Auntie SparkNotes: My Girlfriend Slept with *Both* of My Roommates and I’m Furious

Dear Auntie,

I have a group of friends. There’s four of us, including myself, and we basically hang out with just each other. This is part of the problem, because everyone involved is part of the problem itself, so outside perspective would be great.

So the four of us have been friends since sophomore year in high school and we’ve all recently bought/rented a house to live in together during college. Now in this group there’s myself, my best friend G, our mutual friend J, and a spawn-sucking, road-sucking, whore named A. About a year ago, the beginning of senior year, I noticed there might be something more in my friendship with A. To make a long story short, she felt the same way and we’ve been together since February.

And it was great! We knew each other pretty well already, so that was no problem. And our schedules don’t line up very well, so even though we live together, we don’t see each other too often. She’s hilarious and smart and really cute and I just have such a nice time with her.

And then a week ago, we were getting ready to go see a movie, just the two of us, and I was waiting for her to finish getting ready. Then J comes over and starts talking about how great it is that she and I are dating and we’re so perfect together and blah, blah, blah. He says it’s so great I was okay with moving in together, which confused me. I asked him why I wouldn’t have been okay with it and he says he just believes honesty is the best policy and that he’s really glad he doesn’t have to walk on eggshells anymore.

So I asked why he would need to walk on eggshells and he says that he’s wanted to tell me since it happened but that everyone said not to, because they “knew” I’d “fly off the handle,” if I was told. At this moment, G walks in, looks over at J, who immediately apologizes and leaves the room. G looks back at me and says, ” Damn. J just told you about me and A, right? “

So I get angry and ask what that means, and then A comes running in and says,” Okay, look, I did sleep with J once but—”

I lost it. My girlfriend had slept with both my roommates and nobody ever told me about it. I dumped her on the spot and refused to talk to any of them. I had my work schedule switched around some, so I wouldn’t have to talk to any of them. J kept calling and texting and kept apologizing profusely, saying again and again how sorry he was, and that he shouldn’t have said anything. A and G kept calling and texting, tell me this all happened way before we got together (as if that would make me feel better) and to please let them explain.

Finally I came home the other night from work and G was waiting up for me. I told him I didn’t want to talk and he starts telling me the awful stories anyway. Back in our junior year, A and G ended up doing pot and sleeping together. And then there’s J, who is the the naive and innocent one of the four of us. He’s really religious and his family is the very traditional kind, finish college, get married, have babies. But the idea freaked him out because he had never done it before and he was worried and scared and embarrassed and all that. So when he told A about it, she said she’d help him if it would make him feel better because he had never even kissed before. And yeah. She agreed to sleep with him because NO WAY WOULD HE HAVE EVER FIGURED OUT HOW, AUNTIE!

Apparently, right when we started dating, she grabbed them for a meeting and basically asked them both not to say anything, which set J off and made him feel guilty about it all. As a way to ensure none of this came out, A told another lie and told J that she had talked to me about this already. G kept telling me this all happened years ago, when we weren’t dating, or even attracted to each other, so I shouldn’t make a big deal about it. He started lecturing me on how I needed to talk to A and then go make amends with J because he feels terrible.

Imagine that. J feels terrible for letting himself get used by A and then intentionally going behind my back and keeping this from me. They all plotted and worked together to keep me from ever finding out about any of this and it really upsets me. It’s not fair. I’m just as much a part of this group and I found out last about all of them. I feel so sick knowing my so-called friends are horrible people who take advantage of each other and use each other and keep secrets from me. And I miss A. A lot. But I can barely stand looking at her. I thought she was wonderful and it turns out she’s not. She’s effectively ruined our relationship, not to mention her friendships with J and G.

So I just need your outsider’s perspective on the whole of it. I’m doing the right thing about this, right? I mean, these people lied to me. I should be taking time to cool off and heal right? I’m justified in being angry and hurt and not making a big deal about this. As you’ve read, it was already a big deal.

Before we begin, Sparkler, let’s get some important stuff out of the way: I understand that this is a big deal to you. I understand that you feel very betrayed, and very angry, and probably very foolish (which is how we all feel when we’re the last to know the truth about something.) And given what you’ve just discovered, I completely understand why you feel these things, because on its face, it’s a pretty shocking thing to learn.

