To not allow him to contact my friend, and/or to tell him why?

[Cristicalmass]

I have a new boyfriend. He’s wonderful and we’re really quite grossly into each other.

He met my friends for the first time last weekend at a friend’s engagement party.

One of the friends there is someone I love dearly but have distanced myself from because she has history for getting close to people’s partners. No evidence of her sleeping with these men or anything, but just getting uncomfortably close, finding reasons to befriend them, contacting them etc. She actually doesn’t only do it with partners. If you introduce her to any new friend/family member, she’s befriended them and keeping in touch with them. In some ways it’s quite nice but it’s also made many of us uncomfortable in the past.

She is extremely beautiful and enigmatic. And single.

New boyfriend was very charmed by her. At some points I felt a bit invisible while they were chatting. They had a lot in common. Honestly, I was deeply uncomfortable. I am mature enough to have rationalised that it was hopefully just a combo of my insecurity, alcohol and him making the effort with my friends.

They ended up talking about a lot of professional things that they have in common and she’s offered to help him with his new job search, and to meet up for coffee and that she may even have a job for him.

I don’t want it. I know it’s controlling, I know relationships need trust, I know it’s immature.

But I don’t want it. And I would like to be honest with him about why.

AIBU to raise it with him? She’s asked me to tell him to get in touch to discuss further.

Is that you, old friend? Are you stalking me again?!

It very well could be that she just doesn't realise the impact of her actions.

What actions? She's being friendly. By the OPs admission, she hasn't done anything other than be friendly and text her friends. Although she is guilty of being "extremely beautiful and enigmatic. And single." And the impact seems to be her so-called friends being jealous and bitchy behind her back.

100% this

Not sure I'd have this woman as a friend.

I had a friend you couldn't trust for a moment with a BF, she had every intention of being the object of desire for any man in the room whether she was interested in him or not.

She broke up no end of relationships (obviously not good ones to start with) but she;d quite happily have the men hanging around while she gave them nothing in return.

This sounds like my sister. I hate introducing friends to her because she acts as though I’m just the stepping-stone to her. She’ll be overly useful to them, but it’s obviously just a ploy to get them away from me. When she is fed up of them she treats them appallingly.

OP - it will sound OTT if you say anything over to your boyfriend but I’d try and keep them apart and not encourage a friendship between them.

So you added friends of your friends on Facebook and then they became your friends, wtf and youre calling others batshit 🤣🤣 that's pretty sad, no offence

All the cool girls on the thread need to read The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood to understand this type of person properly. And what you are laying yourself wide open to.

When single women post here saying that female friends have distanced themselves since the friends became single, and they’re wondering why, someone will point out that many coupled-up women see single women as a threat and worry that they’re going to ‘steal’ their man. Then posters will pile on saying that’s ridiculous, they’ve never viewed/treated a single woman like that, the op is imagining it etc etc. But here is proof. This woman is single and gasp beautiful and worse is friendly to others…she must be a shameless hussy out to nab someone else’s fella, or at the very least to let the op know that she could have him, if she wanted to, so the op’s solution is to distance herself.

I agree. I’m wondering how many of Gannets friends have gone low contact and she doesn’t understand why. It’s weird and overstepping behaviour and I doubt everyone has been completely fine with it.

People like this tend to exist in their own universe though - maybe narcissistic tendencies or undiagnosed neuro-diversity?

If one of my friends immediately started getting in contact with any new bf or friend I’d introduced them to I’d be like 🤔

You’re being disingenuous - have you read the OP’s posts?

This person is wanting to get in Contact with the ops new bf to meet for coffee to help him with his career apparently. She also has form for getting cosy with other women’s partners. Being a shoulder to cry on to the men when they fall out.

Is that a woman you’d want meeting your partner for coffee? It sounds massively overstepping the mark to me and like she wants to be in the centre of everyone’s lives and business. It’s actually quite sinister.

I agree with pp’s that you can’t stop someone from cheating if that’s what they’re going to do but if my partner wanted to go and start meeting a single friend of mine I’d tell him to sling his hook.

I also wouldn’t be friends with a woman like this.

Obviously I had been introduced to them, met them at parties and so on.

How on earth do you think adults make friends?

I think if she has form in overstepping boundaries then that’s an issue. I take your lead on how far to go with a fiends partner, colleague of friend from your friend! You don’t just jump in like this is a person you’ve randomly met who isn’t connected to your actual friend and start agree img and arranging to meet up independently of said friend, you just don’t. I wouldn’t like it if I introduced my new partner to a friend and she tried to arrange to meet him for coffee etc. it’s a bit gaslighty to insinuate that it’s insane for anyone to have a problem with that because it’s very problematic.

But do you go and start trying to make arrangements to meet with the new partners of your friends alone and start offering to help them in their career?

There is a difference with being friendly and being overly friendly and wanting to see new men individually away from their new partners ... that's the weird bit.

Even down to being at an event where you've just met this new partner of your friend and completely dominating his time so her friend feel left out and invisible. It's not on. He should have been more aware of that too on that score.

