Ask Molly Ringwald: I fancy my friend’s ex – should I go out with him?
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Version 0 of 1. My friend recently broke up with someone after a short relationship. She is acting totally heartbroken, even though she was always complaining about his behaviour and how she hates his friends. I’ve always liked him and think he likes me. Would it be terrible of me to go out with him? On the spectrum of terrible things, yours falls somewhere in the vicinity of the generally lousy but not super uncommon. You and I and all the women out there know that what you are planning to do is to break one of the key tenets of the “girl code”. (A refresher course: thou shalt refrain from dating thy friends’ current crushes or recent exes.) This is one of the tacit understandings that we all agree upon when we enter into a friendship. Your attempt to justify the deed by insisting your friend complained about him doesn’t let you off the hook. Come on! Who are we supposed to complain to about our relationships? Our friends! The same friends we call to get a ride home from situations where we feel unsafe, the same friends we ask for an honest opinion on something. “Can I get away with high-waisted jeans?” “Why does he wait 24 hours to text me back?” “Do you see two bars on this pregnancy test or am I just squinting in excitement/terror?” It’s our good friends who are there when it’s inconvenient, or sad, or scary. Good friends are easy to underestimate since we put so much of our focus and desire on finding the love of our lives; but in many ways it’s our friends who are the loves of our lives. If they are vintage friends, they have been there through the awkward bits: the teenage acne, the horrible fashion choices, the time you returned from that year in France speaking English with a terrible French accent and smoking Gauloises. And they loved you anyway. The essential question is, how good a friend is she to you and which do you value more: her friendship or the possibility of a relationship with her ex? Notice I said “possibility”, because that’s all it is at this point. The decent thing to do is to ask your friend if she minds if you date her ex. She might give you a more generous answer if you wait until the heartbreak has passed, when she isn’t feeling so angry and vulnerable. If his appeal is more than wanting what you can’t have, he’ll be worth the wait. • Send your dilemmas about love, family or life in general to askmolly@theguardian.com |