How I Befriended My Ex-Boyfriend’s Other Ex-Girlfriend
I’m going to tell you something that I’m very embarrassed of, even to this day. Ready? I was once one of those girls who didn’t have female friends because (cringe) I thought other women just didn’t like me. I know, I know. Shock — it wasn’t because they didn’t like me, it was pretty clearly because I was peanut butter and jealous of them. I felt inadequate about my looks and abilities, so naturally, it was easier to hate on other women than to address my own insecurities.
Now 25, I can look back on this and roll my eyes at Past Sam, confident that Present Sam is a much more positive, wise human being. Except a few weeks ago, when I almost reverted back to Past Sam’s jerk mode.
Last fall, I dated a web developer from Australia — let’s call him Oliver — for a couple of months. We had pleasant conversations and decent chemistry, and he was a fun guy, but we just weren’t emotionally compatible. He’s the kind of guy who wakes up at eight in the morning on Sundays to go to the gym, do laundry and run errands. I spend my Sundays eating brunch, watching Netflix and wondering why science hasn’t created a way to teleport my out-of-shape, moderately hungover ass to the elliptical.
All in all, my personality was incongruous to his lifestyle preferences, and vice versa. We broke up, staying on friendly terms and sporadically catching up over drinks. But he is not the important person in this story.
Fast forward to mid-February: I had been dating somebody new and we were planning a Valentine’s Day party together. I reached out to Oliver to invite him, as we had become platonic friends. He declined, citing plans with his new girlfriend. Out of nowhere, I felt a bizarre pang of envy, despite having zero romantic feelings left for Oliver, and I had no idea where it was coming from.
I think many, if not most, of us secretly hope that we are special snowflakes to all of our partners, irreplaceable and absolutely unique, even when we know those partners are not “The One” (or whatever). When we’re faced with the truth — that our lovers can and will care for other human beings as much, if not more, than they cared for us — it can be difficult to cope rationally. Sure, it’s selfish and self-centered, but like I said, it’s a secret desire — not a sensible one.
Come June (sorry folks, this story covers quite a timespan), after Oliver and his girlfriend had broken up and my ex and I had split, he and I began hanging out again. One evening, he mentioned that his ex-girlfriend followed me on Twitter. Before that moment, I hadn’t known her name (which is Rebecca Hiscott, by the way, and here is her aforementioned Twitter account). I recognized her name as somebody I had recently followed, as well. And then I did what any other Internet-loving millennial would do: I started a good ol’ anxiety-inducing session of e-stalking.
Until then, I no idea what she looked like nor her personality, but I suddenly felt like I knew everything: She was very intelligent, very funny and very pretty — all qualities that would make me admire another human being, whether I met them in person or on the Internet. Unfortunately, here’s where I start thinking like an idiot.
I normally pride myself on being enthused for others’ positive attributes and accomplishments. As a reformed mean girl, I now actively avoid comparing my abilities and successes to those of my friends or acquaintances. And yet, in this case, I found my thoughts diverting into an uncharacteristically negative zone.
First, there were the personality traits: She’s clearly smarter than I am, I told myself, and way funnier. Then came the career-related insecurities: She’s better at writing, she’s written for more outlets, she clearly is the more witty of the two of us. And, of course, the Old Faithful of self-doubt: Is she prettier than I am? Even worse, I found myself actually wanting to ask a friend if she was the prettier ex-girlfriend. Really — I, an adult fucking feminist who knows better, nearly pulled that middle school childishness. But I stopped myself.
See, it was that last one that really stung. I’ve always held a lot of insecurities about my weight and face — insecurities that have resulted in me damaging my body, risking my health and alienating loved ones over the years. I’ve worked hard to stop looking at the world and myself this way. When I realized that I was unraveling all my work in order to seek some fucked up validation that involved fishing for compliments and pitting myself against another woman who had done literally nothing to me, I halted my needy, immature urges.
I stepped back to think about it like a logical adult: This is somebody who consistently writes about topics I find interesting. She responds to the stuff I publicly talk about, too. When I replaced my jealous mindset with the much more reasonable one I’ve been developing over the past couple of years, I realized she was somebody I could easily be friends with.
So, I messaged her. I asked if she wanted to grab coffee, acknowledging that it might be a weird request given the situation. Thankfully, she was totally into the idea and we made plans to meet. I admittedly felt nervous, but sucked it up, knowing that nervousness stemmed from the same silliness as the insecurities.
A few days later, perched up on a sunny rooftop in Williamsburg with a couple of frozen margaritas, we started talking. For hours, we bonded over our shared love for tattoos, enthusiasm for cats and experiences with failed New York romances. And guess what? She is really clever, really funny and really pretty, just as I had suspected. But instead of assuming her positive attributes implied some deficiency in my own, I just kept thinking, Man, it would’ve been really stupid to miss out on being friends with this rad person entirely because of a dude. Did I mention we’re friends now? We are, and it’s fantastic.
There are few things more ludicrous than resenting another woman due to the actions, or even mere presence, of a man. Yet from childhood, that is exactly what we are conditioned to do. When your ex-boyfriend becomes another woman’s boyfriend, your friends are supposed to call her ugly. If a guy you like is interested in someone else, your friends feel obligated to assure you that you’re undoubtedly the winner in this imaginary, one-sided competition. When a man cheats on a woman, the other woman becomes — well, The Other Woman. It is her fault, despite this act necessitating two consenting parties. If movies are to be believed, you are supposed to sit around eating ice cream, crying, and calling this Other Woman an ugly, boring, Slutty McSlutlegs whore.
Friends are not supposed to say, “Well, it’s possible that they just have an emotional connection that the two of you didn’t have, and that she’s actually a very lovely person.” Nope — they are supposed to verbally beat down this new woman, even if she can’t hear their insults, because we are trained to believe that by kicking another female, we are potentially strengthening ourselves.
This, of course, is never the case (exception: you are Rhonda Rousey). I have never once looked back on a petty insult I dished out back in college and thought, Oh man, that shade I threw really changed my life for the better. The moments I am most thankful for are the ones wherein I took responsibility for my wrongdoings, apologized and befriended somebody I had previously been an ass towards. It is possible to be a feminist and hold internalized sexist beliefs and behave poorly as a reaction to them; what matters is the conscious desire to push back against those instincts..
I’m not saying that this experience is possible between every pair of mutual exes. We all know that “The Other Woman” isn’t exactly realistic. Very few of us are going to meet our partner’s other scorned lovers and embark on a magical emotional journey together, eventually resulting in (spoiler alert!) the shitty partner’s downfall. This is obviously not a plausible, feasible expectation when it comes to the messy intersection of romance and friendship.
What I am saying, however, is that if you both once liked the same person, you might have a few things besides that person in common. The potential for a new friend mixed with the benefits of overcoming any resentment and jealousy make it worth it to at least try.
