Should I be friends with this person?
I've been friends with someone for 18 months that seems to be taking the friendship in an inappropriate direction. Well, it started inappropriate as well.
At my last job we all sat in cubicles. One day, having just led my ornithologist brother on a small bird tour of the area, I described the trip to a co-worker. Someone I'd never noticed before popped up from behind a cube wall and started asking questions. She introduced herself and for the next few days continued to strike up conversations with me.
After a certain amount of this I wondered if this was a romantic interest from her. I was already counting the days until I would quit the job so saw little reason not to ask her out for a drink. When I proposed the idea she gave me a devious smile and we quietly headed out. Afterwards, in the settling of the tab, I Venmo'd her for a beer and noticed her Venmo account had a different last name than she has at work and asked about that. She's Chinese and I wasn't sure if sometimes Chinese people might have an anglicized last name in addition to their first name. "Oh, sometimes I use one, sometimes the other" was all I got. Nothing physical occurred or was initiated.
A week later after texting and going to a company workout class together she tells me that she is married. I'm absolutely shocked and feel like I've been used as part of someone's adulterous fantasy. The style of our conversations seemed identical to the getting-to-know-you type of stuff you cover on first dates. But I wasn't sure. Maybe I misread the situation. I tell her I'm not comfortable with the situation and we stop talking for a week. But I'd already joined the group workout class on her recommendation and would see her there anyway. I decided that I didn't really know what her intentions were and would give her the benefit of the doubt. She seemed to be interested in us having a friendship.
But I really wanted to know... what did happen? One of my favorite podcasts is Heavyweight. In it, Jonathan Goldstein plays the role of a social detective. People come to him with relationship issues from their past and he, without the restraint most people feel, badgers people for answers with his journalistic skills. I suspect I am mildly autistic, so for me many mundane social interactions carry mystery. To have Goldstein take relatable life experiences and crack them open for all to see is powerful. It's like we can finally get some goddamn answers to people's closest kept secrets.
So as time went on I got integrated into her group of friends, met her husband, her dog. Her husband seems like a great guy. But my friend would give indications of unhappiness in her marriage, often in groups when he was not around, occasionally over text message to me. I never engaged.
She had some hard-to-get permits for a backpacking trip. It would be a trip of four. Her husband was not interested so she invited three friends including myself. I went on the trip, made a new friend who just moved to my city, and had a great time. Immediately afterwards we started planning a new trip.
At some point my female friend did initiate a conversation on what she was thinking when we went out for a drink and what happened during the days after before she told me she was married. It boiled down to her wanting my friendship but not wanting to change my behavior. In my interpretation she wanted the attention of being dated. I honestly wasn't sure how much I believed this explanation - and even on its face it didn't sound super great.
So we just got back from another backpacking trip - myself, my female friend, and a male friend of hers who is married. During the trip I ended up discussing my sexuality with the two of them. I consider myself to be on the spectrum of asexuality. I described, as best I could, what makes me attracted to people (an emotional connection, their personality and intelligence, etc.) and the short list of people I had found myself strongly attracted to. I didn't list my female friend - I had lost most of my interest with that initial feeling of being used a year and a half ago. And a couple weeks isn't quite enough time for me to really get things revved up. Visibly I could see she was very confused but I didn't acknowledge her reaction. "Wasn't there one more ... the married one?" I dodged the question.
On the drive back her male friend brought up the topic of my sexuality again. I answered his questions. My female friend seemed to again want to know if I was attracted to her. "Do you ever find your friends attractive?" "Are you attracted to older women?" (she's older than me)
On my side of things, this friendship has been predicated on the idea that as long as I didn't engage with anything I consider to be unethical there couldn't be any harm done. But now I'm not so sure. And what's worse - I'm finding myself attracted to her again because of her interest.
I've been thinking about having a conversation about how she's making me uncomfortable. I think it's past the point where there's any chance nothing's going on. I really do not get the impression she's trying to leave her husband. I just feel played with.
Edit: Okay, the friend in question is away for a few weeks but I'll have a conversation with them when they get back to figure this out.
Personally, I would probably walk away without seeking any clarification. But I think you should talk to her and get some clear, direct answers if you want to pursue this any further.
If she is in a monogamous marriage with a good enough guy then I would stay far away. You would be a "home wrecker" and eventually her next victim. If she has some sort of open marriage thing, I think it would have probably come up by now, but it's possible and maybe you're interested in pursuing that.
It's also possible she really likes you and is trapped in a nightmare marriage, in which case you'll have to use your judgement and proceed with caution. Could be a happy ending or not. This would be tricky.
Judging by your post I'm assuming she likes the attention and is interested in cheating. But again, you won't know if you don't ask, and you should only ask if you plan to keep her around.
