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All healthy relationships are built on communication and trust. You should never lie to your partner, but does that mean you should always tell every bit of truth? When does it become acceptable to hold back information? Okay, enough with the hypotheticals. If you’ve hooked up with a current friend of yours, should you tell your significant other about it?
Obviously, I’m asking because this applies to my life. I have several female friends. At some point during our friendship, I’ve hooked up with several of them. When my girlfriend and I first started dating, I faced a quandary. Should I tell her that several of my friends, who she would inevitably meet, have interacted with my junk? I mean, obviously I shouldn’t phrase it like that, but you get what I’m saying. Or should I keep it to myself in the name of protecting her?
My first thought, of course, was to tell her. Honesty is the best policy in a relationship, I make it a personal goal of mine to always tell the truth. “I may be an asshole, but I’m not a liar,” is a phrase I’ve used more often than I’d like to admit, albeit with mixed results. Also, at some point, the truth would come out, right? One of my idiot guy friends would mention it. I would drunkenly slip up. One of the girls would make fun of my dick game. Who knows. I’m friends with a bunch of assholes. And when the truth finally did come out, I would be in a ten times worse spot than if I had just been upfront about it.
Telling my girlfriend that I had hooked up with my female friends would be uncomfortable. It would be a hard thing to hear, and it would definitely have made it harder for her to hang out with said friends in a group setting. She’d definitely call me a manwhore, which for some reason girls think is not a compliment. However, our relationship would remain the same. It’s not like she could have been mad at me for hooking up with someone before I met her. Well, not logically at least.
However, if she found out that not only had I been intimate with a friend of mine, but that I’d never disclosed it, that would be an entirely bigger shitshow. She would think of me as a liar. Trust would be broken. She’d feel like everyone knew but her, and retroactively parse through good memories with my friends and think they were laughing behind her back. Of course, they wouldn’t have done that, but that’s the thought that would persist.
After thinking all of this, it seemed like my answer was clear. Of course, I should tell her. However, that came with its own set of challenges. If I told her, would she ever hang out with those friends and I? Would she declare it too awkward, or too uncomfortable, and never meet some of my good friends? Even worse, what if she thought I shouldn’t be allowed to interact with them anymore? We might have had some history, but they were still my friends, and I wouldn’t have been able to stand for someone telling me I wasn’t allowed to hang out with them.
In the end, I told her. I sat her down and let her know that there were friends of mine with whom I had “had relations.” I don’t know why I phrased it like a politician navigating through a scandal. Maybe because that’s what it felt like. I also told her that if she asked me directly, I would never lie to her. I would tell her who it was and what the nature of our relationship had been (how many times we had hooked up and what we had done). However, I asked her to think before she asked me anything, and figure out if she actually wanted to know or not. I made it clear that I was not going to lose any friends over this, and if she didn’t think she could handle the truth, she should remain blissfully ignorant.
And it worked out.
She appreciated my honesty, and only wanted to confirm that I had never been serious with any of them (nope) and that I didn’t have feelings for any of them (fuck nope. My friends are the worst). Surprisingly, she didn’t immediately ask me to divulge all the information and took my advice to think on it. She has asked me about a couple of friends since that conversation, and I have kept my promise to answer honestly. She is friends with those friends, and we have hung out regularly with zero issues.
Maybe I’m biased due to my relationship with an understanding and confident girl who handled this issue with ease, but I’m a firm believer in disclosing all past hookups that could still be a part of your life. If your SO is never going to meet them, there’s no need to bring it up, but if they are, save yourself the future issues. Just tell them. They might get mad, but if your relationship is solid, they’ll get over it. That being said, this only applies to past casual hookups. If you’re still “friends with your ex,” good luck trying to sell that to your current partner. No one’s buying it. .
Respond
Nick Arcadia
The opposite of a life coach. Email or DM me if you want some bad advice: nickarcadiapgp@gmail.com
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As someone who has hooked up with a few of my male friends (with no feelings involved whatsoever), I probably wouldn’t say anything at all. But I think that’s because there’s also more social stigma attached to women who sleep around than men who do the same thing.
“With no feelings involved whatsoever” lol
Well I’m clarifying because I think you should tell your SO if there were feelings involved. I just have a tendency to make drunk decisions based on proximity lol
**Cues the “Where are you going to be Friday night?” comments.**
Does this mean that “sup?” is played out? I hope not.
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I agree, and yet as someone on the receiving end of this, I don’t at the same time.
My girlfriend dated one of her pretty good (current) friends from law school for like a year. She describes it as a terrible situation where he’s a mess and they fought all the time and it was never that serious, but basically any time she mentions something about him (like him meeting her bosses/kind of adopted parents when they were dating), it gets my hackles up and I get all in my own head for probably the next 12 hours wondering how serious it was and how they stayed friends after such a terrible messy relationship.
I’d feel like an idiot if I found out later, but at the same time I know I’ll never like the guy as much as I would have, because I just always wish he hadn’t dated my girlfriend…knowing full well how unreasonable that all is.
Hey it’s me, your female friend.
*Male friend. Fuck, that had potential.
This is why you don’t hook up with friends. Never have to worry about that. But in your situation, I definitely agree. If your girl/boy friend will interact with the old hookup, tell them
Random college fun times….no. Your wife’s best friend who will undoubtedly spill the beans to her during a drunk brunch one Sunday… yes
It’s a Schrödinger’s cat type of curiosity to want to know.
I’m of the policy that if they never ask, then it isn’t lying. You don’t name off all the people you’ve been with right out of the gate. But if the other person asks, you tell the truth. I also believe that you shouldn’t ask a question if you won’t like a potential answer, as far as past relationships go.
no.
Damn, you read that whole thing in under a minute? That’s impressive.
Are you watching your own article comments to see how long it takes for someone to answer your title?
I read most comments because my sense of self worth is directly related to what y’all think of my writing.
You should take it as a compliment that someone (me) can read and understand your articulated opinion in such quick time. Your self-worth is booming.
@BostonMax- Let the court include this as article A of the evidence for the prosecution.
A drinking game question revealed that I made out with a random girl at a bar my gf and I frequent (this was a year before our relationship) and she got upset… granted, she was kinda drunk/irrational but I’d venture that most S.O.’s don’t want to know your history
I don’t wanna know unless it’s with someone that I come into contact with regularly. Even then I don’t actually wanna know I just would rather know than look like an idiot for not, so lesser of the evils. As long as they’re not cheating I don’t wanna know anything about where their peen has been.
Honestly, this stuff kind of torpedoed my last relationship. He had major jealously issues and wasn’t cool at all with me being in contact with anyone I’d ever hooked up with, even if there were no feelings involved… which sucks, because I’ve hooked up with several of my guy friends.
I was ashamed to admit I had previously hooked up with a guy who had a reputation of being kind of a fckboy, and then he found out about it. He held it over my head the rest of the relationship as a reason not to trust me. And then he’d get weird about anyone I’d hooked up with liking/commenting on my social media, so I eventually blocked those people for the sake of my relationship. Some of those people I didn’t give a shit about, but some I did consider friends and there were no romantic feelings. It left me feeling isolated and and sort of afraid to have guy friends. Even now that we’re broken up, I don’t think I’d be able to hook up with guy friends again just because I don’t want this issue to arise in my next relationship
In hindsight, this relationship was doomed from the start. Jealously issues are incredibly hard to work though. They can make someone become very controlling and the relationship gets toxic very quickly.
He just sounds like a manipulative dude, consider yourself lucky your friends helped filter him out.