'I'm concerned about my BF's white knight syndrome for his 'best friend.'' UPDATED

"I'm [28/f] concerned with my [29/m] BF's white knight syndrome for his 'best' friend."

Hey there! I've read plenty of great and bad things here but I'm sort of lost for what I should do in regards to my own relationship. So I suppose I should get into history first:

My boyfriend and I started dating about 13 months ago. We met through mutual friends playing an online game two years ago. We were long distance for awhile until my job offered me a great promotion in a big city close by where he lived and I took up the offer.

Decided to meet up as friends and we let the relationship blossom under that pretense of getting to know each other before deciding if it was what we wanted.

As far as the relationship is concerned, its going really well and has been since the start. At least it seems to be doing well in the healthy state of mind. BF and I share a lot of hobbies together but we also do things apart (He likes sailing boats, whereas I get seasick just walking on the marina :D). We share alot of the same family values, want the same things out of life, very passionate about hobbies and careers.

We're both at a point in our lives where if things were to fall into place, we could spend the rest of our lives together and then some. But we're not moving that fast just yet as we're still young in the relationship :p. We still live in seperate apartments (our jobs are in different cities too far to commute from either's place) so we see each other every weekend (more if we have bank holidays).

Most people just see us a normal happy couple with their up and downs. But generally, we're great together ninety-nine percent of the time. Until my BF brings up his 'best' friend in any conversation, who I'll name Cat henceforth which always make for a tense conversation..

Now I'm pretty sure you're thinking that I must be 'that' girl. The jealous type of girlfriend most guys don't want. The jealous type of girl that doesn't want her boyfriend talking to other girls beside herself. But that simply isn't the case here. And I'll explain:

Cat and my BF were friends a year prior to meeting me and I suppose you could say they share a 'special type' of friendship. The friendship most people in a relationship dread, the "friends or more" with the blatant flirting and dirty jokes, never moving forward past it but always wondering if they did could they be more type.

BF had let me know that Cat always had a (or rather still is) thing for him and at one point he did too. But that was before Cat admitted that she was married and with kids, BF had shut that idea down immediately but still continued to have the flirt fest with her regardless.

(His reasoning was because he was single and what harm could it do.. lol?). Anyway, when BF and I met, we had an instant connection and the rest is kind of history for that.

My concern here is that any time Cat has a problem, BF goes running for the hills trying to be her white knight. Her marriage is on the rocks, - has been for the longest I can remember. She and her husband married young (shotgun wedding) and they've never really been committed to each other. If she has money problems, he writes a check for her.

If she has problem sleeping, he lets her record his voice over skype or mumble so she can 'fall asleep'. If her husband doesn't want to sleep with her, he's there to listen. If she's in a sh!tty mood, she makes him say NSFW jokes and makes him flirt with her to feel better. If she witnessed the second coming of jesus and didn't know how to process it - she'd make him explain what happen.

She likes to shamelessly flirt with him always.. In general, she looks for solace in my BF when she has a problem and he always helps her out, no matter what it takes. Now normally I wouldn't care and would let him do that for any person he cared about but.. T_T...

She always let it slip that if she were single, she would snatch him up in a heartbeat even if he is with me or anyone else. She cracks lewd jokes at him while around the both of us. Cat has never let the opportunity slip by to make it known to me that she's very much in love with my BF. She makes me uncomfortable and I've told BF that, many times.

He assures me that he did entertain the idea of once being with her, but once when he met me - that all changed. I trust his word one hundred percent and without a doubt, he wouldn't cheat on me. Or at least I want to believe he wouldn't do that to our relationship. We've talked about what to do and he told me he would stop talking to her entirely if that made things better.

But I didn't want to be that girl you know... the girl who makes her boyfriend break off friendships.. I told him about how much Cat gives me anxienty about the relationship. That she would try anything to get rid of me and to get to you if her 'life' allowed it to. :/ BF assures me everytime that he's with the person he loves, being me.

I suppose her constant bantering has gotten the best of me. To the point of where I trust my BF but when he's around her, I don't. Everything about Cat, I can't trust. Everything I hear or see about or from her, I can't trust. Am I just being the insecure girlfriend who can't get over that? Am I just afraid that one day she'll do something drastic to take the person I love away? Is this jealousy?

I don't know what to do, think or say about the situation. I've had so much anxiety over this that writing all this out has taken a toll on me. :( What can I do to ease the anxiety of my BF's white knight syndrome for Cat? Is what he's doing 'right'? Could she just really be the best friend or am I just thinking too much into this? :\ Please help..

