Both married, close friend has decided I'm the one. I'm not

[nibblesthekibbles]

Hello,

Not here for a flaming.. nor permission, just have nowhere else to air this situation.

Lovely friend of 15 years has recently decided that "I'm the one" - which I am most certainly not.

I am happily married, young children. Definitely, 100% not leaving my husband. My friend - not as happily married, but with young children.

I feel desperately sad for him, but have encouraged him to work on things with his wife and I have massively distanced myself.

He has now announced that he must speak to me tomorrow, and whilst I'm unsure of what he's going to say - I know I have to finish our friendship.

I am desperately sad I am sad for him and I am so, so sad for myself, as I am losing a really great asset to my life. I realise I cannot keep him around - it wouldn't be fair on my wonderful husband, my gorgeous babies nor myself.

I can't help but feel I'm abandoning my friend, but this cannot turn into something more than what it is.

I am doing the right thing. I do not invite stress nor drama into my life, I don't need it. I wish he'd just kept his bloody mouth shut.

I actually think your DH is right. Don't meet him, tell him you need to be absent from his life until he sorts his head and that he needs to focus on his family.

ask him not to contact you until he has sorted things out and that you'll see him anon.

You are his escape route, he will realise its all fantasy at some stage and hopefully you're friendship will be back.

Good luck x

I’m so sorry, it’s so disappointing when you think you’ve a true friend and they pull this pathetic shit. The ‘willing to take on [your] children’ line would have me seeing red, how fucking dare he?! How utterly disrespectful to you, your children and your husband.
Absolutely agree with everyone else, don’t meet with him.

I’m sorry you are going through this

Please don't meet him. My friend was murdered in the same circumstances, met him after work and stabbed to death. He had become obsessed and deranged. She even had a friend with her who was badly injured.

My husband is very clear on our friendship and I have explained that friend is going through a difficult time and is sailing a bit close for comfort sorry OP I took this to mean that you hadn't told your dh about the meeting or the intensity of this guy'sfeelings for you. You say your dh thinks he's wonderful. I know my dh wouldn't think a man that put me in this position and said he was going to leave his wife and kids was wonderful.

There must be a part of you that's enjoying the drama just a tad, otherwise you'd have texted no to the meeting.

Be completely honest with your husband. Don't speak to the man. My only caveat to that is if you do ,have your husband there. If this man thinks no one else knows he'll just continue so you need to bust it open a bit and the best person to fully include is your husband. It is not your job to support this man. He has over stepped the mark. I am not a fan of blocking people but I think in this situation I would

I had a close male friend who did a similar thing. I felt furious inside as I also viewed our friendship as a great example of a platonic relationship with a man. When he randomly declared his love (romantic not platonic) for me it was like a slap in the face. I felt betrayed. It was so inappropriate as, although not married, I was in a serious live-in relationship and had not given this friend one iota of a hint that our friendship was anything more than platonic. We had been friends for years but I distanced myself from him after that and the friendship was finished. I understand that sometimes people feel if they don’t say something they may lose out on a possible relationship but when they don’t read the room and selfishly declare their love then I can’t support that in any way. My advice is to absolutely not see him for this chat!

@Maglin if I was enjoying the drama then I'd continue the situation, bask in the compliments and have a good old time thinking I'm special.

I am most certainly not. I feel sick to my stomach.

Anyway, I've dispatched a message wishing him all the best.

I feel shit but it was the correct thing to do.

DH helped me compose the text message, he said he obviously could never approve of another man being interested in me, but acknowledges that my friend has probably lost the plot.

Ah well. I'm sure I'll get over it.

Ugh I had this with someone. Kept saying I’m ‘the one’ and it made me so uncomfortable as I didn’t feel the same. Told him this and he kind of said ‘I understand and respect how you feel, but I still know you’re the one and we’ll be together in the end’ which was the opposite of respecting how I felt. I’m single so a bit different but still a horrible feeling and sad that we can’t be friends anymore and he spoiled things, and like you I’m seeing the whole friendship in a different light

Why on earth would the OP be ‘agonising’ over her DH’s feelings? She’s obviously primarily concerned with her own sadness and annoyance at this turn of events and the ending of a friendship she values, and concerned with whatever aberration is going on in her friend’s mind! She sounds perfectly sensible about it all.

She has told her husband what is going on, but his feelings (which also sound perfectly sensible) don’t trump hers.

Don't meet up with him. A hug is not what be needs from you right now. This is nothing to do with you, it's all in his head and you making yourself more 'real' will not help matters.

I had a male friend do this once (although I was single, just not interested) and I felt like it devalued our friendship. He had told mutual friends we were getting together, without my knowledge. Really ick. We are no longer friends.

Having slept and read this mostly supportive messages, I'd like to say thank you

I can't believe how many posters felt the need to allude that I am somehow enjoying the drama/headache

I'm absolutely heartbroken about this entire shambles, and I've done nothing wrong. I can take a bit of a battering and be accountable if I've misbehaved, but it makes me quite upset that there are always some (presumably) women who will always find fault in the woman, no matter how badly a man has behaved

I am literally prioritising everyone else here - my husband, our children, his wife, his children - I even think I'll be helping my friend, even though he will probably never lay eyes on me again

I too had a friendship like this that I would have used as a of course men and women can be friends example.

I didn't handle it like you because losing the friendship was so devastating to me (and possibly because my marriage wasn't as good as yours at the time) and it led to adecade of heartache while I tried to keep everyone happy.

You're lucky this has happened at a time when you can be strong about it. Imagine if it had happened when you were also feeling fragile and in need of come care/attention.

