“Athol, I am very interested in this topic. I am a 30 yo man living and working in London. My ex girlfriend of 4 years cheated on me whilst on holiday. While she was here in London she always went for drinks until 2am with her work colleagues on fridays, sometimes other days of the week. This used to tick me off, but it just isn’t socially acceptable to deny them. Even my friends used to tell me I was being too harsh by acting upset with her GNO’s. The events that transpired during her girl’s only holidays proved me right, however.
How can I lay down the law in my future relationships…whithout looking like a total spoilt prat in front of my friends and hers?”
There’s two separate things going on here. The first is that she is displaying disinterest in you repeatedly. The second is that you are being shamed into allowing those displays of disinterest to continue unopposed. Then having been reduced to a passive attachment to her life, she stumbled onto an active interest and responded to it.
Stripping away any talk from the situation and just looking at the actions, every Friday night for four years, she was not with you. That means she wanted to be with them, more than she wanted to be with you. Some weeknights as well, she wanted to be with other people more than she wanted to be with you. She also wanted to be drunk repeatedly and avoid intimacy with you, rather than sober and be intimate with you. Ultimately she wanted to not be on a vacation with you, and be intimate with someone else.
I really don’t give a damn about London culture. I’m pretty sure if she said, “I’d rather be home banging my boyfriend“, she wouldn’t lose her job or work friendships. These are choices she makes.
The reason it ticked you off was that you wanted to be with her and she didn’t want to be with you. Maybe I’m just getting too old, but isn’t the entire point of having a steady girlfriend to have some fun together on Friday nights? Your frustration seems pretty reasonable. Wanting to be with your girlfriend on a Friday night doesn’t make you a spoiled prat, it makes you normal. It’s a reasonable request to be together, if only for most Fridays.
If even your friends are shaming you into sitting on your hands and doing nothing because “it’s the culture, stupid”, that just means they are either trying to meet her at the club without you cockblocking, or they are all scared wussies too. Ignore them, sometimes the culture is stupid and you confuse the volume of advice with good advice. A flock of geese make loud honking noises too, but that doesn’t mean they understand the sexual marketplace any better than a bunch of dateless guys on a Friday night. At least geese get laid.
Not letting yourself be treated like day old fish’n’chips isn’t being an ass. It’s attractive behavior that women respond to positively.
