Be strong either way

Dear Carolyn: After a bad run of luck for about five years, I met someone who I think is quite kind and special, and we have been dating for about two months.

We met friends of mine from college (a married couple) about a month ago for dinner, and he hit it off with the woman and asked me for her e-mail address to see if she wanted to get together for lunch. They work next door to each other and are somewhat in the same business. I kept putting off giving him the e-mail because I found it inappropriate for him to be seeking out lunch with my married friend.

I finally gave him her e-mail address when he asked for it yet again, and the next day they met for coffee. He called me to tell me that he met with her, which was nice, I guess, but he didn’t tell me much else. The whole situation has made me feel very uncomfortable, especially since I never did hear from my friend that she went to coffee with him, only from my boyfriend. – Uncomfortable

“Uncomfortable” is what you get when you try so hard to keep someone, you start suppressing your judgment.

You want your judgment to be wrong, I understand; you want the guy’s interest in your friend to be innocent and professional, and you want to be glad you didn’t confront him. You want your friend to have been so unfazed that she forgot to mention she met him.

The good news is, your judgment may be wrong and his interest may be innocent and professional. Your friend may have been unfazed. It wasn’t a mistake to provide her e-mail address knowing they might socialize.

Your mistake, I think, was in your reason for handing over the address – because you were afraid that voicing your opinion, “I find it inappropriate,” would imperil your first promising relationship in five years.

You had two choices: to explain why you wouldn’t give him the e-mail, or to hand it over and hope for the best. Each was legitimate. The way to make either one comfortably was to make it a conscious choice – either to state your beliefs, knowing your fledgling relationship might not withstand your honesty, or to let their coffee-sharing play out, knowing it could end badly and prove he wasn’t as promising as you had thought. Both choices show strength.

It’s not too late to show that same strength at this point. You can choose to confess to him that his contacting your married friend makes you uncomfortable, or you can choose to wait to see how things play out.

The latter may look an awful lot like not doing anything about it, but it isn’t the same thing. The difference – in your self-respect, and therefore your comfort level, and therefore, I think, in the outcome – lies in choosing to take on a risk versus ducking your head to avoid one.