So I want to be very clear: None of what I’m about to say is meant to invalidate you, dismiss you, or make you feel bad.

However, I do have to point out that, based on your letter, it’s not exactly hard to understand why your friends thought it was better to keep this information from you. You say they “knew” you’d “fly off the handle” like that isn’t exactly what you did—but it is. I mean, look what happened when they told you the truth: You couldn’t handle it. You didn’t even want to hear it. You were so immediately, all-consumingly angry that you dumped your girlfriend and cut off all dialogue without even knowing what really happened. And rather than taking a few deep breaths and working through your feelings, or talking through them with your girlfriend, you jumped straight to blowing up three of the most important relationships in your life. Refusing to hear anyone else’s perspective? Writing off all three of your closest friends as worthless, lying sacks of [stuff] without so much as a conversation? Calling your recent ex a “road-sucking whore”?

Tell me honestly, dude: Would you be inclined to deliver a piece of difficult news to someone who reacts to it like this? I know you’re hurt, sweet pea, but you are making this so ugly. Sougly. It’s truly beneath you, and not only that, it’s doing nothing to make you feel better or give you any peace—because if it were, you wouldn’t be begging a stranger on the internet to tell you that you’re doing the right thing.

The thing is, I think you know that. Your feelings are real and valid, but they way you’re dealing with them isn’t healthy.

The good news is, it’s not too late to deal with them differently.

So, with that said, here is what I’d like you to do: Put your anger at a distance and start asking yourself where it’s coming from. Specifically, I’d like you to think about this from the perspective of the other people in the scenario — which I know you don’t want to do, because it’s uncomfortable, but do me this favor, okay? Try to really imagine yourself in your girlfriend’s position. Imagine that you had two separate, meaningless, one-time flings in your past with two people you were close to. Imagine that you had no idea at the time that you would end up in a serious relationship with someone who knew both of them, let alone sharing a house with everyone involved. Imagine that you knew your significant other would flip her pancakes if she knew you’d had these years-old hookups, perhaps understandably, but still in a way that was totally out of proportion with their significance to anyone involved.

Would you tell her? Would you struggle with the choice to tell her? If you did tell her, consider what you’d be hoping to accomplish: how would you phrase it so as to convey the truth? Might you, by any chance, emphasize that both hookups occurred years ago, before your relationship even presented itself as a possibility? Would you expect that to matter? Why or why not? And keeping in mind that you cannot change what’s done, and that these hookups meant nothing to you, might you possibly decide that the kinder thing was to not put that image in her head?

And when you’re done thinking about that, I want you to think about this:
Why does your ex’s sexual history make her a bad person in your eyes?

Is it that she slept with someone? With two someones? That she hooked up outside the bounds of a relationship? Is it that you know the guys in question? Would you be as upset if they were strangers? Have you ever slept with someone she knows, or someone she didn’t know about? Did you tell her absolutely everything about your history, every last insignificant dalliance? If not, why not? Are you a bad person because of it?

To be clear, you’ll have to come up with your own answers to these questions. For the sake of full disclosure, I do personally think you’re assigning much more blame and bad intent to your ex than she deserves. I think you’re overlooking how very hard it is to know what to do in a situation like this, where you’re weighing the abstract value of honesty against the very real worth of not needlessly upsetting someone you love. Oh, and I think your friend J is a self-serving, selfish weenie who needs to grow up and stop trying to clear his conscience at everyone else’s expense. If he couldn’t stand keeping this from you, the decent thing to do would have been to give your girlfriend a chance to come clean first. (Not to mention: he made an autonomous decision to sleep with this girl, but now that he feels retroactively lousy about it, it’s all her fault and he was “used”? Give me a break.)

But I’m not the one in charge, here. You’ll have to draw your own conclusions. I just want you to at least consider the possibility that there are other conclusions out there than “My friends are all horrible lying users who keep secrets from me,” because the one thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is that it’s more complicated than that—and that whatever your way forward, accepting that is the way through. And while it is harder and less immediately satisfying to think through the complexities of a hurtful situation than it is to wrap yourself up in righteous outrage, you will be stronger, and your life will be better, for doing this hard thing. I wish you the best of luck.

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