Changing my status

Someone I've known for a few years recently went from being in a serious relationship (they were living together) to being single to being in another relationship within a few months. The personality changes I've seen in this person have been staggering. Before, she was a rather miserable person to be around: she would talk about what future jobs she wanted and would talk about having to work in a certain type of institution because she was "destined for greatness". She'd ask me inappropriate questions about my relationship: "Hey, are you guys still dating?", followed by "Hey, are you guys still broken up?", back to "Hey, are you guys still dating?" (note: I would lie to her at each stage, thus perpetuating the questions). You couldn't make any sort of joke or comment at her expense without tons of stupid snarky comments becoming of a fourth grader made in your direction.

Then she got dumped and became a nice person to be around. One could have a friendly conversation with her, and even crack jokes at her expense and she would laugh with you. She'd ask about other people's relationships not as a form of gossip but as a way to find out how other people deal with long distance and separation. She stopped acting so self-important and entitled all the time. It was even a topic of discussion among my group of friends that so-and-so had now become a tolerable person, much to our collective relief.

Then it all came crashing down. She began acting self-absorbed again. She'd ask you to plug in your laptop even if she was sitting closer to an outlet than you. The snarky comments. Not surprisingly, she again has a boyfriend. I don't know what it is about this girl but her being in a relationship results in her being a massive bitch to everyone else. Lord only knows how she treats her boyfriends.

Focus: Do you or your friends undergo personality changes when going between relationships? Are you "that guy" that abandons his buddies when you have a girlfriend?

 

Yes, I am that guy. And since none of my buddies will give me so much as a dutch rudder, I make no excuses.

This is a pretty narrow focus, so let's add one. I was (re-)watching The Hangover the other night, and one of the most realistic parts of that movie is how Stu the Dentist is completely and utterly whipped by his overbearing girlfriend.

ALT FOCUS: Has a crazy/overbearing/whacked-out significant other ever poisoned a friend or acquaintance of yours? Did you try to intervene? What was the outcome?

 

I don't think I change that much. Sure, when I'm in a relationship I spend less time with my friends, but I think that's true for almost anybody. Still, I've never met anyone that I liked so much I needed to be around them constantly. Spending that much time with one person just feels unnatural. In my experience the couples that are always together also tend to be the couples that bicker endlessly, no matter how trivial the issue.

Alt Focus: This might be more of a rant because I honestly feel bad for the guy and lost a friend because his girlfriend's such an unbearable cunt. I lived with him last year and he had been dating the same girl since he was 16 (going on 6 years). As a result his girlfriend practically lived with us too. At the absolute minimum 50% of the time they spoke they were arguing. It wasn't really him either, the girl was just a total bitch. She hates me (of course) as she did her real roommates and almost everyone else that came by the apartment. Ever met anyone who thinks everyone in their life is an idiot when really they're just a swarm of pent up anger problems? Yep, that was her. Here's an example of things she's complained about. These are verbatim.

- "Why the fuck is your laptop plugged in?"
- "Do you have to cook while I'm watching a movie?" Again, it wasn't even her apartment.
- "If you want to talk so loud on your phone take it outside."
- EVERY time she walked in she complained about the smell. Except there was never any smell.
- And so on...
About every couple of weeks my friend would talk about leaving her, and then backtrack and start highlighting all her 'wonderful' qualities. I don't see him much anymore, even though he only lives 45 minutes away. It's pretty much the same story with all of our friends in common.

 

I just become retardedly nice and calm, I don't stop being a dick though, if that makes any sense. I've never been pussy whipped, and I'd be pretty surprised if it ever came to that, since I'm pretty fucking hardheaded about not getting taken advantage of in any capacity. I'm kind of anti-focus where I become a much better person in a relationship, and then revert back to being much more of a dick when I'm not, but maybe that's closer to the norm.

Focus: My friend is absolutely pussy whipped, but fortunately his girlfriend is cool about it and doesn't really take advantage of it. He'll drive hundreds of miles from his college town to hers just to buy her sushi, and drive right back. The amount of shit he does for her is mind boggling, and defies reason, but she could get a lot more out of him if she started getting demanding, but she doesn't. I guess it's not as bad as it could be.

 

I'm pretty much the same in or out of a relationship, and don't change whether I'm alone or with the GF in tow. My friends from home (mostly single or in short term relationships) find this fairly normal, my friends in CT (mostly married) look at me like I'm a fucking alien whenever I say something offensive, raunchy or mean when she's around. I'm really hoping this has more to do with my friends from home not treating marriage and relationships as a piece of the life accomplishment checklist whereas my CT friends just felt they had to settle down as quickly after college as possible; rather than them succumbing to long term pressure from their significant others.

