No — its not as bad as it sounds (unless you live in Mississippi), but I’m sure you’ve all seen or been affected by the interesting phenomenon in certain friend groups where the girls/guys systematically work thru everyone datable in the group. To be honest, it’s always baffled me. I mean, I am friends with almost all of my exes but not to the point of lets all hang out and I can watch you smootchie all over my friend. And THEN, I get to hear her version of your relationship because, well, she’s my friend and listened to me when I told her all about the romantic date her ex took me on.
My heart is generous, but not armored for that kind of wear and tear. I’m more of the school — you dated my friend within the last 5 years, so its going to take an act of God to get us together.
But a lot of people I know engage in this kind of roulette style dating and don’t seem to think anything about it. One of my friends recently explained that she did it (before she married one of the guys in the group) b/c she walled herself off from strange men in an attempt to protect herself. So her guy friends were the only guys who got to know the real person under her famous smile and she relaxed enough around them to develop interest. And another friend sticks to dating friends because they developed a solid foundation to start.
On the flip side, some of my friends have been incredibly wounded by not knowing that one of those breakups isn’t going to be pretty, so they had to decide, do I lose my friends to save my heart or do I harden up to keep my friends?
And then there are those who only fish outside the group which makes it harder to really know someone before letting them into your life and at times the group newbie loses some great friends in the break up b/c the group insider knew them first.
My question is… for those of you who do this: HOW do you move on like that so quickly and do you really get a good chance for making a clean break of it before dating your next friend? Has it ever harmed your circle to the point of splitting friendships?
And for those of you who don’t … Do you have an unwritten code among your friends that exes are off limits or is it something you would consider if the right one came along? Have you ever wanted to date someone in your group and the break up dynamic is exactly what stopped you from pulling the trigger?
There are friends and there are acquaintances. The group I hang out with is pretty incestuous. No, we’re not all related, even my Mississippi friends hold to that taboo (but my Arkansas friends…yikes), yet many have dated each other so that now there is a varied and tight web of…what?…”interconnectedness”. Is that the politically correct term to use? These naughty knots are so tight that sometimes we have an informal (purely joking, I assure you) contest to see who’s sleep with the most people at the given function, party, event. Crass? Crude? Obviously, but that’s my crowd. That’s one of the things I find endearing about them–they shun or like to think that they shun the cultural mores. Which just means they cling that much harder to their own subcultural values.
But as I was saying: There are friends and there are acquaintances. I can’t say I’ve ever dated a friend. I’m friends with my exes, I’ve known some of my partners as “friends” before we dated, even though we really weren’t friends, not in any real sense. We didn’t hang out regularly, our contact with each other was brief and sporadic, blah, blah, blah. Were we friends? Yes, if you think of friendship as something that you can chart on a spectrum. They were on the faded end–friendly but not very close, hence, the word “acquaintance”.
Where am I going with this? Nowhere in particular, except to say that I understand the incestuous circle you write of. It evolves though in different ways. For me, from my point of view, it happens differently than you describe: After I date someone, they become part of THE circle of friends: They’ve become part of the clique.
A friend of mine just summed this phenomenon up by saying the following: “You know, every time you start dating someone new, [her fiancé] says: ‘Oh shit, there goes Scott bringing in another stray, who’s going to stick around when they break up.’”
See the difference for me is that I generally met the people I date at the same places and then they become friends with my friends and then, when the breakup does happen…well, my exes new friendships seem to last. Which all-in-all isn’t a bad thing, even though it can make life difficult for a while and if not difficult, then uncomfortable. But that’s because I don’t move on as quickly as others. It may take a while for my feelings to set, but once they do, they don’t melt easily–even if it’s the best thing for me and of my own accord.
yes, but Scott, to your credit — you do bring home such nice strays!
Just for the record, I didn’t call anyone a “stray.” I was merely quoting.
important distinction…mea culpa
Lawless, why do you even bait me with this….I cannot even get on my soap box, but I will pass this on to everyone that needs to read it.
There is the saying “Don’t pee in your own swimming pool”.
Kel,
I exist to bait you.
Kel
Pingback: Can You Ever Date a Friend’s Ex? « Dating and Mating in America