I want to remain friends with my ex but I hate her boyfriend

[TheRopster]

So, after my previous post, a few things have surfaced: May (my ex-girlfriend) had cheated on me for a year and a half with a boy (Dimitri). This wasn't just a quick fling or anything, this was them forming a serious relationship behind my back, getting together, and eventually I was just binned off on just another average day for May. The relationship was only kept a secret from me since I moved abroad, making it easier for them to be open about their relationship to everyone else. I've recently had a fallout with May over the incident and I have not spoken to her in over a week. Everyone has told me to cut her out of my life, but I reminded myself that she, despite this awful thing she did to me, is a good person. She didn't do it with malicious intent to harm me. This was one small mistake which had a huge effect on our friendship, and I don't intend to forgive her completely, but I want to remain friends with her because her and I were always close friends even before our relationship, and honestly that relationship wasn't supposed to last. However, I have one problem: her boyfriend.

 

Dimitri, in all honesty, is an ass. I explained in my previous thread about the things he has done to me, but to sum it all up here: he made sexual remarks towards me, became overly clingy to me, made me feel awkward and uncomfortable, ganged up on me with May during Skype calls, told me things which he knew would upset me, took his anger out on me and May whenever he was in a bad mood, was very sensitive and got offended and angered by the littlest things, was hypocritical in the sense that he could hurt you but you couldn't hurt him, he was emotional over little things like "killing" other people at his war reenactments and expected others to share his emotions, he said a few nasty things about my mother, he told someone he just met about my personal fetishes (which I don't like sharing) and my old relationship with May in detail, lied to my face, criticized things I did and copied the things he couldn't criticize, acted condescending towards me, forced me to buy/download and play games I disliked and demanded me to help him with certain things.

 

He has done so much and honestly, any good he has ever done cannot outweigh all of the bad. He has done a few kind things, but mostly he has done all of the things I have listed above. I had a year to put up with this, and of course the year before that I had already heard of him and worried about him stealing May from me (which he did anyway). And the worst thing is: May refuses to listen to anything bad about him. When I opened up to her last week, just before she told me the truth about their relationship, I had listed a long list of things Dimitri had done to personally upset me, but she completely ignored them. I spoke to another guy who also dislikes Dimitri, and he told me that May had done the same thing to him when he listed a number of bad things he saw him do.

 

The thing is, I know May. I've known May longer than Dimitri has known her. I know how she thinks. If I had told her those exact same stories using someone else's name, she'd be disgusted. She does not condone the behaviour I told her about. But because this is her first boyfriend (and, in her eyes, first serious relationship since with me it was just a phase and whatnot) I believe that she has what I call "Boyfriend Blindness", making her see good in Dimitri no matter what he does. She is the only person who has ever described him as a good person to me; everyone else dislikes him, and when I first met him he showed strong evidence of being anti-social. He was very awkward around his friends and other people. And another part of her "Boyfriend Blindness" makes her see Dimitri as this saviour; she told me that he was the first person to "make her feel like herself again" and she said that "he tried to talk her into telling the truth to me long ago when they first started dating", even though he was willing to form a relationship with a taken girl and show her off like a prize while also openly lying to me and not telling me the truth himself.

 

I just don't know what to do. I want to remain friends with her because I barely have anyone else, but I just can't stand her boyfriend. I can't cry to her when he does something to upset me because she'll be telling herself that Dimitri is an angel and has reasons for the way he acts. She will justify his behaviour. And, even though she already said that we don't need to hang out with him anymore, she will always speak positively about him and lovingly. And I guess I can't find it in me to talk to her normally knowing that she's banging someone I want to kill. It's weird; her and I have always had the same opinions on people, but when it comes to Dimitri our thoughts are opposites. She won't even agree on things she normally agrees on: when I tell her "Dimitri is copying me" or "Dimitri is making uncomfortable sexual remarks" or "I didn't like Dimitri's anger outburst" or "Dimitri is too clingy", she will say ANYTHING to disagree with me and defend him. She has always agreed on me when I say stuff like this about other people, and she herself has been a victim to people like that and has hated their guts, but with Dimitri she just turns a blind eye to it. And it hurts because I have no other really close friends to turn to about it, nor do I have many close friends at all... I really just don't know what to do.

 

I want to be friends with May, but every time I look at her I see her becoming more and more like Dimitri. Knowing her, she could be getting treated like by him and abused and she would just accept it and believe she deserves it. It hurts, and I can't even get through to her about Dimitri and his messed-up head. He has shaped her into his perfect woman, and she has become brainwashed so much that she won't even listen to me, her ex, "best friend" "important person who means a lot to her" in her own words, when I try to cry out for help. She's not a ty person and wouldn't normally do that, but the fact that she's doing it makes me so confused. Should I be friends with her or not? What am I supposed to do when Dimitri pops up in a conversation? I just don't know anymore.

[MissCanuck]

I cannot fathom why you want to keep this girl in your life.

 

Let her go, OP.

