I have a confession to make. For the last year and a half I’ve been having a friend affair with my best friend’s now-former housemate. It’s a bit like an actual affair, but with no kissing and no sex. Complicated, though? You bet.
It started quite innocently with a lunch, a lunch the three of us planned together. But when my friend, let’s call her Hannah*, pulled out at the last minute me and Zoe*, both being at a loose end, decided to go ahead anyway. Big mistake. To say Hannah wasn’t happy would be, well, lying.
Hannah has always been one of those girls who likes to be in control and us hanging out together without her clearly pushed out of her comfort zone. She unleased what can only be described as a raging bull of friendship jealousy and anger.
Barely speaking to Zoe, she told me that she thought us spending time together was weird. It was awkward, it was uncomfortable but it was absolutely crystal clear that she didn’t want us to be friends.
There was one problem, though. We’d had a great time and we wanted to hang out again. While we didn’t understand Hannah’s issue with it – she’d introduced us, after all, so wasn’t she expecting two fabulously funny and brilliant cough women to get along? – we decided the best thing to do would be to try and organise things to do as a three.
But up went the barriers. She couldn’t make the plans; Zoe or I hadn’t told her at an early enough date; she was washing her hair – they were all excuses and they all pointed to one thing: she did not want to share.
To her, I was her friend, Zoe was her housemate and never the two should mix. So thus began the affair. It started out with the odd drink here and there after work and ended with us pretending to bump into each other at parties, secretly meeting for a takeaway at my mum’s house and even timing our phone calls so that she wouldn’t be in.
We’d make no mention of each other on social media and would even use the fact that we worked in similar industries as an excuse to spend time together.
To her, I was her friend, Zoe was her housemate and never the two should mix. So thus began the affair
Did I feel guilty? Of course. Do I still? Sometimes. The problem with Hannah was that it felt like she was behaving a bit like a controlling boyfriend. At first I thought her obvious jealousy (because when it comes down to it, that’s exactly what it was) was sweet, and I thought with time it would blow over, but it didn’t.
In fact, after a while I began to realise that there was something bigger and more sinister, at play. She felt she had ownership over me – I was her friend, no one else’s. It felt silly and childish.
It also made me hate the way I was behaving. Rather than stand up to her, I carried on hiding our friendship. While we would try to avoid actually outright lying if she directly questioned us about whether we’d seen or spoken to one another, it did kind of feel like that was what we were doing.
If we were ever at their flat together, there would always be an air of awkwardness about it, me and Zoe with our secret and Hannah desperate for us to spend as little time together as possible.
I was sad to have seen a controlling side to such a close friend. And sad that she didn’t trust me enough to be friends with both her and Zoe
I was scared. Scared of her reaction, scared of being made to feel uncomfortable and scared of having to admit that whatever she said and however she felt about it, I liked my new friend. The situation made me, a usually confident woman, feel intimidated by the potential anger that it might bring forward.
I was also sad. Sad to have seen a controlling side to such a close friend and sad that she didn’t trust me enough to be friends with both her and Zoe.
In the last couple of months though we have made a conscious effort to make our affair a little less clandestine. The odd Instagram photograph here and there, actually mentioning the fact that we talk in public, that sort of thing.
But not because we feel it’s our duty to Hannah to do so, even though it would be nice for her not to care, but because as two grown women who genuinely enjoy each other’s company, it’s ridiculous that we have been hiding it for so long.
And you know what? Life’s too short and true friends are too rare to let anyone dictate who you should hang out with.
*names have been changed
Picture: Lukasz Wierzbowski
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.