One of your worst nightmares has now become your reality.
You’re sitting across a dinner table and you feel like your beau and bestie are making too much eye contact. You close your eyes for a second, relax your shoulders and breathe, reassuring yourself that nothing is going on.
While the quick breathing exercise may have appeased your worries for a few hours, it’s now bedtime and you can’t seem to shake the worried feeling. After all, you know what people say about a woman’s intuition – when you know, you just know.
If you’re stuck feeling this way, here are some tips to help you figure out whether or not you’re right (and what to do if you are).
Don’t immediately overanalyze the situation and jump to conclusions. You could be wrong.
One of the ways you can prevent yourself from doing this is to imagine what you would say to a friend in your situation. Inc. says, “[Imagining] your own advice if you understand what an outsider’s perspective might be. Because you’re in the middle of a situation, your views are distorted, but on the outside, you might see things differently.”
If this doesn’t work, then try to bring in someone who isn’t emotionally invested in the relationship.
Invite a trusted friend (or two) to hang with you, your boyfriend and the girl you are convinced he is flirting with. Having someone with fresh eyes and ears be brought into the mix can give you a clear, levelheaded analysis of the problems you are sensing.
If your outside friends confirm your suspicions, then move on to step two.
Regardless of what is happening, communicating with one another is the most important thing you can all do. The consequence of jumping to conclusions can be detrimental to both your relationships.
Start by talking to them individually.
Go straight to your bestie before talking to him. Make sure to approach her in a way that makes her know you aren’t attacking her or accusing her of anything. After all, she was probably your best friend before you and your boo even got together. Be honest about what you are feeling and let her know what you saw. (When you do this, be sure to use “I” statements in order to avoid accusing her of being a bad best friend.)
Also, when you speak with her, Love is Respect suggests checking your body language. Keep your body language open and attentive to let your friend know you are listening. Maybe she has been internally dealing with this and didn’t know what to do about it. Or, maybe she will put all your worries to rest.
After you’ve talked to her, talk to him to hear his side of the story.
Depending on what you hear from your best friend, you may or may not be angry. If you are angry, Love is Respect suggests communicating in a healthy way by following these four steps: stop, think, talk and listen.
This is not going to be easy, but it needs to happen. In the same fashion that you approached talking to your “friend” you need to talk to your significant other. Be gentle. “Stop, take a step back and breathe,” says Love is Respect. Then, after you tell them how you feel, “remember to stop talking and listen to what they have to say. You both deserve the opportunity to express how you feel in a safe and healthy environment.”
After you’ve heard both sides of the story and have had some time to think about it, you’re ready to move on to the next step.
If nothing was happening to begin with, then no worries! But, if your boyfriend has been openly flirting with your bestie and she has been openly flirting right back, you’re going to need to plan a course of action.
You can choose to forgive them, but you have to make sure that this is what you want to do. Forgiveness isn’t just saying “whatever,” and then ignoring how the situation makes you feel. “By forgiving, you are accepting the reality of what happened and finding a way to live in a state of resolution with it,” explains Psychology Today.
If you can’t do that, however, then you may need to move on. Psychology Today also says that forgiveness “can be a gradual process” and “it doesn’t necessarily have to include the person you are forgiving.”
Even if this is one of the most difficult things that you will have to do, it will be worth it in the long run if you’re sure about your decision. The weight of worrying and speculating will be gone and you can go and find your happiness somewhere else.
Overall, remember that you are a bright star in this cloud of darkness and you will get through this. Even if your relationships don’t turn out the way you expected them to, you don’t have to let them define you. If you feel like the best thing to do is to move on, then don’t get caught up in feeling like a failure.
As Ann Landers, Chicago Sun-Times advice columnist once said, “Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.”
