Woman tells friend that her open relationship is 'making her look dumb.'
When this woman is concerned for her friend, she asks Reddit:
'AITA for telling my friend that her “open relationship” is making her look dumb?'
I recently met up with a friend who called me up and told me she was struggling with depression. I hadn’t seen her in a while, so we went on a friend date to see dinner and a movie.
While we were at dinner, we were talking about our relationships. We met our partners around the same time over a year ago. She told me that she and her partner decided to have an open relationship. Although the relationship is “open” he’s sleeping with people and she’s not.
This guy is living at her house, not paying any bills and sleeping with other women? I told her that he was making her look like a plum fool, and that it might be the reason she’s feeling depressed and has low self esteem.
She went off about how I’m uptight and judge mental about open relationships. She said that I didn’t have the confidence to share my partner. I told her that I surely don’t! And that she’s sharing her partner but he’s not sharing her. And maybe if she didn’t share her partner she wouldn’t call me and tell me how ugly she’s feeling, and how depressed she is.
We ended our fiend date obviously. Before I hear from some other people I would like to know if I come off as an asshole. I’ll apologize if I do. From my perspective, I was just telling her the hard truth as I saw it. PS I know that this is toeing the line but it’s not about breakups/hookups/cheating. Just about how the conversation went down. AITA?
Let's find out.
samstress writes:
YTA for how judgemental you were. If this was really about trying to help her you wouldn't be calling her names and implying she's the cause of her own unhappiness.
gingerlee writes:
YTA if only for the way you put it. She reached out to you for support. You don't know for sure what's behind her depression so making that assumption was rude, the name calling was rude and now she's shut down.
If you were concerned you could've put it gently, asked questions and maybe lightly suggested you were concerned the open relationship might be affecting her more than she thought.
morduru writes:
NAH. Giving a friend your honest feedback is hard to do and I would guess you knew the risks to your friendship doing it.