One thing I really don't understand about many men in relationships is even if they're not going to cheat they love hitting on girls when their GF isn't around. Maybe it's because I never looked at women flirting with me as a source of validation, but I've never been interested in the hunt unless I was planning to go in for a kill.

Alt Focus: I have a friend who hasn't been single for more than 2 months at a time since he was 16 and his personality changes drastically with each relationship. His last relationship and his current one are the biggest example of the shift. In his last relationship he was more or less himself, but she was more independent than most girls. She ended up dumping him after about a year and a half because he wasn't affectionate enough, it just wasn't in him to be the lovey type. Cue his current relationship where he is all over the girl all the time, in public and in private. He seriously treats her like a pet and feeds her with compliments all the time. He also hides the fact that he smokes cigarettes and weed by only doing it behind her back and will only get drunk when she's not around. It's fucking disgusting, all my friends and I are just watching from the sidelines as the person he once was slowly dies a little bit every day.

 

I've only had one serious relationship my whole life, and that's the one that just ended a few months ago. Throughout highschool I wasn't with one girl for much longer than a couple of months.

On the other hand, a high number of my friends were in relationships during our Highschool years. Two of my buddies were frequent "offenders". I say offenders because they were the type that would disappear as soon as they got a girlfriend, or change weekend plans at the last minute because their girlfriend wanted to do something else. Unfortunately they can be idiots, and thought that a relationship in highschool was serious. Guess how many of these girlfriends they still see?

Knowing how much I hated their behaviour, I promised myself to make sure I never got to that stage. If anything, once I was in a serious relationship, I made sure to always put my mates first whenever possible. This didn't have too much of a negative affect on the relationship with my girlfriend, because she was pretty independent herself, and there was various stages during the relationship where we wouldn't see each other for a couple of weeks or so (for various reasons), which enabled me to spend plenty of time drinking or whatever with my mates.

 

Focus: My more or less best friend for 2 years of college is the oddest duck I've ever seen when it comes to relationships. On the one hand, he's a man-whore, having slept with just about every donkey and bombshell in his major. On the other, he's the queen of man-bitches. I don't get it, honestly. He has no masculine qualities, save for Robin Williams level body hair, and lives or dies on each and every rejection/validation from the opposite sex. Any time he got into a serious relationship, he all but vanished from existence, and bowed to every single demand or whim of the girlfriend, even if she was treating him like a soggy rectum and wouldn't even sleep with him more than once a month.

What also amazed me was despite all the fucking bumper he got his hands on, he was useless out at a bar. He would sit there quietly all night and not chat up any girls, wait for me to soften up the crowd, and then only talk to the girl I was trying to get with. So we didn't go to bars very often. Now he's got another stage 5 clinger and I haven't seen or heard from him in about a year, and he's too much of a bitch to answer his phone or on fb. Good riddance, I guess.

I don't blow off my friends if I have a girlfriend, and I don't really change who I am. I'm loud, outspoken, aggressive, and drunk at all social occasions whether or not I'm tied down. No doubt, my confrontational attitude nets me into some trouble, and makes girlfriends cry occasionally. But I don't go for guilt trips, and if I detect one in the making, I will call her out on it then and there. I'm also single again, whereas bitch boy never seems to have that problem. Sorta makes you wonder...

 

Like Allord I'm the opposite. You all know single me. He's bitter, angry, and has nothing better to do with his time than amuse himself at your expense. It's not a good mix.

 

I'm so much more pleasant to be around when I'm in a relationship. I get all soft and caring about everything that I usually don't care about and I smile all of the time. Unfortunately for everybody in my life, I don't want a relationship of any sort any time soon so I'll just continue to be a dick for now.

 

I haven't been single for almost eight years now, and when I was single, that lasted almost five. As a single guy I was a complete libertine. I had a one night stand streak that was as impressive as it was shamefully prolific. However, personality-wise I don't change much. I still am tight with my friends and I never let people down because I am always what everybody expects me to be: a complete fucking flake. Plus, my wife is one of those secure, non-jealous cool chicks that understands that boys must always be boys and is not the type of woman that would use a cell phone locater so she can spy on her boyfriend to make sure he is not having too much fun with his friends because they are out to "steal him back from her"*. My friends are all like that: the minute they date a woman and she starts showing jealousy or immature, eye-rolling insecurities it's goodnight Irene. I always admire the Take Shit From Nobody Approach, and always will.

All guys walk a little taller when they're single, because they have a more interesting sense of adventure. We off-the-market-types know where we're ending up, but I have nothing to complain about.

Yet.

*-ACTUAL MOTHERFUCKING QUOTE my ex used.

