Alicia Freeman is an English senior and Mustang Daily relationship advice columnist.
“Spontaneous overflow of emotion” last week, huh? (Haha, English major joke.)
I realize in an effort to share my own experiences to say, “Hey, we’re all human, and we all have problems, so here’s a safe place to talk about it,” I kind of exploded all over the place like a fly in a microwave (I am not sure if that actually does happen). Instead of showing humanity, I revealed a personal self-loathing moment discrediting my worth as an advice columnist.
So, that’s kind of embarrassing. But, you know, embarrassing is kind of my middle name. (It’s a joke! It’s a joke!)
So, this week we will discuss more uplifting things: the dreaded friend’s boyfriend/girlfriend/friend-with-benefits who never seems to leave.
Situation: your friend has this significant other who you just can’t understand why he or she does not dump him or her. You hate everything about this person, calling him or her a troll or crazy behind his or her back, and detailing to your other friends exactly why the relationship should be annulled. You find yourself consumed by your dislike and lack of comprehension.
Ultimately, you simply do not like this intruder in your social circle and your friend’s life for some reason, and you want that person out of it.
I, admittedly a hater of couples, am quick to want my friends to dump their significant others for irrational reasons such as the boy is boring or the girl’s perfume gives me the kind of headache that is often associated with entering an Abercrombie and Fitch store. Yet, sometimes legitimate reasons exist. For example, years and years ago when I was a little high school freshman, my oldest friend (who somehow consistently chooses unsatisfactory men) dated this boy named Dannyn, like the yogurt. I did not like Dannyn straight off the bat, perhaps because I did not like his name, and informed her he could possibly be a jerk.
Now, Dannyn in general simply looked like a douche. He strikingly resembled Andrew Keegan (Remember, he was the douchey guy in “Ten Things I Hate About You.”) and spoke in an incessantly condescending tone. But she liked him and would hear nothing of my dislike. So, I suffered in silence, watching the relationship progress with distaste. Well, dude ended up having an affinity for breaking into cars and stealing stuff, and my friend’s affinity for him caused her to join in these escapades. My friend ended up getting in a lot of trouble just because yogurt boy had a sexy jaw.
This is when I somewhat wanted to pat myself on the back, but the severity of the situation made me take a step back instead into sympathetic friend mode rather than “I told you so” mode. To this day, I still use this story as some kind of confirmation of my advice skills, though it only really confirms that people should just not name their kids after yogurt or look like Andrew Keegan.
Today, my work social circle faced the similar dilemma of unsatisfactory boyfriend. One of our coworkers recently started dating a man more than twice her age, thrusting the whole workplace into shit-talking chaos.
“He’s so old!” “She’s so young!” “He should know better!” “Their age difference is the amount of time I’ve been alive!”
Marginally, we talked of nothing else besides why this was an immature and awful match. Obviously, I work with a lot of girls, and we are the kind who can easily be consumed by the drama of others. Yet, our dissatisfaction with the relationship in no way caused our coworker to see the light; rather, it produced an alienating effect that caused her to shrink away from our workplace family circle.
Realizing our error, we have stopped caring about this drama and have moved on to some new petty boyfriend/girlfriend/cat crisis.
So, here’s the advice: though the undesirable match consumes you, it is none of your business really. If he or she makes your friend happy and treats them right, you might as well accept it. Even if it is not a dating choice you would make. For what I gather at the moment, my coworker is happy with her much older boyfriend, and that’s all that matters.
You can’t make someone break up with someone else. And I have found telling my friends to break up with their significant other causes them to only talk to me when they are having relationship problems — my dissatisfaction causes a rift in our relationship. It is best to simply stay out of it and let it progress how it will. Shit-talking and gossip is also incredibly exhausting — I have heard from a reliable source it causes wrinkles.