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From a friend's perspective, yes.
I'd been close to this kid for a few years, we were roommates during the first year of university, and had shared housing for several years after that. All that time, he'd had a thing for this one girl (even whilst dating others), with whom he had some sort of on and off relationship. He painted it as a very head-based romantic thing, and maybe it was at one point. I only knew the girl in passing (though she was in the first short film I ever made) and I'd been friends with this kid for about five years before she and I really got to know each other.
We ran into each other one day, had lunch, talked, all that. I got around to asking her what was up with him, as their relationship was a constant topic among a number of us, and she told a very different story which summed up as: he doesn't take me out ever and expects me to be really into him. She let a couple other things slip that let me know she'd fancied me for quite a while, and we hooked up.
Telling him was a big deal, because I knew what this girl and his relationship with her had been, at least in his head. This was big stuff, and I was dancing all over it. I told him, and he was calm through the whole thing, professed not to be mad about it. It was obvious that he was, though, especially when the conversations he had with others got back to me. I said, 'Hey, I can fuck off for a while, you know, not be in your face with this,' which he declined. But he also never told me that he was angry about this, and I lost most of my respect for him as a result.
She and I dated for six years, and he went on to repeat this scenario, casting himself in my role with the new upset guy being yet another good friend of mine. I know that he considered what I did an incredible betrayal, yes, a stab in the back, but it didn't stop him when he had a chance with some other girl...he and I have spoken perhaps half a dozen times in the eight or so years since this went down. I think about calling him occasionally, most recently when I moved south, but then I remember how I felt about him when he wouldn't yell at me, and I leave the phone where it is. |
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