Dear Joely: My Best Friend Shagged Someone Beside Me
When your best friend crosses a boundary you didn't know needed explaining
Dear Joely,
You seem good at holiday problems so I thought I'd write in. I happened to find you while scrolling by the pool. My best friend (let's call her Christine) and I are both 24 and have known one another since secondary school. We are very close. There's no one either of us knows better in the world. We are called "the fixture" by my family. She's on the next sun lounge as I type this, but things are a bit strained at the moment.
We recently came to Tenerife on a holiday break, for a week. We looked forward to the trip as we have all our holidays in the past. Our days are made up of sunning ourselves, reading, chatting and swimming. In the afternoons we go back to the apartment and take our time getting ready for the evenings, a few drinks, getting showered and dressed and then out for dinner, more drinks, dancing and fun.
Last night was just like that. We both drank probably too much. Well, it was too much. At some point, I knew I needed to go back to the apartment. Christine wanted to stay out. I didn't think that was a problem. She was having fun with a guy. We weren't far away from the apartment. So I told her goodnight and told her to have a good night.
The sun shines in the curtains in the mornings and this morning was no exception. I felt as rough as a badger's arse. I looked over at Christine's bed. It was then that I realised she wasn't alone. I think it was the guy she was last dancing with when I left. To be honest, who cares? They weren't just sleeping, they were actually shagging. You know, in that kind of "let's do it quietly so we don't wake her up" sort of way.
I felt the bile rising in my throat, and I ran to the toilet and was sick. My head was banging and I was suddenly so angry I could barely see. I went back to my bed and just yelled at him to get the f*&% out. Christine started to protest. I just kept yelling, "Get out."
Things have been strained between us, to say the least, since this morning. I've got my dark glasses on and I'm under an umbrella on my sun bed, as I said. But I'm furious with her. She's tried to talk to me, but I won't have it. I just can't believe she'd treat me like this. I hope you can answer me urgently.
Yours,
Barf & Bitter
Dear Barf & Bitter,
First things first: your friend should not have brought a man back to your shared bedroom and shagged him while you were asleep three feet away.
I don't care how quietly they did it. Sex is not made private by reducing the volume.
You were entitled to wake up furious. You were entitled to tell him to leave. And Christine owes you an apology for deciding, without consulting you, that your shared bedroom could become hers for the night while you remained inconveniently unconscious in the other bed.
So far, I'm entirely under your umbrella.
But now I'm going to pull my sun lounge slightly away from yours.
You say, "I just can't believe she'd treat me like this."
Like what, exactly?
Because there are two possible offences here, and I'm not convinced you know which one has made you so angry.
Imagine the same morning again. Same murderous hangover. Same Tenerife sun drilling through the curtains. You roll over and Christine's bed is empty.
An hour later, she wanders in wearing last night's dress and somebody else's grin. She tells you she went home with the man from the bar and had spectacular sex.
Are you furious?
If the answer is no, excellent. We know what happened. Christine violated a perfectly reasonable boundary about your shared room, behaved selfishly while drunk, and now needs to apologise. You need to stop refusing to speak to her long enough to let her do it. You've been friends since secondary school. Don't turn one inconsiderate shag into the Treaty of Tenerife.
But if you're reading this and thinking, Actually, Joely, I'd still have hated it...
Then I'd be interested in that.
You call yourselves "the fixture". Your family calls you "the fixture". You holiday together. You have your rituals: sun lounges, books, swimming, the leisurely transformation from daytime selves into evening selves. And you tell me there's no one in the world who knows either of you better.
That's a beautiful friendship.
It may also have become an arrangement whose terms you've stopped examining.
Sometimes the most intimate friendships acquire invisible rules. We don't announce them because we don't realise they're rules. You'll choose me. I'll choose you. Other people may come and go, but this is the relationship that remains. This particular territory belongs to us.
Then somebody wanders into the territory wearing nightclub trousers and suddenly we discover there was a border.
I'm not telling you you're jealous of Christine. I'm certainly not telling you you're secretly in love with her. Perhaps neither is remotely true.
I'm asking whether you felt displaced.
Because your reaction interests me. You weren't merely irritated. You were incandescent. And somewhere between the badger's arse, the vomiting and the strange man moving rhythmically in the next bed, several different kinds of nausea may have become acquainted.
Incidentally, I wouldn't place too much evidentiary weight on the vomiting. You had drunk far too much and woke with your head banging. Christine's sex life may be many things, but I'm not yet prepared to hold it legally responsible for your stomach.
What I would do is take off the dark glasses, turn towards the woman on the next sun lounge and let her speak.
She may say, "I'm so sorry. I was drunk, I wasn't thinking and I behaved appallingly."
She may say, "I genuinely didn't think you'd care."
She may even say something that makes you angrier.
But at the moment you don't know, because you've sentenced your oldest friend before hearing her defence.
And when she has finished, tell her why you were angry.
Not just "You shouldn't have done that."
Tell her what hurt.
If all that hurt was waking beside an unsolicited live sex show, that's quite enough.
But if something else hurt too, don't be frightened of looking at it. You don't have to give it a name immediately. You just have to be honest enough to notice it.
You asked me urgently, so here is your emergency holiday prescription:
Drink some water. Eat something salty. Stop looking at Christine over the top of your sunglasses as though you're Joan Collins discovering a second will. And talk to your friend.
You have several days of Tenerife left.
Don't give the best sun lounge to a grudge.
Yours, in better boundaries and separate bedrooms,
Joely
