In my previous post, a couple of you asked about whether Kyle got another date. It was more than a year later before he dipped his toe in the dating pool again, but once he did he actually became the most efficient suitor of the lot of us. His relative indifference actually seemed to translate into confidence, which helped him out a great deal.
A couple years ago he started dating a nice young girl, Sienna. He was reluctant at first because she was “way dramatic”, but she won him over. Sienna apparently had historically dated rough-and-tumble jock types and Kyle was something of a departure for her. He’d been ring-shopping for a few weeks and finally popped the question over the weekend (which I knew about, hence my weekend Ghostland post). To no great surprise, she said yes.
He’s been dating his girlfriend now for a couple of years and it’s only a surprise insofar as I didn’t know if he would ever get married. Kyle was The Fourth Musketeer. In high school there was me, Clint, and Dave. We all split ways for college and for the first year or so didn’t really talk very much. After IM came along Clint and I started staying in closer contact, but Dave was going to college halfway across the country. Then, as though divinity had intervened, Clint stole Kyle’s girlfriend and the next thing we knew the three of us were hanging out together a lot.
Kyle will be the third of the musketeers to get married. Dave and I got engaged and married within months of one another and not too long after both Clint and Kyle got into what seem like permanent relationships. It never ceases to amaze me how much fretting we all did with one another about how difficult it all was until one day it was just all taken care of.
The fact that things eventually worked out well does not justify Clint’s stealing the date from Kyle. Clint had no way of knowing at the time that Kyle ever would recover from the loss. Moreover, it was an unjustified action even if Clint rationalized it by saying that Kyle was your friend rather than his; you don’t steal another man’s date, whether you know him or not.
Comment by Peter — July 17, 2007 @ 7:32 am
I’m mostly of the mind that all is fair in love and war, so long as you’re willing to live with the consequences. So in that vein whether you’re close to the boyfriend or not is all-important. If it’s a guy that you’re close to, you’re going to lose a good friend and probably most of your mutual friends. If it’s someone you’re not close to, you have less to lose. The sticking point for me is that I pleaded with him not to move forward, but at the end of the day he knew that I would stick by him regardless and even if I never approved of the relationship. I never did approve, really. Originally because of what it did to Kyle, but it was hard to maintain a grudge when Kyle wasn’t. My later disapproval had to do with her somewhat manipulative and ultimately nihilistic personality.
Interestingly enough, Clint swooped in on one of my relationships a couple years before. Our friendship barely survived and wouldn’t have if she’d actually left me for him. He also had a history before and after that of going after “marked territory”, ie girls that I wasn’t going out with but had my eye on. “It’s not my fault that you keep meeting them first” was his rationale.
I’ve been on the other side, too, royally screwing over my friend Kelvin’s relationship with Evangeline. Kelvin was amazingly even more forgiving than Kyle on the whole matter. He had a sort of “I know what it’s like to move Heaven and walk through Hell to get her” attitude. I can’t imagine that I would be that forgiving, but I understood where he was coming from.
On a sidenote, it’s interesting how the above makes it sound like the girls were property (”marked territory”, “get her”, etc). It wasn’t like that at all emotionally, but the terminology is interesting nonetheless.
On another sidenote, one must bear in mind the old maxim that when a man leaves his wife for a mistress, there’s a vacancy for a new mistress. Any woman that is jettisening some other guy to be with you will quite likely do the same to you. Whether any infidelity actually took place or not, Chloe left Clint for someone else and Evangeline never left anyone without someone else on stand-by.
Comment by trumwill — July 17, 2007 @ 8:06 am
Froma woman’s point of view: 1) We’re not rag dolls with no will of our own that can be taken away. 2) It’s frustrating when guys think that because they’ve talked to a girl or had a semi-date with her, that they’ve branded her or something. It’s bad for the girl, and for other guys she might actually be interested in.
It’s different if he plays dirty, of course. As in, spreading dirt about the guy, or trying to humiliate him in front of the girl, etc. I’ve konwn people of both sexes who recruit their mates that way — use a friend as bait, then cut their line and swoop in.
Comment by Spungen — July 23, 2007 @ 12:43 am
I can’t stress how awful it is when a group of friends is trying to force you to be with a guy in the group that you don’t want to be with. Usually it’s at least partly to serve their own ends.
Comment by Spungen — July 23, 2007 @ 12:48 am
I’m not sure we’re entirely talking about the same thing. We would never apply pressure to the girl to get together with the guy. Even if we privately thought she was being stupid, we souldn’t air that perception publically and for the most part would remain as cordial as possible (even girls we don’t want to date know girls that we do!). The only times I’ve seen girls cut out of our social circle are when they affirmatively dated a member and broke up with them or was broken up with by them. That’s pretty much par the course, isn’t it? Whenever I’ve broken up with (or been broken up with by) a girl, I’ve taken it for granted that losing friends was part of the bargain.
In the event that they never dated, but she doesn’t want to date guy that expressed interest first, that’s fine, the only repercussion is that other guys within the group will often be reluctant to go out with her. Yeah, it sucks and it’s not fair, but that’s life. I can’t think of any instances where we were ever mean to a girl for rejecting our friend.
The only counterexample that I am aware of is that there was a rough stigma attached to Evangeline after something of disputed severity happened between her and someone else in my extended group. It didn’t stop me from dating her, though. It didn’t even cause ripples with the guy that had long since moved on. The only result was copious warnings.
Anyhow, for the most part, the embargo is lifted once the rejected guy gets over it. Most guys (I’ve known and been friends with) are not going to come between their friends and happiness unnecessarily for any prolonged period of time. There are some cases where we would never, ever date someone due to a complication with a friend, but that’s cases where his life was seriously thrown off track by her. If her presence physically hurts him, obviously we don’t want her around. Guys that would let that happen over someone that they had an unrequited crush on didn’t tend to be people that we would hang out with.
Comment by trumwill — July 23, 2007 @ 9:10 am
I just hung out with bigger losers than you did, I guess.
So … I’m Number One! (on this blogroll, at least.)
Comment by Spungen — July 24, 2007 @ 7:51 pm