My Friend Stopped Talking to Me Because I Had a Baby with My Boyfriend Who Cheated
Ask Dr. MichelleNo Comments »Answer: Should she have cut you off cold, especially after having a baby? Absolutely not. If anything, she could have told you sooner how she felt and what she wanted to change about your relationship. She might have felt happy about the baby but allowed herself to distracted by who you chose to have your baby with and that’s not her decision to make. Yes, you should be disappointed in how she handled it and who knows what else was going on in her head that made her think she should just disappear from your life like that. She may have even been jealous that you two were able to recover from infidelity and work things out.
Now, let me shed some light on why I think she might have disappeared. Sometimes we have to be careful about how much we share with our friends. Even though we don’t mean to, sometimes we frustrate them out by over-sharing our problems. It may have been too much for her to go through all of the cheating with you and then for you to say you were having a baby with the person she probably dislikes given all that you’ve shared. She probably didn’t understand or respect your decision.
In the ideal world we want our friends to be there for us through everything and under all circumstances but our friends have lives and feelings too and they get frustrated when they see us making what they see as poor choices (and they may in fact be poor choices). When you want to go through the same problems over and over and then talk about them everyday, sometimes friends can’t handle that.
I’m not excusing your friend. I’m saying you have to be careful about how much of your business you share with anyone, especially about your partner if you plan to stay with him through a lot of drama and expect your friends to still be cool with him. Most people’s mothers, sisters and aunties wouldn’t be happy about your decision either. They probably wouldn’t cut you off cold turkey because you’re family, but they might back away from you for a while so that they don’t have to ride that emotional roller coaster with you.
You may have let your romantic relationship problems become almost 100% of what you talked to your friend about so that your friendship became little more than a venting session about your relationship. That’s when your girlfriend sees you calling and doesn’t take your call because she doesn’t want to hear anymore about “him” again. When we don’t work on our friendships they start to fall apart. I bet if you two could get back to focusing more on your friendship and less on your relationship with your boyfriend, you could patch things up.
Hopefully, you’ve both learned from this situation, and if you want to, you can still be friends (unless in your time apart you’ve realized that you are better off without each other). When you’re friends with someone a long time you have to “grow-up” and mature with them over time and that may mean disappointing them along the way but it doesn’t have to be the end of the friendship. This was a learning experience that you can recover from and rebuild if you choose.
Good luck!
Copyright 2010 Dr. Michelle Callahan. All rights reserved. This article on friendship was originally published in Dr. Michelle’s online advice column at www.drmichelle.com/ask-dr-michelle
Dr. Michelle joined Dr. Oz to help a woman who gained 60 pounds after a divorce. Dr. Michelle provided tips on moving on after divorce from the the makeover kit in her book “Ms. Typed.”
Click here to watch the video.
Today I had the pleasure of being a guest on the Dr. Oz show! He is really wonderful to work with as was his entire staff. I’m so glad that he got his own show. I was there to give advice to a woman who just recently went through a divorce and as a result gained 60 pounds and lost her confidence. Dr. Oz helps her with her physical health and I work with her on the psychological issues. She is a great lady (beautiful inside and out) and you will really enjoy her story. I told her that she should complete the exercises in the Ms. Typed Makeover Kit to help her establish a new life and identity, and to get back out there in the dating world.
Hey All. I just spoke to Essence.com about this Tiger Woods situation and what it means to women to date celebrities and professional athletes. Here’s an excerpt of our interview:
Source: www.essence.com
For many fans, Tiger Woods’ cheating scandal came out of nowhere, tarnishing his squeaky-clean family guy image forever. Relationships expert Dr. Michelle Callahan, TV host of “Wedlock or Deadlock” tells us why athletes, even super straight ones like Tiger, stray.
ESSENCE.com: Why does cheating seem like an epidemic among athletes?
MICHELLE CALLAHAN: The cheating with celebrity athletes is such a part of our culture because women are lured by the fantasy of fame, money and the white picket fence taken to the extreme. They meet a famous athlete, and those who marry them picture being with someone everyone else adores…[and being] the one he chose. Women see themselves living in the lap of luxury with all the money in the world, having whatever they want and spending lots of time with this person. The “other women” just fantasize about being with [him] for five minutes. That is the fantasy.