[Ziggy123]

I wouldn't try and be friends with her at all. It will just hurt you to see them together. And this wasnt some small mistake on her part as you said. It went on for a year and a half!!! I would seriously question whether this girl is as good as you say she is. I would cut both out of your life. Neither sound like good friend quality for you.

[TheRopster]

Dimitri I've already cut out of my life as much as I can. I have no reason to like him. But May and I formed our relationship at 14 when we were both going through a phase, and I think she just grew out of it quicker than I did. I want to remain friends with her because we have been great friends for 5 years. She never wanted to lose her friendship with me and thought that breaking up with me would cause me to never talk to her again. I also saw the relationship as one that wasn't meant to be and that really we were just supposed to be friends, I'm just pissed off that she caused me to have my hands tied while she got down and dirty with somebody without telling me until I sussed it out. But her boyfriend is the problem because, aside from this cheating crap which happened, he has always been a bad person in my eyes. I just can't voice my frustrations to other friends because they don't know him, and I don't know if I can voice them to her because she'll probably convince herself that he's good and that he has his reasons. I have nobody to turn to.

 

I can list a few reasons why May is a good friend: She has defended me and got herself hurt to defend me, she took me on a nice holiday trip, she's bought me a lot of nice stuff out of thoughtfulness and has paid for tickets/hotels for us to stay in for conventions and stuff (even though she has serious money troubles) and she has always been there for me when I'm having a crisis, such as when I moved abroad or when I've broke down over other things. After we broke up we stayed friends and I went to her when I had a crush on someone, and she was upset to see how heartbroken I was when that guy got a girlfriend. She's always excited for me coming home to England and always plans to organize days out and trips, and she has called a few times and has said "I really miss you". Not in a relationship way, but in a friendly way. She told me that she passes my house during her driving lessons and gets tearful because she knows I'm not there. She misses seeing me frequently since I'm not 20 minutes away by car anymore, but over an hour away by plane. There are many things that she has done to prove that she's not awful at heart, but this Dimitri has come along and has been a terrible influence (especially since she has had terrible anxiety over the years from childhood trauma and school life leading her to become borderline suicidal); he preyed upon her when she was alone and depressed after I moved abroad. I want to stay friends with her because of everything we've been through together, but it's just going to be so hard with that man there. A man who, relationship complications aside, has hurt me.

[Pretzel]

Even if you were not exes, let's pretend for a second that May is just your regular friend and there's no history there : you cannot maintain a friendship if she is choosing such an ass as her partner. That is simply what happens when close friends choose toxic partners. It becomes difficult for them to maintain their already existing and healthy friendships too.

Healthy people don't dance with unhealthy people. (I read that line in a therapy book once)

 

I think this is a cue for you to start shifting the focus from her to YOU and start working on yourself. Sure you can be friends but if that guy is going to irritate you that much, you should have a boundary for yourself to spend less time with her - or time that doesn't involve her boyfriend at all - and makes sure she knows and make sure she knows why.

[Hollyj]

Your ex is an azz, too. I cannot understand how you could have any type of relationship with someone who deceived you in this way! Dude, where is your self respect????

 

Are you looking for her to buy you more stuff? Is this your barometer of a good friend? I would say trust, loyalty and respect would be higher on my list.

 

I suggest that you make an effort to find new friends. I think that this may why your standards are so low.

[Snny]

You will end up being a homewrecker for this young lady if you cannot get along with her partner. Her relationship is her business. A friendship with her is a very bad idea.

 

I just don't know what to do. I want to remain friends with her because I barely have anyone else

Then go out and make some friends. Join meetup groups. Take a class. Do some adult adventure traveling activity to get out and meet people.

 

You cannot move on if you do not let her go. She no longer depends on you and neither should you vice versa.

[TheRopster]

Thinking of calling it a day. After over a week of not talking to her she finally called and yelled at me. She accepted responsibility for the wrongs she had done, but I felt like she was trying to blame me because I "ruined" her 17th birthday by whining about my problems and I always repeated the same problems to her, even though she never properly told me about how I made her feel with the problems I told her. I got really upset when she told me to "never talk to her about Dimitri again", telling me that if I "respected her feelings" I would not tell her about the stuff he's done to hurt me.

 

So... I'm gonna just keep her at a distance. It's not fair that I've now taken the blame. I know I messed up, I know we were literally kids in a teen relationship, but all that aside... why would I want to remain close to someone who won't let me open up about her boyfriend's behaviour? If I had a boyfriend who upset her I'd want her to tell me, not force her to keep silent so that I could keep looking at him perfectly.

[catfeeder]

Playing friendzies with exes is messy kid stuff. We learned it in school because we needed to navigate shared classes and social circles, but once we grow beyond that stuff, there's zero need to keep an ex in your life beyond civility in public.

 

Healthy people won't date a person who's still involved with an ex beyond shared children. It signals unfinished business, and most people don't want to mess with anyone who's calling that a friendship--it's usually something else.

 

Head high, and make it a private goal to surprise everyone, including yourself, with your resilience and ability to bounce back from this. You'll thank yourself later.