Dear Diary
Let’s get straight to the important stuff. Karate Kid replied to my intense text message maybe 40 minutes after I sent it the other night. I did read it but didn’t want to believe it as I was so caught up with being angry. Also, I had made it clear that I didn’t want to talk about it. My message’s intent was strictly to inform him that I was very upset and why he was the cause.
His reply was: “Ok. That was a joke…..hence the “:p” I like banter…I was hoping you would banter back. I have been wanting to dance at [the venue that the dance congress was on on the weekend] for a long time now. Hence I wanted to dance with you there on Sat but got annoyed that you left without telling me. Hence I dropped everything to spend time with you.
…a moment for me to paraphrase his poorly constructed argument – he wanted to dance at a place so didn’t (as a FYI he danced there until 2am the night before…I refuse to be blamed for him ‘missing out’. I didn’t even ask him to come over). And, he’s annoyed at me for leaving a party that he wasn’t? – if he wanted to dance with me there he should have came earlier or asked me in advance when I was planning on being there. I had work the next day – he knew this as he’d asked me to go to a group yumcha sitting on the Sunday and I said I couldn’t. Anyway, let’s continue on….
I had wanted to go to yumcha with you, bring you along to XX’s house warming, my neice’s birthday but you were unavailable.
Two out of three I believe. Yum cha yes, because he asked me directly. The house warming….hmmm sort of, he said he wanted me to go AFTER I said I was busy. His niece’s birthday – that’s just a straight out lie. There’s no way in the world he would have invited me to a family event. It’s so easy for him to say that when it was a weekend that I was out of town.
There is nothing going on between Janey and I. We will talk about this.
Janey? What the? Don’t call her a pet name to me!! That just proves a level of intimacy. I’ll be the judge of if I think there’s something going on or not.
I decided to go to bed and not engage in conversation. I was so angry it was hard to sleep. My mind played over and over images of them that I saw on Facey ages ago when he first friended me and I deemed him safe as he clearly had a girlfriend. Also, my mind flashed images of her name on a text when we were in the hotel room in July (Rhetorical Questions entry) and her name on his messenger conversation history list just last week. It then flashed memories of him hovering around her when she arrived at the last dance party before her 10 week trip, he wanted to dance with her and wasn’t going to let any other man get close. Absolute bull that nothing was going on! Maybe she isn’t interested in him any longer, but he sure is keeping her close in case she changes her mind.
At about 1am, I was rudely awoken by my phone vibrating. It was Karate Kid. What didn’t he understand about me not wanting to talk about it? I just wanted him to know that he was in trouble and what he’d done wrong.
At 5am, he sent another message: “Ok. We will chat after work today. It’s hard to read text as meaning and emotions can be lost. I didn’t realise you were getting upset. Hence the banter.
Yes, you making something nice, I do consider it being special. It’s one of the things I love about you
….Hmmmm he does get brownie points for using the word ‘love’ for the first time. Normally, he says that he ‘likes’ things about me.
I will drive to your place. What time do you finish? Just to be clear Janey and I are friends. I chat to all my friends. We will sort this out too.”
Stop. Calling. Her. Janey. And stop defending the ‘friendship’! It just reinforces my suspicions that he wants something with her. I refuse to come second to her. He needs to sort out his priorities.
I’ve been in a similar situation before and it wasn’t fun. There is one way I found to approach the situation and that’s to hold your head high, be willing to cut your losses at any given time and to have confidence that you’re the superior choice. You see, if they start defending the friend over respecting you, there’s no way you’ll win. It’s best to let it play out and see where the cards fall. If you lose your cool that’ll make the choice easy for them as you look like the crazy one.
The situation I’m referring to involved my ex, Bear, and his flirtatious best friend from elementary school. Before I arrived in Perú on my first trip to visit him she made sure that she posted photos of them together on his Facey account. This set off alarm bells before I even arrived but I kept my cool and quietly noted her as an enemy. When I arrived, she showed interest in getting to know me….more alarm bells. Keep your enemies close, right? I wasn’t going to let her appear as a good person to Bear by befriending me, so I declined the shopping trip she wanted to take me on.
After I left Perú, she kept up her evil work. She took the opportunity to post a picture from Bear’s birthday dinner of her kissing him on the cheek….this made my blood boil but I let it go as I knew he wanted me over her. What eventually made me break was her posting a nostalgic photo a bit later with a comment that said ‘Me amas, admítelo’. My Spanish wasn’t that great back then but I knew exactly what it said: ‘you love me, admit it’.
She’d gone too far with this! Using the verb Amor means deeper love than the casual verb Querer. Lovers use it. Not friends. Even if she’d said me quieres it still would have provoked a reaction from me. So, I sent her a private message on Facey telling her that Bear was in a relationship now and that she needed to have more respect for him and herself (when I get my laptop back I’ll see if I can find the message in my conversation history for you).
Naturally, my message didn’t go down too well….I found this out from Bear. She’d gone crying to him about the horrible way I spoke to her. She never emailed me, how was I to know that she was upset? Her divide and conquer tactic didn’t work. I forwarded him the email I sent and stood firmly to what I wrote. I won that battle as she looked like the crazy one.
Despite me being in the right, Bear was too selectively blind and spineless to acknowledge this. He instead chose to defend her…..he said that I was the one that needed to respect their friendship and that she was like a sister to him. He also said that she would tell him about her relationships and that he’d never sleep with her knowing where she’s been (ouch). Anyway, I’m sure you know me well enough by now, Diary, to know that I didn’t enjoy hearing any of this. I argued that friends don’t use the word amor – Check mate. He wouldn’t accept my argument and so we agreed to disagree.
Just to prove me right, about six months later I stumbled across an incriminating photo (I may have been a Facebook stalking her best friend who friended me…). The photo was posted just before Bear and I first met during Rio carneval…..they were in a night club and she was kissing his neck! He looked like he was enjoying it. Busted! Bear and I were still together at this time and I asked him to please explain….he said it was a friend’s kiss and that it was normal…..I don’t appreciate being made to look the fool.
The situation never really resolved as he always maintained that they were strictly close friends and defended her over me. I thought this was spineless and in all honesty, I think that that was one of the reasons why I fell out of love with him. How could you trust a partner that puts non-family before you? How could you ever respect a partner who is spineless? Even when he showed me the engagement ring when I was breaking up with him I had no doubt that the decision I was making was correct. I saved the photo years ago in case I ever needed it to prove a point to Bear. If I get the laptop back and can ensure their identities won’t be revealed I’ll share it with you so that you can see that I’m not crazy.
After confronting her about needing to act like a lady I no longer felt threatened by her. Bear clearly wanted me over her and so whenever we crossed paths in Perú I held myself with confidence and grace. That’s how to win the war, be the happy, graceful, non-crazy option.
There are some stark differences between the case of Bear-‘friend’ and Karate Kid-Plain Jane Peasant Maiden. In Karate Kid’s case, I feel he’s the one that has feelings for her and is doing the pursuing. The other major point of difference is that Bear’s friend was very pretty and smart (she was studying medicine at the time and now is a Doctor). What is similar is that it doesn’t matter what I say, they defend their ‘friendship’ over their relationship with me. I don’t care how good of friends they are, Plain Jane Peasant Maiden is not going to be invited to our wedding (if that ever happens, I may not want that).
As for if I can tolerate it, will I need to ask myself seriously about what I perceive the integrity of Karate Kid’s intentions to be. I am a firm believer in actions speaking louder than words. Let’s hope that I have enough patience and poise to observe for a little longer.
Anastasia
The Contemporary Princess 