Rebecca Meyer
Last week, this woman was at dinner with some of her friends. During their get-together, they started talking about relationships. One of her friends has been in a relationship with a great man for two years. However, her friend and her boyfriend have been having problems recently.
While she adores her friend, she worries that her friend, who hasn’t been in a committed relationship before this, doesn’t realize how complicated relationships can sometimes be. From her perspective, her friend seems to think relationships should always be smooth sailing, which isn’t realistic.
“She often complains that he always wants to spend time with her, isn’t manly enough, can be clingy, and doesn’t go out as much as she would like him to,” she said.
Even though she doesn’t have a problem with her friend feeling frustrated with how much time her boyfriend wants to spend together or how he likes to spend his free time, she does have a problem with her friend constantly badmouthing her boyfriend.
She is a lesbian and has only dated women, but she’s had tons of male friends throughout her life. From her experience, men have as wide a range of emotions as women do.
In all of her relationships, she’s valued her girlfriends’ mental health, emotions, and financial independence, so she thinks people in relationships with the opposite gender should treat their partners as equals.
Her friend never compliments her boyfriend and is mean to him most of the time. Because her friend’s boyfriend adores her friend, he doesn’t usually defend himself against her insults. She felt terrible for her friend’s boyfriend but tried to give her friend grace and remember that she hadn’t dated much.
During dinner, her friend was venting as usual about her boyfriend, but her comments crossed the line, in her opinion. Unfortunately, her friend’s boyfriend lost his job and went to her friend’s house. While he was venting about the stress he was under, his eyes welled up with tears.
He said he had no idea what to do and was worried about how to continue making student loan payments. As her friend told this story, she expressed her annoyance at having to listen to her boyfriend confide in her.
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