by SG’s Team Agony feat. Atlea
Let us answer life’s questions – because great advice is even better when it comes from SuicideGirls.
[Atlea in Temptation Waits]
Q: I’m head over heels in love with him. We have a rich, intoxicating, romantic, sexual energy between us that I’ve never experienced with anyone else before. I’m smitten. He makes me smile, laugh, swoon, and my stomach fill to the brim with butterflies every time our eyes meet. The only problem is, he’s my roommate. And he has a girlfriend.
Let’s call him “Blue.”
Blue and my relationship extends back about 8 months now. I was living in my own place, with different roommates. We met in the summer, via mutual friends, at a cookout and later a party. A party where I proceeded to get rather intoxicated, and we became inseparable for the rest of the night. He was in the middle of teaching me a card game when I felt a puke coming along. I nonchalantly excused myself and scurried away to the porcelain god and began my worship in private.
Moments later he was there, taking care of me. Rubbing my scalp, hair, my back with a firm, confident delicacy, warm with affection. I remember, in a state of drunkenness that was beginning to fade to sleep, looking up at him, with his sheepish, clever smirk. Now I remember thinking to myself, and honestly I really don’t know even to this day if I actually spoke this aloud, but I remember looking up in those beautiful brown eyes and knowing “I’m probably falling in love with you.”
Ding, ding, ding! Right-o!
Over the next few days numbers were exchanged, the texting and phoning frenzy ensued, and the “platonic” sleepovers began. Platonic = nibbling, cuddling, poking, and prodding, tickling and giggling, massages, caresses.
Well, the platonic sleepovers digressed (or progressed, depending on how you look at it) into something a little less than innocent. Roving hands, love bites on the back of our necks. But he was still the with girlfriend.
We’ll call her “Pink.”
I interrogated him. I pushed him. I demanded a solution, because I had no intention of being anyone’s mistress. He said he “didn’t know how to breakup with her.” Personally, this girl and I have very different in values, interests, and lifestyles. I really don’t care for her.
He said he felt bad breaking up with her, because he was the only friend she had. It had been a few years, but it finally started to crumble and she wouldn’t have sex with him. She was very uninterested in sex, and Blue is quite the opposite. He said to me: “What’s a relationship without sex or passion? A friendship.”
The days oozed by, still, nothing done about Pink. Sexual tension began mounting. We addressed it by deciding to try to avoid being alone with one another. We tried to establish a “no-touchy” agreement, and kept things on a “just friends” basis while he was in a relationship. However, we’re both creatures of passion, and self-control is a fleeting thing.
We’d drunkenly make out in the conveniently empty kitchen at parties, play footsie and hold hands under the table, whisper dirty words in secret, and then the following day we’d “have to talk about it” again, say we’d be good, this can’t happen again, etc. The cycle repeated and repeated.
There were indiscreet butt-grabs, exploring fingers in backseat car rides, dirty texts. We even ended up back at my place one night after a night out at the bars and the inevitable happened.
Time passed, my lease approached its end, I began looking for a new residency and still nothing was done about Pink. My feelings only intensified. Our scandalous secret remained.
Everything happened so fast. His house had an open room, I’d be saving tons of money on rent, I’d be just blocks from work, plus his other roommates were my best of friends. I went for it. We talked it over, we both agreed we could be roommates. I tried to have no expectations, aside from two hopes:
1. We’d move past all this BS, cultivate a great friendship, and forget any of this ever happened. I’d start dating someone else and things would be dandy.
2. Blue and Pink would separate. Blue would express his undying love for me and we’d get married and have babies and live happily ever after. (I tried to avoid admitting this one to myself).
So that was then. Now, here I am, sleeping just 25 feet away from him (and usually his girlfriend) every night, my heart aching. I love him more than ever. We’re badder than ever. We’ve had sex, we’ve fooled around, and kissed, and touched, but furthermore we’ve grown even closer emotionally, yadda, yadda yadda…
I’ve lived here for some months now, and I live with my love moment-to-moment. Pink is still around. Blue seems unhappy in his relationship. I can’t say anything. I’m his “roommate.” I want to tell him more than anything that I love him, but I entertain the idea that it would be wise not to. I’m back and forth between treating him with indifference, to trying to express my love in silent ways. Some days I feel used. I feel like I’m lying to Pink every time I see her, chat and pal around with her. Some days I feel as if I should be patient. A part of me feels – and pardon the cheese – that we’re meant for one another.
