Best Friends Forever - Irene S. Levine [31]
Yet Nicole felt comfortable enough to call Lacey crying about her boyfriend who dumped her or to pick up girls in front of her while at clubs. She even started getting “frisky” with one of them in front of Lacey. Lacey was feeling increasingly sore and sensitive. She confronted Nicole about her behavior, but Nicole made no apologies. She told Lacey that they were friends, not exes, since they were never in a long-term relationship. “She seems to have conveniently ignored that I still had romantic feelings for her,” says Lacey.
The anger kept escalating and Lacey admits to becoming passive-aggressive at times. Nicole requested a break. Several months passed and the two women tried to be “just friends” again, but it never worked. Lacey learned how exceedingly difficult if is to downgrade a romance to a platonic friendship after someone has been dumped. In her case, there was too much residual hurt and anger.
THREE’S A CROWD
Threesomes can easily become friendship killers when two women have an extremely close relationship and a third person, male or female, suddenly enters the picture.
In the case of Carey and Jillian, a possessive boyfriend killed the friendship. Carey, now 24, and Jillian had been best friends during elementary and middle school as well as their first two years of high school. People teased them because they were always at each other’s side. Carey became part of Jillian’s family and Jillian became part of hers. They did homework together, joined the same clubs at school, and had many friends in common. They spoke about taking trips to Europe and living together after high school.
Their relationship changed when Carey’s family moved away, but Carey and Jillian still spoke on the phone and saw each other twice a year. Through their senior year in high school, Carey would spend Easter week with Jillian’s family and Jillian would return the visit towards the end of summer vacation.
Carey was commuting about forty miles to work in a hotel in downtown Chicago, where she was a front desk clerk. It wasn’t an easy time for her. When she got home each evening, she seemed to argue constantly with her parents. Her parents didn’t like her coming home late and disliked her new boyfriend, Marc, her supervisor and the manager at the hotel. Marc was in his early 40s, considerably older than she was, and divorced with two children. With alimony and child support payments, there wasn’t much money left from his salary to spend on himself or anyone else. He lived frugally in a small studio apartment not far from work, where they often met after hours.
Carey impulsively decided to move in with Marc after a couple of months, hoping to minimize the hassles with her parents and to reduce the length of her commute. She was able to walk to and from work and she liked him “enough” even though he didn’t seem like “marriage material.” The space was small, but they made do. When she told Jillian the news, her friend was angry beyond belief. “She felt that I had ruined our plans to live together after high school,” says Carey.
Carey and Jillian did live together eventually—just not as they had originally planned. When Carey and Marc realized they could afford a larger two-bedroom if they found a third roommate, Carey thought that inviting Jillian to move in with them might be a fix for more than one problem. With their recommendations, Jillian was able to get a job in the same hotel and achieve some independence from her family. Carey loved the idea of having her best friend nearby, and with Jillian contributing a third of the rent, she and Marc could have more space—or so she thought.
They may have acquired more square feet of apartment, but the diminished psychological space began to feel oppressive. Jillian had moved in with the expectation that she and Carey would pick up where they left off, certainly thinking they would spend more time together as housemates. But whenever she asked Carey to go out with her, Carey wouldn’t go because Marc would make her feel bad about leaving him.
One night, the three roommates went