We all have best friends of the opposite sex, and if your boyfriend has a best girl friend and you have an issue with him having a relationship with other females you need to keep yourself in check and your jealousy under wraps girl friend! We can and should all have friends of the opposite sex, of course. But what about that gray area where your boyfriend and his closest girl friend have an underlying flirtatious side to their relationship? This immediately poses the question: how close is too close?
I know I have maybe just as many best guy friends as I do girl friends, which is usually the norm for most people I know. However, when do we draw the line in intimacy in co-ed friendships and how do we balance with our best friend of the opposite sex relative to keeping your partner happy and comfortable with such a relationship?
I was in a similar situation in college where my boyfriend of one year had a best girl friend that was a friend of mine also. We all hung out in the same group and were a big happy family of friends, but, there were times when I would be totally caught off guard and shocked by some too-intimate interactions between my then boyfriend and his best girl friend.
For example, during college on a fun Fourth of July weekend my boyfriend and his best girl friend were laughing hysterically about an inside joke between the two of them. My boyfriend laughed cheerfully and then proceeded to slap his best girl ‘friend’ on the ass! Or how about that time on his birthday when this same girl ‘friend’ brought my boyfriend a penis shaped birthday cake for his 21st?
Inappropriate actions such as these really made me uncomfortable and got to me as they were much too intimate and I felt as if I was sharing my boyfriend with another woman, literally. As much as I was cool with him being close with his girl friends I was shocked and confused by these sexual innuendoes being thrown into my relationship with him on a consistent basis. I constantly felt violated and that such actions had crossed a fuzzy line into a place of what I felt was a gray area of a friendship with sexual undertones. In this situation, in retrospect I was right, no one should have to deal with their intimate partner being intimate with someone else let alone their best ‘friend’.
If your boyfriend treats you just as equal and synonymous as he does his best girl friends and vice versa, then Houston we have a problem.
Ultimately you must be able to determine not only what you’re comfortable with but also where the intentions lie in your partner’s actions. Assessing how your boyfriend interacts with others is very important and on the other hand you yourself need to keep your intimate relationships with other guy friends in check and make sure you don’t make him feel uncomfortable or that you treat him like every other one of your guy friends.
If your boyfriend’s best girl friend is just calling him too much and that makes you jealous, well girl you need to get over it because he’s allowed to be friends with whoever he wants and if that were a guy calling all the time you probably wouldn’t care. However, if your boyfriend treats you just as equal and synonymous as he does his best girl friends and vice versa, then Houston we have a problem.
You need to know exactly where your boundaries lie and always voice what you are and are not comfortable with in order to have an open dialogue with your partner so that you are not put in situations like these or give anyone room to be inappropriate. Remember, people will treat you however you allow them to so stand your ground, set your relationship boundaries and make sure you’re comfortable with what your partner is doing.