 

Alt-Focus:

I lost a best friend because of the wonderful manipulations of her utter douchebag of a boyfriend. Even thinking of that bastard makes me a little twitchy. He moved into our apartment 2 months after they had started dating. He never paid rent which drove me up the wall. He would also do lovely things like cook hamburgers and leave the pan filled with grease sitting around. Once he left chicken bones in the kitchen and one of the cats got one of them (very bad for cats, they can splinter and hurt them). Beyond all that, he was unbelievably rude. Sometimes I would just be speechless. One of the moments that sticks out the most was when I was watching a movie on television in the living room (he didn't pay for cable or electric either) and he came back with a couple guys. Without speaking to me, he walked in front of me and changed the imput to the Playstation. Even the guys who came with him were like "dude, I think she was watching something" which he completely ignored.

The worst part was he started to rub off on my friend. She used to clean up after herself, but pretty soon she was leaving shit laying around too. She started ignoring me and everyone else, pretty much making her universe revolve around him (which I'm sure the self-centered ass loved). She would come home from work, go in the bedroom with him and close the door. Then usually have banging sex at ungodly hours. The only time that things were alright is for 3 weeks in December he was visiting family across the country so it was just she and I again. I confronted her and she apologized a lot. By the end of the 3 weeks, she was pretty much back to herself and life was good. Of course then he came back and it went to shit in 4 days.

Sadly I lost the war on that one and I ended up moving out after 5 months of hell. I didn't speak to her for almost 2 years. The asshole even had the nerve to send me a message telling me that I still owed money for the cable bill. I told him that he could pay it out of the unpaid rent money that he owed me. She ended up moving across the country with hiim and she is still with him. We aren't ever going to be as close as we were, but we are on amicable terms. We are getting along a lot better when we aren't living together and especially when there are 3000 miles between me and the douchebag.

 

I'm no different. My friends and immediate family can't even tell when I'm single and when I'm not (except that I occasionally drag a girlfriend to family events). Often, they find themselves asking if I still have a girlfriend.

A friend of mine is the opposite. When he's single, you can't chase him away with a bat. He's high maintenance and constantly wants to hang out, but not in a good way. He mopes, he whines and he constantly talks about his ex wife.

When he gets a girl, you don't see him at all. That is, until he starts moping, whining and talking about his ex wife to her. Then repeats the cycle all over again.

 

Alt-Focus
A couple of years back my best friend was dating this awful, bi-polar witch of a woman. She had him completely pussy whipped. The problem was we didn't know it at the time because she always seemed really cool when we all hung out. It wasn't until we overheard him on the phone with her that we realized there was a problem. This chick had him on a really short leash, but of course he didn't see it. Eventually their relationship turned into the proverbial Sid and Nancy situation. Fight like dogs, break up for a few days, get back together, fuck like rabbits, fight like dogs... This cycle went on for over a year. At one point we had had enough. We sat him down and explained to him how much of a moron he was (in a nice way though). He acknowledged that she was a bitch and told us he would end it with her.

A week later he bought an engagement ring. A week after that they broke up again. We took him out for drinks, and after consoling him for an hour proceeded to mercilessly mock him for buying the ring. A week later they were back together and he was ready to propose to her again. A week after that they finally broke up for good. A couple of months ago I was the best man at his wedding and can proudly say that his wife is infinitely better for him than that bitch who stole a year and a half of his life.

 

I immediately thought of Andre, the Boyfriend Chameleon, from The League a couple episodes back.

Alot of people claim their friends change or are pussy whipped when in reality they are just peeved that since their friend now has a significant other, they don't spend as much time hanging out, or chasing girls at bars, etc... I say it cause I completely do the same thing and understand the sentiment. One of my absolute best friends, and formerly most reliable wingman, has been dating his current gf for over 2 years. She is pretty needy, a complete daddy's girl, and most upsetting to me, has no attractive single friends for me to hit on, despite always talking about how much she could hook me up. But all that being said, she is pretty cool, she makes him extremely happy, and physically he really outkicked his coverage with her, so as long as he maintains most of the qualities which made him one of my good friends, I'm fine with it.

However, 2 of my other friends were guilty of being poisoned in the most dastardly of fashions. One escaped, however one is now married to a horrific she-beast. First, my roommate Goalie.

