You Need Help: Am I Her Best Friend or Am I Being Emotionally Manipulated?

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Q:

This is definitely a chaotic situation. I met a girl on a night out about 8 months ago, and we hooked up after some strong suggestion on her part. I am usually not a hookup person because I catch feels easily. After a few weeks of her saying first “let’s do it again” and later “she wasn’t ready for a serious relationship,” we settled into a friend pattern. We see each other all the time, both in groups and individually, as she’s started hanging out with people I know. Somewhere along the way, I caught heavy feels, but I also am trying to respect that she’s not in a place to seriously date, per that conversation we’ve had. I’ve tried to put up some solid boundaries in my behavior and expectations, but… We frequently spend all day and non-sexually all night together (the number of times I’ve ubered home when the sun is coming up…). She says that I am the person she trusts the most. A couple weeks ago, we hooked up again, which she initiated. She said some deeply wonderful things about a life with me, but then a few days later said again that she couldn’t do a serious relationship right now, and that she was scared of losing her best friend. About a week later, she started dating someone else (not particularly casually). I feel hurt, but am also cognizant of her telling me multiple times that she wasn’t ready for a relationship. We still also spend about 400% more time together than she does with her girlfriend. My friends are livid with her and insist I’m being manipulated and gaslighted. I’m confused and hurt and stuck. I know the answer is going to be me setting boundaries, and also I feel like I’m also at risk of losing a deep connection. Help?

A:

A chaotic situation indeed! But one I can also assure you is both common and, while challenging, ultimately manageable — even if it ends with you technically giving up some things that feel good.

I have to say that I’m not totally in agreement with your friends that there’s gaslighting happening here, at least from what I get in your letter. Perhaps bits are being left out! Manipulation, I can kind of see, but I don’t see it tilting all the way into gaslighting, and I actually don’t see her behaviors as outright nefarious either. It sounds to me like you two have very incompatible needs when it comes to intimacy and relationships — needs so incompatible that perhaps your entire viewpoints on what intimacy is could be quite different! The sex could mean something entirely different for her than it does for you.

Technically, it doesn’t really sound like she has lied to you. She has said repeatedly that she’s not ready for a relationship, and I know that her actions to you might not line up with that assertion, but I think you have to believe her when she says it. When she talked about envisioning a life with you, perhaps she meant a life that looks like this — a sort of nebulous friends who occasionally hook up situation while mostly sharing intense emotional intimacy in the form of late nights and deep talks. She spends more time with you than with her girlfriend, but sometimes those are just people’s priorities in life. It’s possible that she values friendship that sometimes skirts into sex more than she values more conventional romantic relationships. I know you write that her relationship with her girlfriend seems like the kind of serious relationship she told you she was avoiding, but it’s really difficult to know the actual contours of someone’s relationship structure when you’re not part of it.

I think you could ask her about a lot of this, especially since you two are so close. How does she define her relationship with you? How does she view intimacy? Do you know how she feels about monogamy/polyamory/etc? Is her situation with you the first time she has been in a situation like this? These conversations might be difficult to have, especially because you have to accept the outcome that the answers might not give you exactly what you want, but I do think it could lead to better understanding about what each of you want out of friendships and dating. This could help illuminate that you’re not the right fit for each other romantically, which I know would be heartbreaking, but it could at least lead to potential closure and allow you to figure out if you’d like to start a new friendship with stricter boundaries (like no sex) or take even more space from each other.

Again, I don’t have all the details! So if she was actually like “I can envision a life with you where we are in a serious relationship” and then afterward was like “jk,” then yes, that is a different story! But in that situation, I can’t say I’d recommend continuing to be friends with her, because that is indeed very unfair and manipulative!

You know you’re not a casual hookups person, and yet you have ended up in a no-strings-attached hookup situation with her and have caught feelings. That’s all fine and normal! Especially because you already knew this tendency about yourself. The exact thing you thought might happen happened. But by letting her call all the shots, you’re taking away some of your own agency. If you know hooking up will make you feel sad and stuck after, you should really consider that before it gets to that point again. I don’t think it’s healthy or worthwhile to keep doing the same things with her and expect her to change her mind about what she wants. She seems pretty consistent in what she wants, even if it’s a bit confusing on your end.

You already knew the answer was going to be setting more boundaries, and that is indeed the best advice I can give. But I think you can talk to her first and figure out what exactly she means about not wanting a serious relationship and not wanting to lose her best friend. But most of all, listen to what you want. And if it’s something she can’t provide, you have to restructure the way you approach the relationship in a way that honors your own needs and desires. If that means a bit of a friendship breakup, that’ll be sad of course. But it doesn’t have to be forever. And there are plenty of in-between options, too. Try only hanging out in groups to see how that goes. Limiting one-on-one time and those late nights together could allow you to realize you connect in other ways that don’t feel quite as intimate but are still meaningful connections.

This all sucks, and my heart is totally with you. Who amongst us hasn’t ended up in the murky waters of a hard-to-define friendship/something more than friendship? You’re not alone in this hurt. But I think a reframing from your friends’ perspective of this person is actively trying to hurt you to realizing you have different needs and views when it comes to intimacy could actually release you in a way. I’m wishing you the best!

You can chime in with your advice in the comments and submit your own questions any time.