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ON
BEING "THE OTHER GUY"
HEY, SOMEBODY'S GOTTA DO IT
DEAR KEN & ARIEL: I have been "fooling around" with a very
good female friend of mine for about a year now. Thing is, she has a
boyfriend. Although she says she’s completely happy in her relationship,
she continues to mess around with me, all the while confiding things in me
that she admits she’d never tell her boyfriend. Some of my friends think
I should keep my distance from her; others say I should urge her to leave
her boyfriend for me. Your opinion?
 KEN
SAYS:
Was it Confucious or Happy Days’
Donny Most who once posed the question, "Man, why can’t chicks be
my marginally attached buddies and have sex with me?"
Truly, the line between
friendship and sex is a precarious tightrope. On one side, there’s fun
but meaningless sensual pleasure. On the other side, there’s…
Hey,
wait a minute. What am I talking about? No-strings sex is something some
folks seek more vigilantly than a Honus Wagner baseball card or a five
dollar prime rib, and you seem to have dropped right into a pit full of
it.
The question is, are you up
to the challenge of investing more and more of your time and emotions into
this girl, if the payoff seems all but nonexistent.
If you’re the kind of guy
who doesn’t give a tinker’s cuss for the mushy-mush of love and
relationships, then it seems you’re in a situation tailor-made for your
hit-and-run lifestyle.
But if you’re clinging to the hope that one day Ms. Fastlove will wake
up, look into your eyes and declare, "My God, all along, it was you—the
love of my life, right under my nose," then it’s time to punch
yourself in the berries, shake your head straight, and get on with your
life.
Class dismissed.
 ARIEL
SAYS: It seems that you have been sucked into that black hole of friendship
and sex.
Some people claim that they can just be friends who happen to
have sex and be perfectly fine with that arrangement. However, I think
that the percentage of those scenarios in which things actually work out
and both parties are truly honest about their feelings is about the same
as the percentage of the population that claims to have been abducted by
aliens.
To muddle your situation
further, she has a boyfriend. Your life is starting to sound like a good
script proposal for an HBO special. The fact that she has cheated on her
boyfriend several times with you—her friend, someone the boyfriend would
most likely trust her with—ain’t very cool.
But you’re the one asking
for advice, not her. You’re not cheating on anyone. So my big question
to you is, what do you want out of this friendship?
Yeah, you can have sex
without commitment, but in this messy situation there’s potential for
further complications, like the boyfriend’s fist in your handsome face.
Be honest with yourself: Do
you want to be more than friends? Do you think she would leave her
boyfriend for you? You know her much better than I do (hell, I’m just
some hack writing a column) but it seems that she may be looking for some
sort of attention or validation that her boyfriend or you can’t give
her, and she will continue to look elsewhere.
In other words, even if she
leaves her boyfriend for you, she may still be unable to remain
monogamous.
Your friends are trying to
look out for you and don’t want to see you get hurt. But it only matters
what you think. If you think you and her can have a purely platonic
relationship, then by all means, have a blast.
But if sex is going to be
the recurring topic, I would suggest you move on. You don’t have to
"ditch" her, but just ease off on the quality time. There are
many babes in waiting who don’t have boyfriends and might love to be
more than just friends with you.
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