By: Billy BeerSlugger
The more I try to understand women the less I do. Take for instance girls who invariably tell every aspect of their relationship and lives to their best friends. When girls get together to talk about relationships it is anything but good news for the guy she is dating, especially when women ask their friends advice or opinion on things dealing with their significant other. Girls often find out that they have more perceived problems than they did before they sat down and had the discussion. As if their friend talked them into being mad at the boyfriend for something they previously did not think was largely offensive.
“I wasn’t mad at Jim for going to the bar with his friends but after talking to Susie I’m kind of pissed off about it.”
Now from what I can surmise there are a couple of glaring reasons for this to occur:
- Critiquing other peoples relationships make women feel better. It’s kind of like being a judge on a reality show, even though you may suck as well, telling other people where they are failing with no repercussions can be a big ego boost.
- Subconsciously or otherwise the friend is trying to sabotage your relationship. Reasons detailed later in the article.
- The friend is actively trying to destroy your relationship
- There is a good reason to question a man’s actions/behavior. This is certainly possible.
Not to say that a girl’s friends intentions are bad because I truly believe that for the most part girls best friends are trying to help. However, they may be trying to help them in a way that lends itself to their situation, not your girlfriends. The friend is not there for the intimate parts of your relationship and does not understand the complexities and idiosyncrasies involved. Guys and girls also can leave out crucial parts of stories when talking to friends. The circumstances surrounding a fight. The wanton disregard of crucial details as to the genesis of the problem.
“Dan and I got into a fight about money again. He just freaked out on me for no good reason.”
Well Dan’s wife/girlfriend may be spending too much of their money on crap they don’t need like $200 hand bags and such. Further, Dan may have had that money earmarked for some sort of beach vacation in which he was going to whisk Sally away on and be all romantic and shit. Now his plans are askew.
But seriously, no one knows your relationship like the people in the relationship. The day by day dealings, the good times, the bad times. For the most part your friends aren’t there for the day by day unless you’re on a sitcom like Friends. Your friends insight into dealing with things is subjective at best for ways to approach specific situations. I often find that the best advice is very broad in nature and can be applied in a multitude of situations. If you get that sort of advice from a friend, take that to heart. But don’t get all bent out of shape when one of your friends tells you that you should be pissed off at your boyfriend for X situation. Of course she could be saying, “dump that loser” and you might have to listen to that one. Your girls’ friend may be single herself and trying to get her single for selfish reasons (this goes both ways for men and women) so you have to watch out for that one.
One of my favorite Chris Rock routines goes like this:
Women hate women. You get any two girlfriends in this room, been girlfriends for twenty five years, you put a man in between them … “fuck that bitch,” “fuck that bitch.” Guys are not like that. Guys actually think that there are other fish in the sea, and if a guy introduces his boy to his new girlfriend, and when they walk away, his boy goes, “Oh man, she’s nice, I gotta get me a girl like that.” If a woman introduces her new man to her girlfriend, and they walk away, her girlfriend goes, “I gotta get him, and I will slit that bitch’s throat to do it.” Every girl in here got a girlfriend they don’t trust around their man.
Anyway, the reason for writing this is that most guys have run into this at one time or another in their dating careers. When their significant other talks to a friend or family member and then becomes pissed at a certain situation at the behest of that friend or family member. A note-able one for me was when an ex-girlfriend got pissed that I couldn’t/wouldn’t take a Friday off to help her move and that her parents were coming down that day to help. At first she was fine with it and then was later pissed after talking to her mom even though I was given 3 days notice as to the parents coming down to help. Though I was sure enough slave labor for the remainder of the weekend lugging boxes of crap and furniture it just wasn’t enough that I didn’t take that Friday off to help too. To try and mitigate the damage I did take a two hour lunch that Friday to help. Still not enough. No good deed does go unpunished.