I can't stand people like this she is sly and manipulative ,probably doesn't 'want' the men she makes a beeline for but enjoys the power she has.
I think her behaviour is quite stereotypical for woman like this towards men but what i find more uncomfortable is the way you describe the way she likes to 'befriend' others friends and family ,totally unacceptable because she is doing this to get one over on you ,to find out anything she can about you,she enjoys making you feel insecure.
Enigmatic my arse ,i bet that image is something she has mastered to lure in her prey, she knows exactly what she is doing.
She is not a friend ,a friend wouldn't dream of making someone feel the way you describe , ditch her asap ,tell your boyfriend this is what she does and if he does get swayed by her then he's not worth bothering with is he ?

Well it depends if we work in the same or overlapping industries, doesn't it? My industry is very dependent on contacts and networking so yes, this has probably happened several times.

"Dominating his time" = having a conversation with him? At parties, DP tend to split up and work the room separately, we're not joined at the hip. We see enough of each other on a daily basis, parties are where we talk to other people!

If you have bad vibes about this I would trust your gut. Women know when another woman is just being friendly and when they are flirting. If she's flirting I think that's not particularly good loyal behaviour from someone who is supposed to be your friend. And I think planning to meet your new boyfriend without you (and without her really knowing him herself so they aren't friends) is weird and a bit desperate on her part.

Well you didnt say that, you said you go on fb and add friends of friends and they are now your friends which would be pretty bizarre don't you think?

Why are you friends with this person? Can you and your other friends not cut her off if she’s so awful?

She said she did this ‘if she got on with them’. Indicating that they’d met and had conversations.

It was very clear what she meant and it’s not at all bizarre.

So you do try and arrange sole meets with your friends new partners the moment you meet them. Why are you asking him out and not include your friend in that? That is not an act of a friend.

And dominating his time does not equal having a conversation. You can have a conversation that includes your friend and other people, and that allows him to leave the conversation and mingle not locking him in and making offers of help immediately. Hopefully he was trying to be polite to his GFs friend albeit really lacking in emotional intelligence for allowing her to do that and not hoping for a hook up with a woman who was playing a version of the pick me dance.

No one has said you need to spend all your time at events with your DP, of course we all split up and talk to other people, that's normal.What OPs friend was doing was something rather different.

The OPs friend is not acting like a friend, she's acting like a mate poacher, whether she means to or not is by the by.

If you want to stand up for mate poaching tactics, that's your opinion you are entitled to it. I will say though that acting like a mate poacher is not a friendly act in any way shape or form and it puts people in very bad positions and places.

Some of these responses really show some people just want to never acknowledge that beautiful women can and do use it.

It's inappropriate to private message friends partners/offering shoulders to cry on etc.

There are two possible reasons:

1. She has no idea what social norms are or how uncomfortable she makes people.

2. She does know and it's a form of control.

Tell him it makes you uncomfortable and if he ignores you bin him.

Tell her it makes you uncomfortable. Why on earth are a group of people allowing this behaviour to carry on unchallenged? She needs to know so that she can either put it right or find a group of friends who are unbothered.

Either way - if it bothers you, why have them in your life 🤷‍♀️

Maybe the rest of us don’t just have a single group of eight female friends. You’d find what the OP describes a lot less odd if you branched out a bit and accepted that lots of people have overlapping, mixed-sex friendship groups and individuals from different epochs and different areas of their lives.

"This is really not the situation at all. She has been inappropriate in the past with a friend’s boyfriend. It didn’t get to infidelity but she was texting him offering to be a shoulder to cry on for him through a difficult time he and his girlfriend, while talking about said girlfriend (her friend), behind her back."

I wouldn't want to be anywhere near a woman who would do this.
She's toxic.

OP how do you feel about your new BF being so obviously charmed by your friend ? Has it changed your feelings for him? Given you the 'ick' that he isn't emotionally intelligent enough to realise he made you uncomfortable?
I think that would really piss me off tbh that he was so obviously 'charmed' by her, in front of me.
Your 'friend' is a dickhead too. She'd be binned off too.

Thanks for the advice but I’m good 😉

I don’t feel the need to schmooze and have surface level “friendships” with lots of different people. For a start I’m not a “corporate” type who has lots of contacts and acquaintances in order to further my career or see what they can do for me etc.

I have a group of friends from childhood, a group of mum friends, a large family and a few people of both sexes I get on well with and occasionally go for a drink with from my hobby group. And that is the perfect amount of friends for me personally. I’d find it weird and overstepping the mark if any of these female friends met my dp and then wanted to meet up with him one on one “for coffee and to help him further his career”. I don’t have superficial friendships and just because you are possibly happy to push yourself onto other peoples partners and have meet ups with them in the name of widening your friendship group doesn’t mean other people have to be comfortable with it. I know, I know - so very bourgeois!

Maybe you have friends who don’t like the fact you do this but don’t want to tell you you’re overbearing?

We have a poster here saying she finds the whole thing uncomfortable and that her friend is predatory/has form for doing this and getting uncomfortably close to partners of friends and going behind those friends backs to offer a shoulder to cry on to the men. In what world is that not fucking weird? If it’s normal in your world I’m glad I’m not in it!

It’s quite arrogant to presume that your way is the right way and anyone else just “needs to branch out a bit” 😂