Goalie, despite being a goofy and at times awkward with the females, is what ladies refer to as tall, dark, and handsome. However, he has minimal self confidence and always allows himself to settle for less than desirable females. His ex-gf was a magnificent cunt. She would come over, and despite dating Goalie for over 9 months and knowing us for longer, sit in the room and not say a fucking word. We would later overhear her chatting up a storm behind closed doors with him, so its not like she was mute. Additionally, she made him hang out with her lame and pathetic group of friends at the expense of things that really mattered to him. Such as attending a fucking wine tasting during Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals 2 years back...oh yeah, Goalie is a diehard, obnoxious Penguins fan...he missed most of the game. I recently also learned that if he was lucky, and she was drunk, he might receive a bit of oral pleasure...but then would have to finish into a fucking towel. This would be once or twice a month max, after 6-9 months of dating, and not having sex cause they both are virgins...And he put up with this all with a smile on his faceto the point of missing my birthday party one year cause he was celebrating his...8 month anniversary. Thank god that fucking shrew is out of his life.

My other close friend, BB, and the girl he is now married to dated from the middle of Freshman year through the end of their Junior year of college. Now his wife, Firecrotch, is one of the most manipulative and bitchy girls I've ever met. She was one of my closest friends early in college (I introduced them) only to have her turn on me cause she feared my influence on BB. Well she is a bit of a teetotaler, while BB is a fucking lush. So most weekends, she would stay home with her dog while he would come out and party with us. What 20-21 year old girl stays in with her dog on a Friday-Sat night in a college town? Well he would get ripped and makeout with any skank he could get his hands on. I sat idly by and let it happen cause I hoped it would cause him to drop the charade of "Firecrotch is definitely the kind of girl I could see myself marrying." Well, finally the relationship dissolved and he went back to his old ways and had an awesome time, I never say him happier. Cue us graduating college, he moved to Columbus, me to Chicago and a bit of time passed. Till he told me he had started hanging out with Firecrotch again...but just friends. 4 months later, no lie, and they were engaged. The wedding got expedited and they were married in the Outer Banks 6 months later, a wedding I couldn't attend....cause it was on a fucking Wednesday. Firecrotch selfishly planned that her family and her 2 close friends could take a whole week off but didn't care that the majority of BB's friends and family couldn't. Shortly after marrying, they bought a house in a bumfuck suburb a good 30 min outside of Columbus, conveniently in her hometown and no more than 2 miles from her parents. We were talking recently and he mentioned how pretty much every other Saturday he gets to go out in Columbus with friends, its a pretty sweet deal. He is 26, with no children, and he is boasting about having 2 nights a month to himself? Lock and load. He is completely complicit with this and bought into it all with this weird sense of how his life should be, completely twisted with Firecrotch's need to be married and settled as young as possible just like her parents. He is the big breadwinner, yet he allowed them to sell her condo at a 15% loss so they could buy their current house, putting less than 5% down. I understand she is a financial reh-tard, but BB is a fucking accountant, how is he allowing himself to be swindled like this...oh yeah,



Its so refreshing when you see actually mature, adult relationships you can actually be happy for your friends about.

 

And that's where I zoned out for about 5 minutes imagining your friend wandering around the house frying chicken, doing laundry, greeting the neighbors at the door with a series of sticky wads accumulating all over her body like compound interest on a shady car loan. Eventually she stopped being your friend and started being an animated ectoplasmic amigo who would slide around town solving crimes and entrapping criminals in her sticky mass. And then you two would save a little boy from an international papal crime syndicate of priests that had gone to the dark side of the altar and it would become a heartwarming buddy comedy blockbuster for the whole family: LadyLecter and Spunky the loveable cumstain.

I think my lack of sleep is catching up to me, I'm dreaming while awake again.

 

First of all, i am a paranoid luddite in this age of facebook privacy, so the whole concept of changing "statuses" feels so much like grade school already. Carrying on...

Back in the days before the internet made everyone retarded, people used to call each other to organise shit and hang out. This one friend would always vanish off the face off the earth, be unreachable/busy/whatever whenever he got himself a new girl.

Sometimes the girls would try to be inclusive. A good example would be this one time the new girl "convinced" the friend to have a "salon haircut", on her dime. Of course, the real reason she wanted to do this is that my friend had magnificient long hair. Magnificient enough that random girls would come up and touch his hair, and introduce themselves. The girl wasn't happy with this pattern, and hence one weekend i found myself in some salon early in the morning ( as we were gonna have brunch after) with friend, girl and hair products everywhere. While my friend was having the haircut, girl comes up to me, grabs my arm real violent-like and said:" You realise that no matter how it looks like, *IT LOOKS GOOD* ok? (* : she actually used nails on that part).

I thought the haircut was horrible and was basically an attempt to castrate his sexyness. He said he liked it so i kept mum, because it's not like it was my business anyhow.

She eventually royally fucked him over after basically moving in with him for over a year, and all kinds of other shits i don't want to get into.

I don't really see this guy often now : he recently got a kid with this hippy-like girl he's been shacking up with, and he seems happy. I hope he got a good one this time.