Myjellybean.com

Dear Jellybean,

I need a tie breaker, and fast! My boyfriend and I have been dating for 6 months now, and I feel like our relationship is slowly falling apart because of this girl. Throughout our relationship there's this girl, "Julia", who keeps trying to hang out with him (alone). Julia has a boyfriend of her own of over a year, and he loves her very much, but he doesn't know that any of this is going on because he lives in another town. You see, Julia didn't always try to "seduce" my boyfriend, she only started to do this after we got into a fight. Not to mention that her and him weren't even friends before, they were only acquaintances because they had a couple of classes together last year. Since the fight, Julia has been using the smallest excuses to talk to my boyfriend, such as asking to borrow a pencil from him in the hall, asking about that music CD he was "supposed" to lend her, etc.

After she got past this small phase to get closer to him, she began calling him. Once I was over his house when she called - she had asked him to hang out with her on Saturday night. I heard her saying so because the room was quiet enough for me to hear her through the speakers of his phone. I cut him some slack for this because he told her he was busy that day anyway AND he told me that he didn't want to answer her call when he saw that it was her number. I told him that he could answer, though, because i didn't want it to make it seem like i was jealous.

Now the phone calls, the lending, and the invitations have become more frequent. She even became close with his crew of friends. Every time i tried telling him how this made me feel, he shrugged it off and defended her. He told me that he thought she wasn't doing it with the intention of hurting me. That's hard for me to believe because i truly feel like she's doing this to hurt me and for my boyfriend and i to break up over this. I still cant help but wonder why she would hang out with a bunch of boys alone (some of them are taken) while she still has a boyfriend of her own.

I presented this scenario to some of my friends without using actual names and their takes on this situation were pretty much split in half. Some of them thought that the boy (my boyfriend) shouldn't stop being friends with the girl (Julia) simply because his girlfriend's rivalry with her. Others thought that the boy should stand by his girlfriend and stop talking to the other girl (Julia) because that is totally disrespectful.

I personally think that by having him be friends with her is disrespectful to me. I told him once that it hurt me to know that he doesn't stand up for me in this situation even when he knew all of the bad things that girl has done to me. I REALLY need some advice because i feel like our relationship is tearing apart. I feel like breaking up with him over this, which i know is exactly what she wants and once we do break up, i know she wont even talk to him anymore because her mission is done. Is it wrong for me to feel like it's not right for my boyfriend to hang out with another girl alone? let alone someone who doesn't like me and will try to trash talk me? I really need to know if it's a reasonable reason to get upset over AND how to talk to him about this! I don't want to seem like a jealous girl who breaks up a "friendship" simply because I don't like the girl (even though i know that deep inside they aren't that good of friends anyway).

Love,

Heartbroken Girl

Dear Heartbroken Girl,

This is a complicated situation. If the girl in question, who tries to hang out with your boyfriend, was just some girl at his school who didn't know you, I would probably tell you that while your jealous feelings were natural, you should trust your boyfriend, and allow him the freedom to choose his own friends, whether they be boys or girls. I would tell you to be on the lookout for any signs that they were getting "too" close, such as him cancelling dates with you to hang with her, or starting to talk about her to you all the time, but I'd say you should let it be.

However... things are not really that simple here, are they? You and this girl had a fight, and that's when she started trying to get close to your boyfriend. I agree with you that this is probably not a coincidence, and part of what this girl is doing, in spending time trying to get close to your guy, is about upsetting you and taking your boyfriend away to get back at you for some perceived thing you did to her.

So, yes, I think it is reasonable for you to upset. I think you should talk to your boyfriend again, telling him some of the above. Explain that you don't want to control who he's friends with, and that you would never tell him to stop being friends with someone he likes. But you can explain that his friendship with this girl is probably going to cause you some anxiety, for the specific reason that you and she don't like each other, and you don't trust her motives completely.

That doesn't mean you should try to end their friendship, though. If it were me, I'd actually try to horn in on it as much as possible. Find out when he's going to be hanging with the guys and her, and make a point of showing up there too. Put your arm around him, sit on his lap, or whatever, and generally make a big show of how close and happy you and your boyfriend are together. At the very least, it will irritate the girl you don't like. And hopefully, it will also send her a signal that you are your boyfriend are just fine, thank you very much, and she's not going to be able to break you up.

One word of warning. If your boyfriend tries to block you from hanging with his group when she's around, that's when it's time to get suspicious. Being friends with a girl is one thing, but needing to see her away from your girlfriend is quite another. If they are really just friends, and there is nothing more than that in his mind, he should be happy to have you in on the fun. If not, I'd think seriously about why you are putting so much work into this relationship. I know you don't want this other girl to "win" - but some prizes are better than others, and more worth having, if you know what I'm saying. Good luck with everything - I hope it works out in a way that's good for you.