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Auntie SparkNotes: My Prom Date Had Ulterior Motives

Hello!

I have boy and society troubles to get advice on. I got asked to prom a week before the event by one of my guy friends. Ryan and I were pretty good friends but I assumed it was a very casual thing; he forgot to pick up the tickets so I paid for them and got them, we were both going to wear sunglasses indoors the whole night because we thought it was funny, he asked if he should get me “the flower thing” or if I would be cool without it and so I said I already made an order for his boutonniere but he could do “whatevs” and we high-fived after.

Flash forward to the night of the dance. Ryan picks me up super early. He’s wearing the tuxedo his dad got MARRIED in. He spent the whole week making a corsage with his entire family’s help. He bought a car air freshener “just for me” (this being because his car smelled intensely of weed but I’ll save that for later), and then at the actual dance, he refused to dance with anyone else when i was around and when I saw him grinding on one of my friends, i gave him a thumbs up and he immediately stopped dancing with her and apologized to me. (This kind of thing happened more than once because there are a ton of girls who are into him.) I don’t want to dance like that with him because I’m very religious and uncomfortable with doing these things, especially with him.

So now I’m all worried that he’s super into me and I didn’t want that so I’m really panicked. On the drive to the after party he is telling me all these lies like “I would never do drugs” and “Marissa is having another after-party tonight and I would never go! It sounds so raunchy,” and I sat there pretending to believe him. And after I left the after-party, I talked to my best friend who was at Marissa’s party, and she says not only did Ryan go, but he smoked and had a threesome with two other girls there that night and was upset because he just wanted me to “give it up to him” and all he wanted was for someone to give him a blow job and stuff like that. Ryan also refused to go to prom with one of my other good friends because he said she was “too innocent” and thought I would be “easier” (big mistake).

I am very hurt and appalled by all of this and my friends don’t know what to make of it. It has been almost two weeks and I haven’t said a word to him. I don’t really want to forgive him, but all of my friends are telling me to get over it and still stay friends with him, because we always used to hang out before, but I honestly feel like our whole friendship is a lie now. Should I try to pretend like I wasn’t aware and stay friends with him, knowing that he has other intentions, or should I totally break off contact with him, even though we have had a good friendship in the past?

That’s a good question, Sparkler, and I’m going to answer it—just as soon as I finish wrapping my head around the rather twisted sequence of events in your fairly long letter. Here, as I’m understanding it, is what happened:

Your good friend asked you to the prom last-minute, showed up in a vintage tuxedo with a handmade corsage, and made your comfort a priority for the duration of the evening—including apologizing when he did something not-particularly-classy by grinding with someone other than his date.

Your good friend then made a few embarrassing ham-handed attempts to woo you by positioning himself as a non-smoking, non-partying, straight-arrow kind of a guy, which worked exactly opposite of the way he’d hoped in that it totally weirded you out.

And finally, having realized that he didn’t have a chance, your friend waited until you went home, and then went out to another party where he purportedly made some indelicate comments about his disappointment at striking out with you and got busy hooking up with someone else—and please do note the word “purportedly,” because at this point, you’re only hearing about your friend’s behavior secondhand from someone who may or may not actually know what she’s talking about. (And considering that your other friend’s version of events has Ryan behaving not just badly, but like a straight-to-DVD movie caricature of teen male entitlement, a little skepticism is probably in order.)

And assuming that this accurately sums up the how and who and when and where, I must admit that I’m struggling to understand the why of your reaction, particularly the part where you’re freezing out this guy for… what reason, exactly? Because he was interested in you? Because he mistakenly thought you might be interested in him? Because he was bummed out about it where someone else could see him? Because after he struck out with you, he dealt with it exactly like the (smoking, partying, hookup-having) person you always thought he was anyway?

These are real questions, by the way. You say you’re hurt and appalled, and those are real feelings you’ll need to deal with—but first and foremost by asking yourself where they’re coming from, and why, and whether your gut reaction is necessarily the most reasonable one. I mean, yes, your friend had the mistaken idea that you guys might hook up after prom, and of course you wish he hadn’t. In an ideal world, nobody would ever have to deal with the squicky awkwardness of being liked by someone who they’d rather die than kiss. But alas, we don’t live in an ideal world. And given the circumstances, the way your friend dealt with his error in judgment was… actually pretty gracious, no? He tried, he wasn’t getting anywhere, he backed off. He was considerate and respectful of you for the duration of your time together. It wasn’t until you’d both left the scene that he said what he said. (Which might have been as awful as it sounds, but which also might have been the drunk, stoned, face-saving posturing of a person who just had his hopes pretty badly dashed.)

None of which is to say that you have to remain chummy with him, of course. It’s up to you to decide how and with whom you spend your time, as well as how far you’re willing to extend yourself to understand or forgive someone you feel has wronged you. But to freeze out a formerly solid friend just because you heard a gross rumor about him, without so much as a single conversation, never giving him the opportunity to know what he did wrong or apologize for it? That’s awfully cold, darling. Especially when there are ways of looking at this that make your friend’s behavior seem not great, but certainly human—and if not forgivable, then at least worth looking into before you decide for sure.

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