Would you like it if someone followed you around, isolated you from other people and told you who you should and should not talk to? My guess is you would not. If you do, talk to your doctor today, because you either have a serious case of oneitis, or some kind of brain damage that needs to be addressed.

As many of us know, the described above, also known as mate guarding, is not only NOT COOL, but is also COUNTER PRODUCTIVE.

I saw this unfold in front of me recently and I thought it would be worth sharing:

A few months ago, a friend of mine got a new roommate. One of his colleagues needed someone to house one of their clerks, so he put her up for free until she needed to leave. We all met her one night at a dinner, and the whole night it was clear he was trying to be the alpha male of the group. The girl was a huge feminist/Bernie supporter, and he tried to crap on my friend for being a pro-life Republican (funniest part is he wasn’t even pro-life). He then tried to crap on me by saying the company I worked for was evil. My friend and I were not phased by it and the night was fun. She even said she was excited to hang out with all of us in the future.

Later that week, we met up without her and he talked about how he stayed up until 3AM with her drinking (and did not make a single move) and how he was going to play the long game and ask her out after she moved out. As time went on, he started getting more and more possessive of her:

One night, we were all going to hang out, and he went “alright her and I are going to pregame alone and meet you two out at the bars.” This seemed odd because we ALWAYS pre-gamed together. We both thought it was weird, but we went along with it.

Lo and behold, when we met up, he spent the entire night making an effort to keep her away from other guys, even us. I remember her and I were talking and I made a joke that made her laugh really hard. He looked visibly upset, then told me to go play the bar piano and leave her alone. I just laughed and went along with it. I figured this type of behavior would blow up in his face at some point.

As the night continued, it got worse. He AGAIN went back to the “his company is evil” line to her in front of me. Instead of just laughing it off like last time, I said “yeah… I remember a few months ago we travelled around the state handing out lunch coupons to underprivileged kids. We also gave out free pork loins to families who couldn’t afford Christmas meals. As you can tell, we’re a really evil company”. She again thought it was hilarious, he looked visibly rattled, then tried to pick out lies and inconsistencies in the story. It was at this point that I knew this girl and I were kinda vibing, and that he was going to do EVERYTHING to stop us from spending any time together.

About 10 minutes later, we left the bar and went to a place to eat. He grabbed the food for them to go, despite the fact that it was still early in the evening and there were plenty of tables at the place.

He pulled this again a few other times, except he would say “actually we’re just going to stay in tonight” and not go out.

Keep in mind that this entire time they were A) Not dating and B) He had made a grand total of ZERO MOVES

I did see her one other time: him and I were playing poker at his apartment, and she stopped in. Her and I talked for about an hour, and the entire time I kept trying to include him in the conversation. He just stayed glued to his phone and acted like a dick. She went back to her room and he told me to leave shortly after.

A few weeks passed and I didn’t think much of anything. But I noticed that he was now badmouthing her constantly. It appeared it had all fallen apart. He was mad that she was living in his apartment rent free but would get upset at him talking loudly on Xbox. It looked like their dynamic had evaporated.

I had never thought much of this, until one day her and I ran into each other at the bars when he was out of town. We were really hitting it off that night, I invited her back to my place for some piano and I think you know how the rest of it went down.

That evening she told me something that confirmed all of my suspicions about my friend:

“This whole roommate situation was weird. We were cool with one another until that one night when you and I talked for like an hour. He acted like a total ass after that.”

I asked whether she noticed if he would try to isolate her a lot.

“He was so possessive of me, it was the dumbest thing. We’re roommates, we’re not dating. It was like he was trying to protect me from you guys and other people. I was really annoyed by it. I’m my own person, let me live my life and talk to who I want to talk to. To me, his behavior is a sign of insecurity. It was even worse when he would try to make fun of you guys for your beliefs or company history. Even my ex-boyfriend wasn’t this controlling.”

Everything I had noticed, she had as well.

There are a lot of blue and red pill examples you can pick out from this story. But one message stands above them all:

DON’T BE A MATE GUARDER