TLDR: BF white knights for his friend, who always seems to be the damsel in distress. His friend is love with him and lets it known to me (the girlfriend) that she is. Need advice on how to handle the situation.

Edit: 1:22am: Thanks everyone for the lovely replies. I may not be able to reply to everyone (currently on a break from work right now) But keep them coming! Its really nice to see what an outsider thinks and feels about the situation. Some things I never even considered or thought of.

I've come to decide that I'm definitely going to have 'the talk' with the BF in person when he's over here at my place this weekend. I'm unsure if I'll do an update post but you all have been giving me some really great advice on how to proceed and process the situation. Thank you all again.

This is what people had to say to OP:

DullSharp said:

Tell your boyfriend that you feel Cat is being disrespectful of you and your relationship and explain the instances your described here or specific times you felt she was undermining you and your relationship with your boyfriend. Tell him you don't want him to cut off the friendship but ask him to put some boundaries in place. If she wants to talk about her husband and their troubles, fine.

If she wants to re-imagine her life with him in it, he needs to nip that in the bud, especially as he had previously decided independent of you that that wasn't an option. Flirting can be harmless but if you don't think its harmless, talk to him about it and how the things she says makes you feel. If he won't do it, then that's a hard road to continue on. Best of luck!

MonteLukast said:

Obviously your BF really likes the attention Cat gives him. I think his reasoning that it's okay for him to flirt with her is self-serving and insulting. It's never appropriate to put yourself in the middle of someone else's marriage. It's no wonder Cat's marriage is on the rocks. I wonder whose fault that is? If he says he'll cut off all communication with her if you want him to, I'm betting he'll just continue behind your back.

I think this is a very troubling situation no matter how the rest of your relationship is. It's good that you don't live together and you can still distance yourself from him when the time comes.

And ElectraUnderTheSea said:

That Cat lady sounds trashy as hell, what kind of married woman with children asks another man to tell her dirty jokes and brags about wanting to snatch him?? I honestly wonder what your BF sees in her; this whole story gives a rather poor idea of what kind of person your BF is.

Ten days later, OP shared this update:

As requested by some, here's the update. The weekend came and I sat the BF down and we had a very long talk about everything. I laid down all of my cards on the table- the concerns I have, the "friendship", what she means to him, that he was blind to her advances and how crude and mean she is regards to me, how she disrespect the relationship and tries to undermine me etc.

He was very adamant to say that he was only just being a friend to her. That he didn't see what he was doing was anything more than going beyond that. The bf also mentioned that he might have felt compelled to help her because he always feels like he has to do everything he can for anyone in his life.

He did say the flirting thing was mostly harmless but he now realizes how careless and stupid it was to think that it didn't hurt anyone. He pretty much fessed up to saying that everything he did or was doing was essentially emotional cheating. Hes steadfast on the fact that he's never actually done anything with Cat beyond that just being a friend to her.

That any romantic or otherwise feelings related to that were dead and gone the moment Cat revealed herself to be married. He asked me what I wanted done. I told him that I wanted her out of our lives. That I couldn't trust him around her and vice versa. I couldn't be happy as long as she was able to hover over my boyfriend and our relationship so freely.

She was a threat to the relationship and there wasn't room for another. I know, people told me to be brave and I shouldn't care about being a stereotype etc and that I should stand my ground because of all of my concerns thereof. He was very responsive to it and said that he would cut her out of his life and therefore out of ours. He said it would be hard because he feels like he's abandoning a friend.

I told him that she wasn't just a friend to him and I had to remind him that Cat was more than that and would always be so long as he let her be. He promised that he would no longer do any of it and would cease any and all contact with Cat after we were done with the discussion.

We ended up talking about a lot of other relationship issues we had. Apparently a lot of trust issues are deep seated with him (parents divorced while young, never had real friends, past relationships never working out etc).

While I have them too.. There was lots to be said. We're still together and dating and hopefully stronger after this is dealt with in its entirety. As for the bf doing with what he said he would do, only time will tell. As for me, I'm happier and relieved to have been able to talk to the bf about the situation.

Thanks to everyone who took time out of their day to read my other thread and gave some great advice to me. Hopefully I won't have to return here with another update in the future regarding this particular matter. But ill definitely come back again if I do more boggling mind matters for relationship issues.