Dear Tom and Bobbie,In response to your answer to the woman whose friends hit on her boyfriend, I noticed that both of you talked about what her boyfriend should do and skipped right past the fact that her "friends" are hitting on her boyfriend. It might be time for her to reconsider who her "friends" are.
Bobbie says:Although we focused on our reader's concerns about her boyfriend's response to the flirtations, since that was the core of her question, I agree with you and others who also wrote in that it is valuable to now deal with her friends' behavior as well.I also agree that any "friend" willing to hit on their friend's partner disqualify themselves as a true or safe friend. And even though most women in our culture would tend to overlook this, it is a big enough betrayal to merit a more meaningful reaction. Yet our tendency not to face this as the affront to friendship it actually is happens to be part of the problem.Moreover, ignoring this kind of behavior brings us to an even bigger female problem, one that boils down to the question: why would any woman, much less a friend, do this to another woman? But perhaps the more important question is, why would any of us put up with it, as so many do, by politely ignoring and failing to mention it, and then continuing with the "friendship."Many women are inclined to skim over this because it is how we were trained to interact with each other while growing up ... and many don't even see it for the problem it is. As a result, this kind of covert betrayal has become almost an invisible problem to women and is one they rarely address or deal with. Here's why.Rather than compete openly on athletic fields as boys learned to do, girls were encouraged to more covertly "do battle" with each by using the power of their beauty to elevate their status.Thus, rather than cultivate their talents to gain top positions in life or develop the personal qualities of kindness, caring and loyalty needed for good friendship, they learned to rely on the power of their beauty to elevate their worth and vie with each other for improved social standing with both girls and boys.This system enabled the most attractive girls to use the superiority of their appearance to win other girls to their "side" until they developed a large enough "army of influence" to get their way for a variety of unkind intentions — rather than for good ones. It also enabled a "bully" girl to push the other girls around as well as push them aside to win the hearts of the boys.Such a start on the playgrounds sent young girls off to a bad start in their interactions with each other, and many women still have painful memories of being deeply hurt by being left out or having a girlfriend or boyfriend stolen. Interestingly, these ways of interrelating often creep into our adult female interactions and are the genesis of other women, even "friends," hitting on our partners.Because this was not generally addressed or handled on our childhood playgrounds, many women have no model for knowing what to do when it continues to happen in adulthood. And so they do now what they did then, allow and ignore it, while trying to improve or win back their own social standing. And this is what our reader and her friends are doing.A more appropriate guideline would be to stop ignoring the unfriendly behaviors of these women and put their actions on the table to be discussed openly the moment they are happening. By doing this, we no longer pretend our friends' unkind behaviors are socially appropriate and will be "politely" tolerated to either spare them embarrassment at the time of their action or to save their friendship later. By reacting, we let them and others know that we do have a standard of behavior that we are willing to declare and stand for, much in the way men more effectively and openly do. And so just as we suggest the reader require her boyfriend to meet a standard of honoring her as she would like to be honored, we suggest she hold her girlfriends to a similar standard . . . a standard that allows her to settle for more, rather than less in all of her relationships.Tom Merrill, Ph.D., ABPP, and Bobbie Sandoz Merrill MSW, are married and veterans of the relationship puzzle. Tom, a clinical psychologist, and Bobbie, a therapist and parenting specialist, bring their personal and clinical experiences to this column. They have co-authored Settle for More: Finding and Keeping the Relationship You Want, to be published in fall, 2004. They welcome reader responses and questions: Merrill@lava.net.
