Direct Answers Column for the week of September 5, 2005
Direct Answers from Wayne and Tamara
Company We Keep
I have a male friend I've known several years. He's a player. Always has been and I fear he always will be. I gave his number to a friend, Gloria, who was interested in him. I warned her he's a player; she said she didn't mind.
A month later I learned another close friend, Cindy, was involved with him, but it was nothing serious. He expressed interest in both of them and said they both knew he didn't want anything serious. One did not know about the other. Then Gloria found a boyfriend and stopped seeing him.
Cindy continued to see him, and it got serious although he never admitted it. In the past few months Gloria contacted him and he decided he wanted to be with her, but he told Cindy he wasn't seeing anyone else. I felt something was going on but wasn't sure until I confronted him.
I was stuck in the middle. I told him I would tell both women. He didn't tell them, so I did. He got mad at me because now neither wanted anything to do with him. He told me he didn't want to be friends with me anymore.
My two friends were grateful, or so I thought, for letting them know what was going on. Now one friend decides I should have told her sooner. She says I betrayed her. She will have nothing to do with me. It's difficult as we have the same group of friends. Am I in the wrong?
Summer
Summer, let's take a broader approach to your question. Do you think a woman's sexuality should be used as a plaything by a man?
What is a player? A man who plays with women's affections. What are the elements of play in this game? There are two: being involved with multiple women, while concealing that fact, and giving each the illusion there could be more for them, in order to get more for himself.
Both you and this man know a player uses a woman's nature against her. The player says he's not offering a relationship, but once he is intimate with a woman, she feels it must be a relationship. No woman wants to be a party girl. It's not in a woman's nature to want to be used.
You're around a man you know uses women. We are known by the company we keep. You kept company with a man who uses and abuses women. Whether you wanted to or not, you vouched for him with your friends. You helped them believe he was all right because he was your friend.
It's as if you introduced a burglar to your girlfriends, and he burglarized their houses. Where's the surprise? You knew his nature. Apologize.
Wayne & Tamara
Someday My Prince
I'm a woman, 25, who's never had a boyfriend. I'm educated, from a good family, with friends both male and female, and I'm not ugly either.
I feel I've been overlooked somehow. I'm beginning to wonder if it's going to happen. Should I leave it to fate, or make an effort at getting a boyfriend? But then, there isn't anyone I'm interested in right now.
Bobbi
Bobbi, T.S. Eliot wrote, "I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope. For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, But faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting."
You said yourself there is no one of interest to you currently. Until there is, wait without hope
.
When someone of interest appears, be yourself, because the way to find someone who genuinely loves you is to be yourself. Now, be fully engaged in life. Follow your interests, experience all you can, be with your friends and family. Until he appears.
Wayne & Tamara
Authors and columnists
Wayne and Tamara Mitchell can be reached at
www.WayneAndTamara.com
Send letters to: Direct Answers, PO Box 964, Springfield, MO 65801 or email:
DirectAnswers@WayneAndTamara.com