In the last couple of weeks I started seeing a friend of a friend and she’s very nice. I see no reason to get involved with any kind of complicated situation given I can find plenty of people without baggage now that I moved to a city with better dating prospects.
This is your answer. Do not get involved in weird complicated shit. It is never worth it longterm.
If I may add to this, it's probably worth considering how you'd want to bring up the situation to the girl you're seeing should you choose to maintain the friendship with the married woman. Is your friendship worth the discomfort of having that conversation?
Yupppp. Complications beget complications.
Believe me when I say my moral fortitude is stronger than most people’s. And I suspect I have it easier than others in that I seem to experience sexual attraction differently.
As a fellow person on the asexual spectrum, though, I asked my partner about this situation. He said that as an allosexual person, the situation would have become untenable sooner, or else the cheating would have happened sooner.
For myself, if I were in your shoes, I might be hesitant to throw away a friendship circle in which nearly all the time it's great, except for the rare times when this lady is being "gross" (his word). For my husband, he would feel the "grossness" nearly all of the time and so friendship just wouldn't work. And his read on the situation is that since most allosexual people would have noped out far sooner, and she might read your staying as a "strong possibility" of it going her way.
Anyway sexuality aside, what kind of friend are those in her circle supposed to be if you and the lady did hook up? Or even be witness to the continued flirting. They'd either have to be complicit in her "grossness", or else they'd be burdened with the duty to tell the husband: to be questioned and doubted, and watch a guy get angry and defensive, or else be believed and watch their friend fall apart. It's not fair for the other friends.
My philosophy, when it comes to things that matter, is be open and direct.
Social inhibitions are great, they need to exist, but we often take them too far. It's rarely a bad idea to say "this is what I'm thinking/feeling. What are you thinking?"
And, if necessary, be a little persistent about getting answers to your questions. Real friends don't have to be polite, just kind. The worst case scenario is that the outcome makes your decision easy.
I know it's flattering to feel desired and to want to reciprocate, but I get red flags on this, it feels to me like this woman is wanting to get her ego stroked, and she recruited her friend to help. I'm the sort of person who will walk away from relationships (platonic and not, but doing so is easier if platonic, of course) if I feel uncomfortable or like I'm being used. I haven't had to do that with a co-worker so I'm not sure I could advise there. But if it were me I would just shut it down, minimize contact, and keep work professional as possible.
Okay, small update. This happened a little over a month ago. I saw this friend, we went to a garden/estate that she has a membership to. On the way back I brought up her comments on our last hiking trip. I said that what she had said made me uncomfortable because I felt like she was trying to stroke her ego. I figured it was safest to make the smallest accusation, so I never accused her of trying to cheat on her husband.
She got very uncomfortable and confused. She said that there must be a misunderstanding, that she had been referring to another married woman that I had been attracted to. I corrected her, saying that no such person exists. She doubled down, saying that there was someone. Maybe not married, but in a relationship. Yes, there was someone I dated who I came to suspect had a boyfriend and was cheating on him. But I'd never said she was married. This appears to be who she was referring to, but I had mentioned this person back on our trip at the time. I specifically remember because I recall omitting just one specific other person.
Anyway, at the time I told her I accepted this explanation. It didn't seem like there was any room to press further. Things were uncomfortable. Her body language had changed (facing away more) but she didn't tell me to leave. I soon found an excuse to head out.
At first I believed what she'd said, that this had all been a misunderstanding. That mainly stems from trying to read her for lies at the time and feeling she had been genuine. But I've gone back and forth on it since. And I think if I'm stuck between these two possibilities I shouldn't continue the friendship.
When I originally posted to this thread I omitted some details for brevity but also to try and bias readers slightly against the possibility that this woman is trying to cheat on her husband. The truth is, it is a bit of an ego boost for me to have someone want to do that with myself. So I was in a state where I wanted her intentions to be pure to maintain the friendship, but I also liked to fantasize. I figured I would be biased in my presentation of the facts. But now it's over so I'll add a couple of extra bits.
This woman had told me she had cheated on her husband before, before marriage, back in college while they where long distance. She also told me that he was already fully aware of this. I don't entirely recall the context in which this was raised but at the time it made me a little uncomfortable. It wasn't a total non-sequitur.
I like to cook and so does she. Her husband does not cook. In the past she had hosted potlucks with her friends, myself included. However recently she remodeled her kitchen and asked if I'd like to cook a full dinner in her house for her and her friends. I declined. At the time I wondered if this was a way to have me act as a supplementary husband. It seemed weird.
Having read your original post as well as yours and everyone else's comments, I can't help but feel all this could be settled if the two of you had an open heart to heart conversation where you can ask all your questions and she can answer all of them.
I see too many assumptions made here from everyone's end and too many "reading in between lines" situations.
I recommend having a one on one conversation with this person and starting it off by voicing your concerns and then ask clarifying questions. If she is still being vague or isn't answering your questions, then walk way no matter how good the friendship has been in the past.
