My bf's best friend is a stripper

[Brittany16]

I've been going out with this great guy for 5 months now. I've never had such strong feelings for someone and he says the same too. All sounds well, but there is one great problem that bothers me so much i get feelings of dumping him everytime the subject comes up. You see... My boyfriends' best friend is a stripper, they're together whenever i'm not with him. The ONLY thing she talks about is sex, my bf even said she hasn't talked about any thing else since he can remember. He said he understands why i don't want him to hang out with her alone anymore, but he also mentioned that i was going to have to live with the fact that they are still going to spend time along together. Also, i get along great with ALL my boyfriends friends except for her... she hated me from the start because i didn't talk to her enough (that one made me laugh). I guess i'll mention that I am 16 and he is 19, so yes, i am young... maybe someone can help me out a little...

[walkingwithaghost]

I think you're both very young. If you are unhappy with his friend all you can do is breakup with him because this situation will never work. She'll always be a sex obsessed stripper, they'll always be best friends, you'll always be suspicious and jealous. If he does stop being her friend because of you he'll resent you for it and feel like you're trying to control him. If you're unhappy and jealous more often then you feel loved, special, and happy (with this guy) alls you can do is dump him, worry not, if it's meant to be you'll end up together.

[Brittany16]

Thanx for your adice. BUt the feelings of being loved, special and being happy are much greater then the jealousy. they could be greater without the stripper. I know I'm young and unexperienced with relationships, for this reason i don't want to ruin what we've got. Is it not reasonable for me to not want my boyfriend to be alone with a stripper?

[Mr. Cactus]

Is it not reasonable for me to not want my boyfriend to be alone with a stripper?

 

I think it is perfectly reasonable for you to not want him hanging around a stripper. And in my opinion a reasonable boyfriend would bow to your wishes and stop doing this. Failing that, I would recommend you move on. Certainly I empathise that the feelings you enjoy from the relationship outweigh this issue, but you will almost certainly be able to find someone else who has all the good qualities you are after without this particular problem. I think you deserve such a thing. Everybody deserves such a thing. As walkingwithaghost said, you are very young. You have plenty of time to find someone else if you cannot get your boyfriend to respect your wishes.

 

We often think that the person we currently love is irreplaceable and that we could never find someone as wonderful again, despite any faults they might have. I don't believe that is true - there are always lots of people who we can meet and have a loving relationship with. So don't be afraid to leave if you can't work this out. There are always other people out there.

 

My feeling is that your boyfriend is rather less mature than you, since it seems a very immature thing to be hanging out with a stripper that only talks about sex. To me that says something significant about the type person he is and it is perhaps a very good reason to consider avoiding him anyway.

[liasonred]

Is this not a bit silly???

 

I could understand your problem if she suddenly came on the scene but she was his friend before you came into his life. You've both not been together too long and are young so you will have these feeling and situations like this come up as you have limited experience of relationships.

 

I praise you for coming to this site and asking for advice to gain an understanding. We all have friends who don't get on with other friends, truth is your boyfriend should be trusted and you making demands of him over his relationships with friends is only going to cause you 2 problems.

[RayKay]

I can understand the feelings of love and so on from him outweigh this issue in your mind, but also keep in mind that our partners do not shrug off our hurt and feelings if they love and respect us.

 

There is nothing wrong with him being friends with a stripper per say...I have known strippers, and many of them are great people, fun to be around, and often either putting themselves through college/university, or taking care of a family. But some are less "positive" personalities - with low self esteem, drug use and living a life where they see their only worth in peddling their body. She may talk about sex a lot, but for some reason if she talks "only" about that I have a feeling she does it to boost her confidence and get people (men) to like her. I think she is not one yet who knows the true enjoyments of sex and intimacy.

 

Clearly your partners opinion seems to be made up, so you need to determine what you want to do...as I said there is nothing wrong with being friends per say, but if that relationship is hurting you, or intereferring with your relationship, there is an issue there and one that needs to be addressed by both of you to reach an agreeable solution. If he refuses, then maybe it is time to move on, as this point will probably remain as long as you are together and is it worth that?

