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Predicament of the Week
In which Breakup Girl addresses the situation that has, this week, brought her the most (a) amusement, (b) relief that it is happening to someone else, and/or (c) proof that she could not possibly be making this stuff up.

Dear Breakup Girl,

I have this friend, you see. I'll call him Kevin, due to his more-than passing resemblance to a younger Kevin Bacon. We're really close friends, and have been for going on ten years now. And, well, we've also been sleeping together off and on, when neither of us are dating anyone else, for the past five years. I know-- yikes. This probably sets off all of your Breakup Girl warning bells or something. God knows, it should have set off mine.

I won't bore you with our ten years of emotional ups and downs. But to really briefly summarize, we met, he had a girlfriend, I developed a huge crush on him anyway, I stood by him and did the "friend thing" when they finally broke up, we got really close, evenutally we ended up doing some stuff that wouldn't exactly qualify us for Platonic Friends of the Year, and ... that's where things pretty much quit evolving. For years, he was hung up on Ms. Thing of the Past, so a real relationship was basically out of the question. But we were very attracted to each other (always have been) so we kept sleeping together. And I was hung up on him, so as long as we were hanging out together (not to mention sleeping together), I couldn't get HIM out of MY head. The longer this went on, the weirder it got.

Occasionally, I would start dating somebody else, so I'd stop calling Kevin or refuse to return his calls. We would go months, even up to a year, without seeing each other. I tried, I REALLY tried, to have normal, healthy relationships with several other men I have dated over the years. They were all wonderful, thoughtful, caring, sweet guys. But I just kept thinking about Kevin. Much like that annoyingly circular Kevin Bacon Game, everything always eventually seemed to wind its way back to my Kevin! I'd break up with whoever I was dating and end up back with him. Well, sleeping with him, at least.

My last relationship ended several months ago. Before I broke up with my ex, Kevin and I had gone the longest amount of time without speaking to each other that we had since we met. When I decided to call him up again for the first time after that, I resolved that above all, no matter what happened, his friendship was too valuable to me to lose. Kevin is one of the closest friends I've ever had, and I decided that I wanted to end the ridiculous pattern we'd been struggling with for five long years. So we got together, went to the bar, talked for hours and hours, enjoyed each other's company immensely and ... went home and slept together.

Bad, BAD idea, I know. But I've discovered that some patterns are awfully tough to break. So, for the past couple of months, Kevin and I did the same old thing. We hung out together all the time, went shopping, ran errands together, cooked dinners together, visited each others' parents together, made bets with each other that required the loser to make the other breakfast, etc. It was fun. We were friends ... and we had awesome sex. For a while, I convinced myself that this was a pretty good thing we had going. But the same questions I've always had started popping back into my mind. How exactly does he FEEL about me? Am I just a good friend who's also a convenient lay? What is this friends-plus-sex thing, anyway? Can it possibly work? If it's such a brilliant idea, why doesn't everybody else do it, instead of opening themselves up to the pitfalls of relationships and marriage? Naturally, it just got to be too confusing. So I initiated a Big Talk.

Kevin told me there is a "connection" between us that he doesn't fully understand, but that he sees us as basically just friends. "So where does the sex fit in?" I asked. He said he sees that as a "component" of our friendship. I pointed out that if that is the case, eventually one or both of us will supposedly meet the person of our dreams and settle down into happy relationship-type bliss, so when (if) that happens, would it be possible for us still to be friends? He said he thought he could easily (easily?!) drop that "component" of our friendship and just be my buddy if the need arose. I thought, okay, I can accept this. But I asked him if there was any chance that this ever could evolve into something more than just friendship- plus-sex weirdness. He gave me an odd look, as if this had never occurred to him, and said, "Well, no. There's too much water under the bridge now. There's too much history there." I must have had kind of a bizarre look on my face at that point, because he followed that up with, "Well, I mean, it's not like we could DATE. We already know each other too well for that."