You're absolutely doing the right thing.

You are handling it the right way OP. Limerence can rear it's ugly head at any one of us. I certainly did not see myself as a homewrecker but the feelings I developed for my close friend made me feel like a woman possessed. I spent hours and hours reading about twin flames (cringe). No rationale helped me until I discovered limerence and my avoidant personality. Now, it's not your responsibility to help your friend see the light but hopefully he will see it in time. Btw your breaking contact with him for now might actually help break the spell. I don't feel anything for the man I believed to be my 'one and only'.

This thread confirms a suspicion I've had for a long time, that straight men and straight women can never truly be friends. The bloke always sees the woman as a possible shag or love interest.

I suspect your first analysis was right. Things have gone awry with his wife and his thought process has been ‘things aren’t like this with nibbles. Why can’t wife be more like nibbles? Life would be better with nibbles. She doesn’t nag me like wife! She listens and is nice to me! Life would be nicer with nibbles! I love nibbles! Nibbles come to me, you are the one!’

He probably hasn’t always loved you. Like many men before, he’s just fixated on you as ‘not like his wife’ and therefore better. And he’s built this up into a whole historically reinvented fantasy in his head.

I know from experiences with friends the extraordinary imaginings men can create in these situations. One became convinced a woman he hardly spoke to was deeply in love with him but was keeping her distance as he was with his fiancé. Unsurprisingly, when he ditched his fiancé this ‘OW’ still hardly spoke to him as this fantasy was entirely in his head.

Oh OP, this is heartbreaking, and like you, I'd also be angry, it all seems so unnecessary. Big love to you, and lots of stomping.

You and your DH sound like you're dealing with it in a very level-headed way, and as a team. You also seem to have a more nuanced view of relationships, including friendships, than is usual on Mumsnet.

Which makes me wonder if there is a niggle, something you haven't quite said yet, that Mumsnet can help you with?

Otherwise I worry that you won't find the support you need here, that MN is likely to goad you from your caring, grounded, nuanced position, into something more polarised and dramatic, which will leave deeper wounds for all of you going forward.

Ah, cross posted, OP.

You don't deserve the hard time you're getting, OP, it's very obvious you feel wretched about a situation that is not of your making. We have enmeshed friendships like this and I'd be mortified and upset too if one of our male friends did this to me. I think the best thing you can do is tell your friend your DH is aware of everything and he either takes a step back and gives his head a wobble and sorts his marriage out or the friendship will have to end. Good luck.

Sorry if I upset you. I think you need to tell your dh exactly what hes said about wanting to take on your kids, if you haven't already. You shouldn't have to deal with that alone. Good luck with it.

A similar thing happened to me, and like the OP I was utterly bewildered and blindsided. I felt a weird mixture of anger and intense grief, that our entire friendship had been a lie and that he was happy to set a bomb off under our friendship, and that I was now bereft of one of my very best friends.
You sound a very good friend OP, I’m so sorry you’re having to go through this, it’s incredibly difficult and destabilising. I think you’ve completely done the right thing. Your friend may be having a mental health crisis or not, or he may just be an arse or not, but either way the nature of his feelings for you means he can’t lean on you to help him work through it. To meet him after he had declared his feelings would have been devastating to his poor wife, should she have ever found out. Well done for doing the difficult but right thing. You poor thing, you must feel utterly wrung out by it all.

He could have been harbouring these feelings for years.

But, it all seems a little too coincidental. His marriage is falling apart and he's just realised he's madly in love with you? More like, he's afraid of being single and thought you'd be the answer to that problem. No thought to you, your life, or what you may actually want. Just that'll you'll do to fill that hole.

He is being incredibly selfish. Stop mourning the relationship. He's a dick and probably always has been but you've just not seen it.

Thank you all again

I'm a bit worldly - I've travelled a lot, worked with lots of men in a male dominated environment and generally raise my eyebrows at a lot of situations.

I'm not flowery or sweet, I have no idea why my friend would ever think life would be particularly easy with me. I am reasonable, but I have high standards and I have worked really hard for everything in my life.

I love my husband and children on a level that is nearly unspoken. The love I have for them just is. It's there, it's impenetrable and they are central to every decision I make.

I initially found all of this so ludicrous that I laughed. I soon stopped and have taken a while, with my husband, to move forward in a measured manner.

Still fucked off and sad though. I know I'll feel better in a few days.

He hasn't responded. He either won't, or he'll send me about 30 messages begging to talk it over.

I'm sorry, OP. This feels awful - sort of the way you'd feel if your old teddy bear suddenly pounced on you.

It's happened to me, after a very longstanding friendship with a former lecturer. We were close and had been for years, and never once in that time did I feel in any way uncomfortable in his presence.

In our later acquaintance I was concerned he'd pushed boundaries once or twice, then one day he suddenly told me out of the blue that I looked like his former wife. I laughed it off, saying I wasn't sure whether to take that as a compliment or not, and he quietly responded: 'I fell in love with her, didn't I?' I'm fairly sure my jaw dropped, but I replied very evenly that looks are an accident and I'm NOT your former wife!

I was desperately sad about this - I'd foolishly trusted him and he was a valued mentor - but there was nothing for it but to break off the friendship for both our sakes. Two years later he died, having not seen me since this occasion. I'm deeply saddened by his death, but I'm still convinced I did the right thing.

Once they've crossed that line, you can't step back over it or ever again enjoy the easy familiarity you've known before.

Don't you just wish they wouldn't do it!?

And yes, OP. Always the bloody woman's fault, isn't it? So depressing, but oh, so predictable.