 

Trust me, there are men out there whom will make you feel loved, respected and take your feelings into consideration. And they may have girl friends, but not ones who will only talk about sex all day, and you can also find a partner whom is more mature and would actually find someone who could "only" talk about sex rather dull. Sex is awesome, and great to discuss (more so with your partner!), but if that is ALL someone is, well

[Brittany16]

Heyyyy, thanx everyone. Your advice really helped me. I was with my boyfriend today and we went out with some friends and his stripper friend was there. She talked to him pretty much the whole night.. and of corse it was all about sex again. I'm trying to convince myself i don't have anything to worry about because they've been friends for longer than we've been going out, but in the back of my mind it still bothers me. When i decided i wanted to go home my bf walked me home and i told him how much she bothers me. He got angry, so i tried to come to an agreement.

you see, I have one guy friend who my bf gets jealous of when ispend time with him, so i sugjested that i wouldn't spend tiem with him alone if he wouldn't spend time with the stripper alone. This made him even more angry and he didn't accept the offer.

I did what i could to work things out so we could both be happy. Was the agreement too much to ask for? I personally didn't think so. I never said he had to end their friendship, i simple said 'no time ALONE with her', but he couldn't do that for me. Is this relationship just a waste of time? Or am i just being crazy?

[Mr. Cactus]

Having just read that makes me stand by my previous post even more. I really think now is the time for you to consider an exit strategy, I really do. Although you may not agree with me, the fact that you are 16 means you have a good lot of time to learn from relationships and learn more about the good and bad attributes in people you have relationships with. So if it were me, I would be chalking this down to experience and moving on. From reading your posts I just can't see that the worthwhile reasons for continuing this outweigh the ones for ending the relationship. It should also help to teach your boyfriend a bit more about mutual respect and compromise, something that he failed to demonstrate in this situation. Perhaps my response would be different had you said he was not jealous about your friendship with the other male. But once you said that, all the red flags poked up big time.

 

I thought about your problem again after I logged off yesterday and painted the scenario in my head that you described. That is, what if you were to hang out with a guy friend - how would your boyfriend react? Well you've now answered that, and to make matters worse, your relationship with your male friend was far more benign in my opinion than his with the stripper.

 

You never know, if you tell him you will leave, he might come to his senses and learn from his experiences, although my feeling is that he isn't quite the right one for you at the moment anyway. I think you telling him that you are considering leaving would be good for both of you. It will reinforce to you that you don't have to be in a relationship and accept things that continuously make you uncomfortable and that you have every right to expect your partner to respect your wishes and be prepared to listen and compromise. It will be good for him because he is being made aware that his attitude and behaviour are not really acceptable.

 

You need to bear in mind that a healthy relationship is one of equal dynamics, equal expectations and equal respect. I think what you have now is missing some of those ingredients. I don't really feel that his having known the stripper a very long time is an excuse for his behaviour. He could still remain friends without maintaining the sort of contact that he does. If the stripper cannot understand and live with that, then that suggests the stripper herself either has some sort of agenda and / or is equally as disrespectful towards the relationship as your boyfriend is.

[Napoleon Bonaparte]

I don't agree with the above posters at all. If you dump him because he is friends with a stripper you aren't a very good girlfriend.

He shouldn't have to bow to your wishes because of YOUR insecurity. That is waaaaaaaaay to controling and in the long run he would resent you for it anyway.

No, she won't always be a sex obsessed stripper. Yes they might always be friends. No you don't have the right to take that away from him.

Good relationships are hard to find. You gonna ruin this one without any evidence of cheating? If he is being a good boyfriend and not cheating then you have a gift in your life. If you lose it because of jealousy then he would be better off without you.

[Brittany16]

Mr.cactus, both your posts gave me alot to think about. I know you really put my situation into concideration. In your first post you mentioned 'We often think that the person we currently love is irreplaceable and that we could never find someone as wonderful again'. I've been thinking about that alot lately... and i've come to realise that in my previous relationships that was where i had gone wrong. I never want to let go because i convince myself that the relationship i'm currently in is too great to give up and i might be making a horrible mistake. I still strongly feel those feeling, expecially with my current bf because i guess you could say he's my first love. I know everyone experiences a 'first love' but its so hard to let go of. Don't get me wrong, he treats me great and everyone seems to think we're meant for eachother... maybe we are, but since we both seem to have jealousy problems that we can't seem to agree on perhaps we both aren't ready for commitment.

