Her: I understand congrats are in order and are long overdue … I guess you never really know a person …
Him: What?
Her: What do you think?
Him: It wasn’t – and it’s still not that simple.
Her: Are you married? It’s as simple as yes or no.
Him: Yes.
Her: See … That was simple.
Him: I was going to tell you myself. How did you find out?
Her: A friend of a friend of your wife … just by chance.
Him: _______.
She is still waiting for another text response. Chances are she won’t get one.
In the meantime, my phone was on fire with one of those “Girl … you won’t believe …” conversations that was somehow different than the others.
The difference is she was under the impression that this was the one relationship she had handled in the right way.
They were friends. He made sexual advances. She finally caved in. But in a move that had her patting herself on the back and tooting an “empowered black woman sticking to standards for herself and expectations in a relationship” horn for weeks, she told him that she would not be boxed into a superficial and purely sexual relationship.
“The intimate connection was amazing,” she said. “So I asked him, ‘Are you ready to be responsible for my emotions?’ and he said that he wasn’t. So we made the mutual decision that ours would not be a ‘jump off’ situation,’ and we would just put the ‘amazing incident’ behind us and remain friends.”
Some of you are reading this and thinking, “What’s the big deal with him getting married if they were/are just friends?”
His whole point regarding the inability to pursue and commit to a full-fledged romantic relationship was that he didn’t have time or energy to do so because of personal goals and career aspirations.
“I think his exact words were ‘I really value your friendship; I don’t want to jeopardize it,’” she said. “I appreciated that.”
But every time they would hang or meet up face to face, he would try to get some. He would talk about how wonderful the experience is and verge on annoying with his attempt to “wrangle” smooth operator moves when they would be alone.
She just charged it to the game of him being a man with needs and no time to invest in the flipside of a relationship.
But in a casual “conversation with her cousin’s co-worker’s sister” (a mouthful, I know) – who is now his sister-in-law – she learned that the man who had been trying to get back in the bed for a tussle down memory lane as recent as three weeks ago had been married since April.
“His whole thing about us not really going down that relationship road was because he didn’t want to ‘jeopardize our friendship,’” she said. “But if you’re truly friends, wouldn’t you tell your friend that you’re getting married? As a matter of fact, your friend would be one of the first people that you tell.”
I think the issue that worries her is not that he tried to get her goodies when he was committed to someone else, or that he didn’t marry her. She is perplexed by the notion that this man met his wife after he met her. Her intrigue lies in this man’s decision to corner her into the “friends with benefits” zone, versus trying to wife her up.
According to him, she was everything he wanted – but the timing was all off.
At what time did he decide that this other woman was the one? And why didn’t he deem my friend worthy of such distinction?
And most importantly, if you’ve met the woman you want to marry and are actively taking steps to make her your wife – why is it that before, during and after the process, you still feel the need for an attempted sideline situation?
She shouldn’t want to be married to someone like that in the first place – she couldn’t agree more. It’s the principle of his decision to pass her over for a promotion in their relationship and outsource to find a wife that has her in a state of unrest now.
It’s one thing to decide who’s the sideline and who’s out front. But how do you automatically have someone designated for the JV when you haven’t even selected a starter?
“He let me know that he wasn’t available,” she said. “So I guess he’s only a partial a-hole liar.”