Huh? OBVIOUSLY I never envisioned Kevin and me dating, in the traditional sense of the word. I guess I pictured us sort of skipping that stage. In fact, it seems to me that if we had a real relationship, nothing would have to actually change--we would just keep doing things exactly as we have been, except I wouldn't have to worry about him walking in one day and proudly announcing that he has a date next Friday. I mean, if it looks like a relationship, and it sounds like a relationship, well, what the hell is it? So, while I understand it may be as simple as him just plain old lacking THOSE kind of feelings for me, and I can accept it if that's the case, the reasoning he gave me just made no sense at all to me, and I'm still confused. And I can't help thinking that the ex-girlfriend might still have something to do with it. It's been a whopping six years since they broke up, but in that time Kevin still has not seriously dated ANYONE else. His last girlfriend was the closest he's come to serious, and that quickly ended when she told him she loved him and he couldn't return the sentiment. He dumped her. I'm sure that same fate that would have been mine if we hadn't had such a long-term friendship before all this started, and had dated in the "traditional" way that he seems to think is a requirement.

So my question is, what do I do now? I can't go on like we have been, it's too difficult and weird and confusing for me. But at the same time, I definitely don't want to lose Kevin's friendship. Should I take him up on his pledge that he could "easily" be friends with me even if the sex "component" was out? If so, how should I go about being friends with somebody I've grown accustomed to sleeping with pretty much every time I've seen him during the past five years? Secondly, I know you're not a mind reader, but could you shed some light onto WHY he is acting this way and his strange response as to why we could never have a relationship? I mean, "water under the bridge?" What the heck does that mean? Why was my question about us ever being more than friends seemingly so bizarre to him in the first place? Personally, I think a relationship that starts with two people who already know each other inside and out is probably better off than a traditional "boy meets girl, boy dates girl" kind of scenario.

I really need your advice, Breakup Girl. This problem is even spoiling my enjoyment of fine cinema like Footloose and Tremors.

--Done Playing the Kevin Bacon Game

Dear Done,

Ooh, did you date Vanilla Ice (who was in Cool as Icewith Michael Gross, who was in Tremors ...) ?

Okay, seriously. It does sound to me like -- brace yourself -- Kevin does want to maintain at least a couple degrees of separation. That to him, yes, you are a good friend (really) who's also a fabulous, but yes, also convenient ... oh, eeuw, it's too harsh, I can't say it. But you know what I mean. Your words, not mine, anyway.

No, I'm not a mind reader, but I am a between the line-reader ... emphasis on "line." Sweetie, when people start using words like "component" and "water under the bridge," they are not using interesting, multi-layered metaphors that demand deconstruction. They are tossing out flabby, jargony, Dilberty terms to distract you from the fact that they're really saying "I like you, but I don't LIKElike you." In your case, I think he really really really likes you, really (so don't bother feeling icky and used), but something -- go freaking figure -- is stopping him from settling down (as opposed to hooking up) with you. Why did the "more than friends" question seem so bizarre to him? It didn't. He knew it would come. It's called Feigned Innocence (which is not the title of a KB movie). And sometimes, yeah, friendships that morph into More Than are relationships with superstrong bonds. But they're not across the board "better off" than the "traditional" scenario. Especially not when, um, sometimes one friend's pretty okay with the status quo.

So what to do? No, if it's weird and confusing for you, you shouldn't go on this way; sure, go ahead and take him at his word. How? I'd suggest doing All New Stuff, not just Everything But. Don't, oh, sleep in the same bed, or fix eggs for each other ... but not sleep together. Do stuff you've never done. Activities. Pursuits. Like, go to the Aquarium. And back to separate apartments.Whatever. You may -- I hope -- [re]discover new facets to your friendship. Or, you may discover that the friends+sex thing was the appropriate, inevitable, and only possible -- if impermanent -- balance of power and passion in your relationship. Without the sex, things may fizzle. I'm not saying they will, I'm saying they might. Which is NOT to say that it was just about the sex, or, again, that you should feel icky and used. Just that it MAY have been about the combination. That one enhanced -- and depended on -- the other.

So. Forget about analyzing the script --- just try doing the friends thing, if you can stand it. Make sure to date more than a few good men in the meantime. Someday soon, you will be able to go back and watch Quicksilver in all its glory. Really.

Love,
Breakup Girl

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