I thank you all for your posts, and maybe some of you are right, maybe i am foolish for being controlling and jealous, but i've come to realise it's somehting i wont be getting over. It's going to piss me off every time my bf and her are together, and i dont feel like being pissed off my entire life. Also, if he's not willing to make an agreement with me, he can't be too serious about our relationship.

however, I'm not ging to jump to conclusions because to be honest the whole 'relationship' thing is quite confusing for an amature like myself, lol. I'm going to talk to him about it somemore, maybe we can figure things out.

If anyone has any advice i'd be glad to hear it. If not, thanx for the help, its appreciated. Ill keep you guys posted.

[Mr. Cactus]

Hi Brittany,

 

Personally I have seen no evidence in your posts that you are being controlling, or jealous in an unreasonable way. I think that to the contrary, he is the one being controlling because he cannot bring himself to understand your point of view and continues to hurt you even when you have made that fact that he is hurting you abundantly clear to him. Certainly you are jealous (so is he though), but I think a certain degree of jealously as a personality trait is a healthy thing, since it is one of the many forces that can help keep relationships cemented together and which promotes fidelity. It's only when it goes too far it causes problems. I would certainly be incredibly uncomfortable if I had a girlfriend who hung out with a male stripper. Then again, that won't happen because I am aware of how I would react and thus would not have started a relationship with that sort of girl in the first place. So I am like you. I am comfortable with how I feel and don't wish to (nor feel) that I need to change my attitude. I would instead realise that I would need to seek a girlfriend who thought the same way that you and I (and quite a lot of others) do. I guess though it's not only the occupation of your boyfriend's friend that concerns me, since I have trouble understanding what sort of emotional and intellectual fulfillment he could be getting out of a female companion who talks about sex all the time. It says a lot about the type of person he is, not just the type of person the stripper friend is.

 

I just sense that are feeling a little bit of guilt and / or that you feel you should perhaps try to compromise a bit more. So far as I am concerned, I really don't see that you should have to. I think you have done enough and you can now confront him with a clear conscience. Actually I think you undersold yourself when you said you would stop seeing your male friend if he stopped seeing the stripper, since as I mentioned earlier, your friendship seems healthy and quite benign by comparison. And just know too, your attitude is something that a lot of males would love to find in a girlfriend. Because it means that if you feel this way, it's a very clear sign (at least to me) that you would more than likely to be an incredibly loyal, faithful and loving partner who is willing to expend the bulk of their loving emotional energy on their partner. If more people did that then there would be far more happy relationships and far less "problem" posts at eNotAlone!

[Napoleon Bonaparte]

Cat someone isn't being controling by objecting to who their partner insists they not hang around (unless that person is a threat to themselves or their partner etc). There is no logic in that.

This friend was around before the partner and he would be a disloyal friend to end such a friendship. Am I the only one on this thing who values friendship? Who thinks my closest friends are as important as the people we date?

If he is being loyal then she has nothing to complain about. It's actually quite immature behavior on her part.

The only thing being friends with a stripper says about him is that he has nothing against being friends with strippers.

[DN]

I think you offered a false compromise. He has had this friend a long time and you are trying to pressure him to give up a friendship because of your insecurities.

 

You then offer to give up a friendship with someone he doesn't like and see that as a compromise. But he could see that as:

 

1. You don't trust him.

2. You are trying to force him to give up a friendship because you don't trust him and are prepared to use emotional pressure to get your own way.

3. You are prepared to abandon friendships to get your own way and thereforeeee can't be trusted either in friendships or relationships not to bail when times get a little rough.

 

When you get into a relationship with someone you should accept them for who they are - or not get into the relationship. His friendships are part of who he is and trying to cut him off from any one of them because you disapprove is no different than trying to change any of his other personality traits that you don't like.

 

To say that he should give up his friend to please you is no different than saying he should change his car, or his house or his job, or his clothes. You are trying to change him - and surely that is what controlling someone means.

[btbt]

The fact that she is stripper is not important. Get this out of your mind. Now think, is she a friend who seems to interfere with the relationship between me and my boyfriend by flirtin too much, trying to make me jealous etc.? If so, then you would have something to talk about to your boyfriend regardless whether this woman is a stripper or not.

