Ask the Group Chat is Jezebel’s new weekly advice column where Jez staffers will offer their chaotic (and possibly not helpful) guidance. Got a question? Email [email protected] or you can fill out this form.
My best friend is about to get married. We were freshman-year roommates and have stayed close for the last decade. I love her a lot but certain, small resentments have built a bit over time. Anyway, she’s getting married this summer and I recently learned she’s been having a pretty prolonged affair—not because she told me, but because I caught it happening. She justifies it to herself because her fiancé cheated on her once several years ago, which she hadn’t told me before, but they moved forward from it.
She says the affair will end eventually, but she’s in no rush for that to happen. I just don’t know what to do, because it’s very obvious she’s setting herself and many people up for a very bad situation. I don’t know if she truly loves her fiancé, or just doesn’t want to cancel the wedding and lose the life she envisioned for herself. I’ve just kind of froze and don’t know what to tell her, nor do I know what she’d be receptive to. Any advice helps. Even bad advice honestly.
I think at a certain point you have to ask yourself if you’re OK being friends with a bad person—and the extent that you want to participate in someone’s self-destruction. Try to communicate as clearly as you can that all of this is wrong and you can’t support it. Ultimately all you can do is control your actions—and who you choose to be friends with!
One of my favorite sayings of all time is, “Not my circus, not my monkeys!” This is not your problem to solve. I am very much of the mindset that, when your friends make bad decisions, it’s your job to be there for them when it blows up in their face…not to fix it for them before it does. (This is, of course, as long as they’re not putting themselves or you or anyone else in danger.) If she straight out asks you, “Do you think it’s bad I’m having an affair?” you can say, “Yeah, bitch!” But even then…people are going to do what they’re going to do.
If it helps (or at least provides some comfort?), this is pretty much the entire basis of Carrie and Miranda’s relationship in Sex and the City. Carrie knows she shouldn’t be hooking up with Big; she knows Miranda wouldn’t approve so she tries to hide it from her; she eventually tells Miranda; Miranda says something like, “Oh my god, I swear my heart just stopped”; Miranda tells Carrie to stop; Carrie doesn’t…and look! Their friendship way outlasted Carrie and Big’s anyways
Also, I will just add that…if I were you, and I was telling this to my therapist, I feel like my therapist might say, “Tell me about these other small resentments.” Is it possible that you’re focusing on this affair because it feels like an easier and more obvious behavior to call her out on? I know you’re struggling to even bring this up but, at least for me, I’d have an easier time telling a friend, “Maybe you should stop cheating on your fiancé,” than telling them, “These things that you’ve done have really annoyed/hurt/upset/bothered me.” I don’t know! Just some food for thought. Good luck…to your friend only because again, you don’t need to solve this for her!
