Am I Right To Feel Excluded and Violated By My Friend?
In threesomes, it’s common for one person to feel excluded. It may turn out that the other two people feel closer to each other than they do to you.
QUESTION
Hi Irene,
I was recently married in May and feel like I’ve entered the Twilight Zone, and I’m not talking about my marriage.
I had a really great friend named Heather, or so I thought. I had known her for close to two years and she was always fun to be around. I asked her to help me with wedding plans and she was there for me through it all. Then came my bachelorette party. I also invited my husband’s good friend’s wife, Amanda. I didn’t know Amanda very well but wanted to include her. She almost declined because she didn’t know the group of women but came anyway.
Amanda and Heather took to each other—very fast. So fast that it became the three of us whenever something social was happening. I started quickly to feel excluded, like a third wheel.
I wanted to get to know Amanda since our husbands became friends a few years ago but I noticed I was excluded from conversations. At one point, Heather interrupted me and walked off with Amanda while I was speaking. This really hurt my feelings and things started snowballing after that. On our girls’ nights out, Amanda and Heather would leave me out of conversations and basically started shunning me. I told my husband and he said to bring it up and work things out, friends should be able to talk to each other. So I did…
Once I told both women I felt excluded, Heather, my original close friend, took it very personally and got uncomfortable. We went out to have a glass of wine and talk it out because I wanted to save our friendship. I thought the talk went fine until I left my cell phone with a dead battery in her car. Heather proceeded to charge it, turn it on, and went through text messages and emails of mine before she told me she had found my lost phone. I learned about what she did through another mutual friend whom she told what she had done.
I was very angry, to say the least, and called Heather out on her actions. There wasn’t anything in my phone about Heather or Amanda, nothing mean or snarky about anyone. Why she did it I don’t know. The part that is bothering me now is that since I told Heather I couldn’t trust her because of her actions, she and Amanda do everything together now. I am the bad guy.
I know this email is long, but anyone with knowledge of what happened says I’ve been wronged, and Heather should never have done that to me. I am excluded in everything they do— including times when they are at the local watering hole around the corner from me. I feel like I am in high school all of a sudden.
Am I wrong to feel hurt that they became close so fast and left me in the dust? That, on top of feeling like my privacy was violated.
Signed, Kimberly
ANSWER
Dear Kimberly,
Anyone in your shoes would feel excluded, hurt, and disappointed as you do. Your primary disappointment has to be with your once-close friend, Heather, who delivered a double-whammy. She has been grossly insensitive to your feelings and also has invaded your privacy. I can’t think of any justifiable explanation for the cell phone incident. It sounds like she is a snoop who is overly curious about your life.
You did the right thing by talking to Heather and trying to save the friendship. Since the issue you had with her had to do with trust and loyalty, it sounds like the cell phone incident signaled the death knell for the friendship.
I don’t think there is any way to repair the damage at this point, especially on your end. You’ve expressed your disappointment and just need to leave it at that. Try to forget this to the extent you can, move on, and refrain from talking about this any further with other mutual friends.
Remain cordial and take the high road, especially in public settings. Some friendships are just not meant to be. You deserve better friends than this.
Hope this helps.
My best,
Irene
Other posts about friend poaching and threesomes on The Friendship Blog:
- Friend poaching or social networking: What’s the difference?
- Friendship calculus: The problem of three
- Escaping from a toxic triangle
- When three’s a crowd
- Friend poaching: It’s complicated
Category: KEEPING FRIENDS
Heather seems like a toxic troll who may even possibly be jealous of you and for some reason is trying to make you feel bad. I agree with what everyone here said about her, although they seem to be ignoring the fact you said they hang at your local watering hole so that will be difficult to do – but you can try. However — no one seems to be addressing Amanda. How do you feel about her, is she someone that seems like she buys into what Heather is doing? Is she being swept up by the excitement of a new friend and possibly uninformed about how that friend is being toxic towards you? After all, if Heather can treat you that way after 2 years, she will almost certainly treat Amanda that way eventually. If I were you, I would ignore Heather but if Amanda is married to your husband’s friend, you may not be able to ignore her. You absolutely need to have your husband engineer a night out for the four of you. Two guy friends and the women who are the most important to them. There is absolutely nothing weird or wrong about that and it may give you a chance to get closer. You do NOT have to talk about Heather at all in any contest….in fact, pretend she doesn’t exist. Feel confident that in this perfectly normal setting. HEATHER is the odd-girl out and has no place there…possibly Amanda’s husband feels weird about her too if she is spending all of her free time with his wife (btw, she sounds like she needs to get herself a significant other and build out her life a little.) Good luck!!
Edit: I meant to write context, not contest! Although Heather may be looking at it like a contest ; )
Honestly, the damage has been done with your friendship, Kimberly. There’s nothing that your best friend can do to fix it. I’m NOT very fond of the fact that Heather has invaded your privacy, by going through your cell phone. It wasn’t her place to do that, so she knew that she was wrong!!
I have to applaud you for standing up for yourself, Kimberly. You did express how disappointed you were with her actions. Besides, I’m a firm believer in Karma, and Heather will get what’s coming to her-eventually.
You’re NOT obligated to forgive your best friend, and it’s obvious that she will NOT apologize to you anytime soon. If you do see Heather and Amanda, IGNORE them!!
Heather probably wanted to read your email to see if you were gossiping about her and Amanda. That doesn’t give her the right to do it though. Not only that, it shows she doesn’t trust you. I would say that Heather and Amanda probably hit it off because they share more in common (including snarky personalities). Try to forgive (not forget) and let it go, find new friends and move on with your life. If you need to vent, it’s best to vent to someone your “friends” don’t know, such as a friend outside the group, a therapist, relative, etc. Just make sure that Heather and Amanda (or any of their mutual friends) don’t know the person you’re venting to.
I think it’s inevitable that when 3 women get together, rarely is there a balance. Your either closer with one than the other and the other feels left out or visa versa. I’m not saying women can’t hang out and have fun in 3 (triads) but I’ve only seen conflict when this arises. Someone is going to get their feelings hurt. 4 women is good or even more, but for some reason when there are 3 there just seems to be an element of competition. Sadly, it’s as true for 8 years olds as it is for 35 year olds.
As far as the snooping goes, my former best pal was a snoop that liked to find things out about people and then twist it to make whatever she found out seem even worse. It was a constant soap opera with her. The final straw was her “snooping” on my boyfriend and then telling me all this “stuff” she found out about him, which turned out to be twisted beyond belief.
Especially since you were the one who introduced them! I am okay if two friends hit it off, but being cliquish and all that hs behavior is not acceptable. You are better off without people like that in your life. Don’t go out of your way to see them, but if you can’t avoid them, lets say at a gathering with mutual friends, be cordial.
Your better then that, you don’t need people like that in your life, you thought she was your best friend, but I truly don’t believe she thought that about you, they are not worth the emotions you have about them, she never was a friend, nor was the other girl, it is best it happened , you got to see them for who they are, once they do things like that they are never going to be honest, they no doubt will end up doing that to each other. Hold your head up, you have a relationship with your husband , keep that in mind it is more important then they are , let it go, things will work them selves out, but don’t go back to them even if they want you as you know it will happen again, LET GO, LET GOD!!
Remember “HURT ME ONCE IT IS THEIR FAULT, HURT ME TWICE IT IS MY FAULT”.