Who was the jerk here?
Thanks in advance to any who dare to read this… It’s long and I need to give a good deal of context.
Last night, a good friend of mine called me a prick and I’m having trouble figuring out what went wrong.
I got a last minute invitation to a colleague’s birthday party at my local bar, and my boyfriend decided to come along. On the way to the bar, we ran into a friend of mine, who was going out solo. I already had been talking with my friend about getting together this week, but we hadn’t planned to meet last night. So my boyfriend and I said hi to this friend, and told him we were just popping out to make an appearance at a birthday party. Before I could ask if he would like to join us, he breezed past without saying anything.
My boyfriend and I went into the bar a few minutes later, only to find that the party that we were joining was moving to another bar. I went over to my friend, told him that the folks I was meeting up with were moving on, and asked him if he was interested in coming along. He said no, and then said, “It was so nice to see you,” in this bitter and sarcastic tone.
The boyfriend and I moved on to the other bar to join the party, and in about ten minutes, my friend sent me a text saying, “The quickest way to become a prick is to be a nice guy. Words of wisdom.” What the hell? I hadn’t even made plans with him that night, and when I did run into him, made efforts to include him, and somehow he took it as a slight. This is how it seemed to me.
My boyfriend and I left the party early because we were tired, and stopped back at the original bar to find my friend. He almost did not engage in conversation, and kept checking his phone and sent about 20 text messages to someone in the half hour that we were sitting there. He did not drink the beer I bought him, and ran off almost without saying goodbye, like he was trying to escape.
Part of the context is that I am leaving the country for almost a year, starting next week. This friend has already told me he is going to miss me a lot. My boyfriend said that some people deal with impending loss by becoming hostile. It also feels to me like he is jealous of the fact that I have other friends, possibly also jealous that I have a boyfriend I see often. But that doesn’t make sense, because he has other friends too, and we have never spent every night hanging out. In addition, when this friend has had girlfriends, he has disappeared on me for months, whereas I have been making frequent efforts to see him, both alone and with my boyfriend. However, my boyfriend has held from the beginning that this dude has a crush on me, which he can’t acknowledge because he thinks of himself as straight. On top of that, he seems to have been in some bad situation involving some girl he’s seeing (my guess as to why he was sending out a text message every 30 seconds).
Am I trying too hard to derive rationality from a stupid emotional situation? Can you think of any other explanations for what was going on, or who was being the prick (and why)? I care about my friends; this guy and I have had a very mutual friendship until now, and the last thing I would want is to be unkind to him. But if he is not mature enough to deal with his own emotions, I am not sure I want to put up with more inexplicable passive aggressiveness from him in the one week I have left in this country.
Thank you in advance for any insight or perspectives.
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