SG lovelies, am I a fool to think that we may end up together in some perfect fairytale one day? Do I express my feelings and risk freaking him out and creating an awkward living environment? Or am I making this too easy for him, letting him have me on the side while he avoids dealing with breakup?
My, what a mess I’ve made.
Xoxox
A: Wow, what a situation! While most people might decide to back away to avoid getting hurt, it seems you’ve actually made it so that you pretty much have to think about it all the time. I can’t even imagine how fast your little hamster must be running up in there.
It’s a little unclear to me if you guys are still fooling around on the downlow, or if the shenanigans have come to a stop since you’ve moved in. I’m going to assume they haven’t. Personally I think that, for you to get a clear perspective, they probably should for the time being. There’s no way to evaluate your feelings while he’s nibbling on your ear every time you walk by him, your brain can’t compete with that. At least mine wouldn’t.
Let’s first check out your two hopes post-moving in. On the one hand, you seem to want to cultivate a friendship. On the other, you want a happily ever after with Prince Charming in your arms. Let’s pretend that his relationship would fizzle, or that he would put an end to it. What happens next? You guys immediately go out? Would you start a courtship from the beginning, or just go into it as is? Would you feel that much better going into it right after the breakup, considering you already have guilty feelings towards Pink? As much as it may be true that their relationship isn’t good, they’re the only ones who can truly do anything about it. Believe me, I have friends in shitty situations that in my opinion should really not be dating, but it’s not my place to decide that for them, it’s something they need to resolve on their own to grow, and to keep themselves from making the same mistakes.
Putting Pink aside, and focusing on Blue, I think that you are definitely giving him too much of yourself. I’m in no way saying that he’s taking advantage of you and is aware of it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. He’s got the comfort of a relationship, albeit not a great one, and when things go bad he’s got available you 25 feet away. When you’ve talked about your situation with him, did you ever discuss how he’d feel if you started bringing someone home? If you met someone and started dating that person, would the housemate relationship be strained because of past feelings on your part, and possible jealousy on his? Not that he’d have a right to say shit, but those feelings are still to be considered since you are both living under the same roof. And if we forget that you may meet someone else, being honest with yourself, could you live there knowing nothing’s going to happen between the two of you? It sounds like moving there was a great decision financially, but you should really think about what it’s doing to you emotionally. I know you’re friends first, and you don’t want things to get weird, but sometimes in life we have to think about ourselves first, because if we don’t we end up pushing people away anyway.
Finally, be true to yourself. It’s the only way to go. Going back and fourth between treating him with indifference and secretly showing him love isn’t fucking with him as much as it’s fucking with you. At the end of the day, he’s sleeping soundly with a warm body next to him, and you aren’t. Showing him contempt when he knows you have feelings for him isn’t having the effect you probably want it to. Instead, it’s probably working you up into over analyzing everything he does. Did that little smile he shot you while holding her hand mean anything? Did those footsteps sound like they stalled half a second when he walked past your door?
Honestly, if he’s incapable of dealing with the situation he has on his hands now, I highly doubt that he’d be ready for another relationship. At least not now. I think that if you are going to continue living there and being pals with him, you need to do just that. Set limits for both of you, and maybe ask him to not share what’s happening in his relationship with you. And if you guys are so close that you can’t handle that, maybe a bit of distance would do some good. If you’ve talked and talked about how bad his relationship is already, then maybe some sort of ultimatum is in order. Not for you to start dating or not, but for him, as a friend of yours, to get his life together. He won’t be any happier with Pink than he is now if they don’t deal with it, whether that means moving forward as a couple or calling it quits. But until they deal with it, try to get yourself to a place where you won’t be going crazy. Sometimes, unfortunately, that means admitting that nothing will happen. Being in a slump is a terrible, terrible thing emotionally, and you should do everything in your power to keep yourself from getting there.
Atlea
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