This is where reality diverges from sitcom.
At the risk of projecting too much of my own experience here, this sounds extremely familiar and almost identical to a situation I was in some years back. This is what really keyed me into it, because I've said this statement myself word-for-word:
The problem here is that as soon as you have to make that qualification for a friendship, something is already wrong.
Assuming that our experiences are similar, the good/bad news here is that the situation is less complicated than it seems, and in fact you pretty much already identified it:
Even in broadly happier relationships, many (not all) people still like to occasionally feel the dopamine hit and validation of being desired by other people outside of the relationship. By itself, this feeling isn't some egregious sin. It's what you do about it--ideally being nothing--and some people do what she is doing currently to you: using you as an IV drip of dopamine to feel like she is still desirable. If it makes you feel any better, you're almost certainly not the only person she is doing this to.
She probably does genuinely value your friendship and company, but being that IV drip is of more value to her. And here's how you'll know: if you don't do anything differently, your friendship will continue as-is with this ersatz version of "will they/won't they" until you start getting serious (not just dating, actually serious) with someone else. At first, she'll ask a million pointed questions about your partner under the guise of "just looking out for a friend". If she believes you two are truly in a serious relationship, you're going to gradually start to see less and less of her. She won't ghost you outright probably, but those trips are going to be less frequent, plans will start to get broken, and eventually it's going to degrade into "oh, it's been awhile, we should totally catch up" and it'll be a friendship purely in name only.
I would probably start distancing yourself from her, because one very important thing to understand is that even though you consider your morals to be ironclad, you're risking the "appearance of impropriety" around other people who may intentionally or unintentionally misread the nature of your relationship. Including her husband. Which, to my mind--and this is where I ended up coming down after negotiating this situation myself--means this friendship is, or is going to be at some point, significantly more trouble than it's worth.
First of all, thank you for sharing!
I don't know that anyone here can really provide an answer to your main question about whether or not you should continue your friendship. You're the only one that can really answer it. But I will say that I totally understand why you're thinking things along those lines - her behavior really is a bit off what I myself would consider appropriate for someone that's married. Like, why keep pressing the issue when you already signaled you didn't want to talk about it (you dodged the question).
Maybe she likes the thrill of it? Could it be teasing?
Maybe if/when next time she asks, reply to her questions with questions: "do you find friends attractive?", "Are you attracted to younger men?"
It always sucks to lose friends - for whatever reason. Maybe it doesn't have to be an either/or though. Almost nothing is ever only black/white. In my mind, there's no problem with staying in an in-between grey area. Maybe you can continue the friendship, as well as continue being in this group, but also keep her at an arms length in a way? I also think there'd be nothing wrong with telling her once and for all that you see her as a friend and nothing more. It could also be that she and her husband are in an open relationship, and that's why she's being so flirty. Although if you've known her for 1½ years, I'm sure it'd've come up by now.
In any case, I totally understand that you feel played with. But I think it would be a shame to end the friendship without first exploring every opportunity - including maybe having a frank conversation with her.
Hope others can chime in too.
It would be a shame to lose the friend because outside of a few moments it’s been normal and nice.
Friendships end all the time. In my experience, "I don't want to lose the friendship" is usually an excuse to justify not doing something you either don't want or are scared of.
Relationships and friendships are complicated. They are never going to be 100% nice all of the time, but it sounds like this one is 95% nice, so then I really don't see any reason to break it up.
Personally, I don't think you should decide to end what sounds like a decent friendship based on your (unsure) perceptions. You could be absolutely correct, but we misinterpret other people all the time. For all you know, she thought you were attracted to her and that made her feel good about herself, but she has no intentions to pursue anything.
Just explain that you're not great at interpreting things and wanted to make sure you're not reading into things too much. Might be a slightly awkward chat, but it's better than ending an entire friendship just because you're not sure if that person fancies you. So far, it sounds like the only thing this person has actually done wrong is not immediately mention they're married. But let's not automatically assume there was any devious intent to that.
I have some autism traits too, and this is probably not the NT approved solution but it works for me. I simply communicate things the way I see them, even when slightly inappropriate.
"Oh, that one. I may have been drawn to her at first, but as soon as I found out she was married and wasn't being authentic in her communication towards me, my feelings deflated. I think I was mostly attracted to the initial idea I had of her, which later proved to be false."
Of course, people don't always think of the right thing to say in the moment. If that happens, I just make a mental note of it and wait for the next opportunity. Usually I won't miss the same opportunity twice.
Once I've said what I have to say, I observe how the other person handles it. Most of the time this tells me whether or not I want to continue connecting with that person. Whatever the case, at least I've communicated my expectations and now they are aware of what being my friend would entail. Either they correct their behaviour, if possible, or if not, at least they understand why I'm not enthusiastically hanging out with them.