My Girlfriend Is Jealous Of My Girl Friend

This week we have a man with a female best friend, but his girlfriend is getting jealous.

Some people have problems that require delicate advice from a qualified professional. Others just need a random guy on the internet to kick ’em in the teeth (with honesty, that is). I’m the latter. Welcome back to Tough Love.

[referenced url=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2018/04/dating-apps-are-for-scheduling-dates-people/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/eypgqsfpcemnbzvbdpai.jpg” title=”Dating Apps Are For Scheduling Dates, People” excerpt=”Some people have problems that require delicate advice from a qualified professional. Others just need a random a guy on the internet to kick ’em in the teeth (with honesty, that is). I’m the latter. Welcome back to Tough Love.”]

Note: I’m not a therapist or health professional of any kind. People ask for my advice and I give it to them. End of transaction. If you have a problem with it, feel free to file a formal complaint here. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get on with it.

Hey Patrick,

My girlfriend hates my best friend, who is a girl. OK, hate is a strong word, but she isn’t happy about how close we are. It isn’t rocket science that having a female best friend would be the cause of some jealousy, but the fact is that she’s a lesbian and I literally have no feelings for her whatsoever. Sometimes I sugar coated how close we are and claimed that we only hang out for an extended period of time when there’s a third party or a group involved. That’s on me, I shouldn’t have been dishonest.

But slowly I’ve been trying to warm her up to the idea that I actually do spend a lot of time with her and that we’re close to the point that I realised that most of my friendships in the past barely grazed the definition of “genuine”. Yes, this friend is very important to me.

The lady’s not having it though. I don’t wanna choose sides. I’m too deep in both relationships with these women and I love both of them very much (in different ways of course). My friend wants to be closer to my girlfriend, but it will be hard. What should I do?

Regards,

Having A Headache

Hey Having A Headache,

Your girlfriend sounds a bit insecure, and she’s being a little irrational here. Your friend is not interested in you or the rest of your gender, and based on what you wrote, I’m assuming you’ve made it clear that you have no romantic feelings for her whatsoever. What is making her so jealous, I’m not sure. Maybe she can’t get over the stereotype that all men think lesbians are hot, or perhaps she thinks you’re so great that you’ll turn her or something (ridiculous, I know). Or! She’s just a generally insecure person. It happens.

That said, HAH (I’m abbreviating your name, not laughing at you), her insecurity may be somewhat validated by your actions. You lied to her about how close this friend was to you at the beginning, and now you suddenly want to spend more time with her, and do it alone, and “Babe, trust me, it’s no big deal.” You have to understand that, from the outside, it might appear that you’re only now growing closer to this person and developing a deep relationship with them – as if something about your romantic relationship is making you stray.

It may not even be your friend that your girlfriend dislikes, but the increasing amounts of time that you want to spend with her. To your girlfriend, there’s been a change with no apparent cause, you’re suddenly weird about it all, and it makes her feel uncomfortable. And now, you can’t really tell her the truth about how you’ve always been this close because then she’ll wonder why you felt the need to hide it from her in the first place. Why did you hide it, HAH?

At this point, your best bet is to get them to spend some time together. A group setting will work, but it would be better for them to have some one on one time. They need to get a feel for what the other person is really like. Either way, you shouldn’t be there for this. You don’t want it to be a session of tug-of-war, you want them to be communicating and clearing the air. If your girlfriend can finally see there’s nothing to worry about, maybe this jealousy issue will go away. Who knows? They might even become good friends themselves.

If your girlfriend isn’t up for that, and the jealousy doesn’t fade, you need to lay your feelings all out there. She needs to know that your friend is very important to you, and that this situation will make you unhappy if it continues. You aren’t making a threat when you do this – this isn’t an ultimatum – but you do need to be clear that her trying to keep you from the people you deem to be your genuine friends will be a problem. The bottom line is this is her issue, not yours. You may have made her insecurity worse with your dishonesty, but at the end of the day, you have to stand up for the relationships that matter to you most.

That’s it for this week. I probably didn’t make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but sometimes what you need is some tough love. ‘Til next time, figure things out for yourself.