against you? There is something else going on behind the scenes imo.
Also, I don't know if this is a bit too personal or not, but are you pre or post op? It may very well be an issue with her. It is just weird that she would just up and seemingly brush off your friendship like this.
Good luck. :^:
I'm pre-op, still; I committed myself to this a bit early, and the plans were not so good, but... oh well. What I've suspected-- or wished, at least, seeing as how I am a hopeless optimist-- is that she pushed herself away the first time because she could not justify her feelings for me with 'the new me' that emerged in those first few weeks presenting as a girl.
I don't blame her! It was a wild period in my life, and I was overcompensating. But things levelled out, you know? It's just never been the same between us. Whenever I ask her a question about us as a unit in any sense-- even just one being cold to the other, or whatever-- she shuts up. Whenever the conversation turns to me, she shuts up. She'll talk about herself, still! She's very open with that. But where she tended to be very open with me, and not just to me, she's no longer even saying "I don't want to talk about that."
She's coming back from Illinois today, and I'm also leaving for New Jersey in a few hours. I have to leave New Jersey in a few days, so I'll try and arrange some sort of rendezvous before then-- I don't want to pressure her too hard, but I know that I'm not going to be able to apply enough pressure if we're not talking in-person. I feel sort of bad knowing that I may just be egging her into an outburst, but at the very least,
I want closure.
You are looking at this from a relationship and social perspective, but it's not cheap to live in Cali, not cheap at all and if you are just scraping by to show up there, you won't do well to live there long term. You are in a tough situation, is there anyone besides your friend that you can rely on for a period of time to sort yourself out? Get a good cash back up and a solid place to live/work in cali then move there.
Your friend seems kind of flakey, I roomed with someone similar and when the going got tough, my friend bailed and left me with the check, watch yourself or she'll do the same to you.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I was run out of my previous university on rails by some kids with baseball bats; it's not that simple a story of course, but I don't want to get into the details. I have a few options aside from Cali--
1) NYU. My academic record, however, is fairly poor due to the absolute shitstorm that developed in my life when I came out with my lifestyle to my parents and had their boot introduced to my ass. I got a 2100/2400~ SAT score, a 2.7GPA, and I ranked in the bottom 1% of my class-- third from the bottom, actually. Add to that the fact that I have zero friends here, and just the hope I can easily make a ton and that its being the #1 rated trans-friendly school in the nation will help.
(It was a magnet high school, so the standards were sort of ridiculous. I'm one of a handful who did not immediately go to NYU, an Ivy, or a premier conservatory.)
2) Massachusetts. Smith has expressed some interest in hearing me out, and New England in general has a more accepting clime than I found in NJ. I have a handful of friends scattered around this state, but not really good friends.
3) Californ-aye-ey. Expensive!, I guess. That and the 'alone' thing.
The only formal job training I have I got while working at a small newspaper publisher in Jersey. I built a Yellow Pages-esque database and front end for them, maintained their website and did formatting/web design for it, I learned Quark and the payroll software that -- according to them -- is fairly ubiquitous, as well as the billing software, I learned AP style copy edit and WYSIWIGing for publication, and
basically, everything that a newspaper outfit does save the actual reporting, I have formal and documented training in. Add to that experience doing general assisting and secretarial duties, and I hope I can find myself some seasonal/temp work at the very least in the publishing industry. If not, I have my A+ certification and a great referral for programming/comp. sci work, but that market I am sure is overdrawn at the moment-- especially for someone with no actual work experience.
Either way, good luck to you. I hope things work out well.
The concern is just a vain one, as I'd like to get there sooner rather than later as drifting across the eastern seaboard is wildly undesirable and, just the same, I'd rather not settle down here for the next five months if I don't have to. But if that proves unreasonable, of course, I will go with what the situation dictates.
Idea #2: Call up the university and ask what sort of early housing options they have
Idea #3: Call up the university and ask to speak with someone from the GBLT organization (I'm assuming they have one) and ask the same sort of question. They might have rooming options with other GBLT friendly folks.
Idea #4: Call up the university and ask to speak to a counselor - same subject as above.
Idea #5: Research out other GBLT organizations within the city, call them up and discuss.
Idea #6: Stay where you are until University starts and then move to the dorm. You're drifting, but you're somewhat stable at the moment - so it might be an idea to just continue, and save up the cashiola. You've got to be in super save mode for the next zillion years anyway in order to pay for your operation costs.
Contacting the LGBTQ coalition at the school you are interested in is a really good idea. A lot of cities have half-way houses for kids who have been disowned/kicked out by their close-minded parents... the coalition could put you in touch with a lot of great resources. Yeah, it sucks that you have to do everything yourself, but you're going to be that much stronger for it.
Strength is relevant only to 1) helping yourself out more in these situations, which is not really a benefit in my eyes because I firmly believe necessity will always lead to success (for me at least), and 2) helping others in this position.
2) is good and all, but I just really dislike that train of thought that it is somehow a tangible benefit that I can take any amount of solace in. I mean, on the surface, this seems like a chicken pox thing-- yeah, I wouldn't mind being told at the end of that, "Well, heh, at least your immune response is strong enough now that you won't get it again."
It's subtly different, in that "Well, you're strong enough to soldier through shit again when it likely happens."
I guess it's my own problem though, in that I take my own strength for granted. Either way, I'm getting off-topic. This is H/A, not D&D!
Mary Jane gets off her plane sometime soon, and she'll probably pop online 'cause she's that sort of gal. I'll talk about maybe grabbing lunch some day this week to see if I can eke out her honest take on the rooming situation. Meanwhiles, I'll crunch these numbers off the Internet and make the calls in daylight hours tomorrow.
Thanks, all.