 

If this woman truly makes you feel uncomfortable and if your boyfriend values his relationship above all, then he should make some changes. This dosen't mean that he has to cut off the friendship with her, but he could tone it down. I have several male friends who once they got married suddenly dropped me as a friend. This hurt me very much, but I realized that they were doing it because their wives were jealous and the guys valued their marriage above all. As much as it hurt me, the guys did the right thing to have a good relationship with their wives. Your boyfriend should be willing to do the same. If he's not, then he's got an issues. But then again, you guys are young, so he might think that it's too early in his life to make this kind of decision. If it really bothers you and he's not willing to change, then find someone who prioritizes YOU.

[Napoleon Bonaparte]

bt those guys were not good friends to begin with. A very close friend is just as important as a gf, wife, kids etc. They are a part of you.

If the wife got jealous because she was that paranoid then they were real coochies for not settling that before the marriage.

[Brittany16]

Thanx alot everyone. I can understand everyone's point of view, but there is something i must let everyone understand... I never asked for him to end his friendship with the stripper, i simply asked that he would not hang out with her alone. If you knew my boyfriends lifestyle you would realize this is hardly any favor to ask for (or so i thought) because he has so many friends. My boyfriend has about... 5 best friends he has pointed out to me, 3 of them being girls, but the stripper is the only one he HAS to spend time alone with. All his other friends he will spend time with in groups, the opportunity comes up for him to spend time alone with them but usually he'll find other things to do, unless its with the stripper. I'm a very paranoid person, so this could all just be my mind playing tricks on me, but i always get this suspecious feeling inside me.

You guys are right tho... I guess i am jealous, i do want him to stop hangiing out with her alone, so if that means im controlling then so be it. But if those reasons aren't something for me to bring or relationship to an end over, what should i do to make this feeling go away? I still feel like i should talk to him about the situation, but i don;t know what to say... If any one could help it would be appreciated. Thanx for everyones previous posts too!!!!

[Napoleon Bonaparte]

Brit honestly at sixteen your relationship with in all probability end in either boredom or cheating anyway because both of you are really young.

How long have either of them known each other?

Is there a sexual history?

Does she ever give signs that she wants him sexually while you are around? Do either of them flirt?

[DN]

To ask someone to give up a friend or change the way they interact with them because you are jealous and insecure is a big deal. Friendships are important - and sticking by a friend is a test of character. The value of friendship is not measured by how many you have. A friend is not of lesser importance because you have others to fall back on when that one is gone. They are friends, not candy bars. All your friends should be important to you.

 

This is not about your boyfriend and his stripper girlfriend. This is about you and your jealousy. If he had anything going with this girl it would have already happened before you arrived in his life.

 

He has given you no concrete reason not to trust him but you are choosing to not trust him anyway. And then you use emotional blackmail to try to force him to ditch his friend, or at least to change the nature of their friendship - to do something disloyal and out of character as a test of his love for you.

 

To say that "if you loved me you would do this for me" is both controlling and manipulative. If I were your boyfriend and you tried to do that to me I would leave you - because you would lose my respect and also because I would not be with someone who does not trust me.

[Brittany16]

Hmm, I understand what your saying. I thank you all a alot for helping me. It is true that i have jealousy problems, i have had them in all my past relationships, He also gets jealous often too.

I guess i still am not ready for a relationship, but i have a lot of time. Its funny how many things you made me realise about myself because it is very true that i have trust issues. I have been cheated on in every relationship i have ever been in, but i guess i should give my current bf a fair chance. I have every reason to trust him. eventhough he does flirt with the stripper when they're together, but thats no reason not to trust him. From the very start i have been on his back about the stripper and its true, they have been friends for a real long time. He has previously had feelings for her... about 2 years ago, but those feelings are long gone. I guess i'll stay off his case about the stripper and see how i feel. I know i mean a alot to him, and he loves me. If it really came down to it he would completely ditch his friend for me, but that is wrong... I know that already (and i never wanted that).

So, Im going to give this a shot. Maybe it'll work maybe it wont, but their are many fish in the sea.

 

Thanx for being honest everyone.