ESSENCE.com: What are the realities of being an athelete?
CALLAHAN: The reality for of a lot of the wives of celebrity athletes is that the celebrity athletes are going to travel without them and they will lead very separate lives. Many of the star athletes’ wives feel like single parents raising kids alone, because their partners are traveling the world much of the time. Since the woman is not with her partner, the fame, the power and the wealth attached to the athlete creates much more of an opportunity for the celebrity athlete to get into trouble, more trouble than the average man. More women are eager and willing to throw themselves at the athlete.
The last line of your email to me states that you don’t want this guy to keep hurting you, and there is almost no way to stay in this relationship and not continue to get hurt. Before I tell you why you have to move on, I have to congratulate you on being so strong and acknowledging that voice in your head that tells you when something is not right. Your own intuition and sense of self-worth and self-esteem are telling you that to remain in this situation is emotionally and sexually unhealthy and it breaks your own personal rules about how you know you deserve to be treated.
Now back to reality. Staying with this guy is going to be exactly what you don’t want–more and more hurt. The reality is, you feel like Ms. Second Place because in many ways now you will be second. It is very hard to compete with a baby or a child for someone’s attention. Sometimes even when the man is no longer romantically involved with the mother of his child he may want to be actively involved in the pregnancy and go with the mother to doctor visits and Lamaze classes. After the child is born, he will need to become very active in the baby’s life both practically and financially, especially while the child is very young. Can you handle knowing that he is going to be spending time with the baby’s mother from now on? He and this woman will be connected to each other for the rest of their lives through this child. Can you deal with that? Will you be comfortable when he tells you he has to go to the doctor with her or go see her and the baby? Because it won’t be until the baby gets a little older that he will take the baby outside on his own.
I am asking you this assuming you feel totally confident that the two are no longer romantically involved. If you won’t feel comfortable with them spending this much time together and you don’t think they are fooling around anymore, imagine how impossible it will be for you to tolerate if you thought that at least one of the two of them still had feelings for the other person and that they were still messing around on the side.
Remember, a lot of women have a very strong romantic bond with the father of their children. Some women even have children just to create a lifetime connection with a man, so the chances of this woman just feeling like she doesn’t want any more to do with him are slim (even if he tells you he doesn’t want anything to do with her). On top of that, even if he isn’t interested in having a relationship with her, many men just like to continue to have sex with their baby’s mom (the men tell me that if for no other reason than it’s easy and convenient). Do you want to be up late at night worrying about where he is and if he is still having sex with her? If he claims he slept with her because you two were going through some things, do you want to have to worry that arguing will lead to him going out to cheat on you with her? Sometimes when people have problems in relationships they look for that one person who they can always run back to for sex or to just take their mind off of their current relationship–is this what you want to live with?
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is a competition between you and her for who will get the man–you don’t have to compete with her for anything. First of all, she is having his baby so there is no win or lose, she is in the picture permanently. And second of all, even if she wasn’t having a baby, why choose a man who isn’t choosing you?
You have been so sexually responsible with your body–it keeps you healthy and alive (avoiding STDs and HIV), do you want to risk that by sleeping with someone who you know isn’t being monogamous which could result in him giving you something he got from someone else? Don’t bend your rules about always using condoms, otherwise you may end up with an STD or a baby yourself and if you aren’t ready for either one, stay protected.
You have your whole life ahead of you. You need to stay mentally and physically healthy to finish college and start building a good life for yourself. It will be hard being without him but I suspect that the pain of staying with him will be greater than the pain of leaving him. You have so much to offer a good man who is willing to stick to his commitments, so why don’t you treat yourself the way you think you deserve to be treated and only offer yourself the best. Move on and heal yourself. Don’t let this guy bring you down, keep your head up and do the difficult work of starting over.
If you’d like more guidance on starting over, check out my book Ms. Typed: Discover Your True Dating Personality and Rewrite Your Romantic Future and read the chapter on Ms. Second Place and try the Ms. Typed Makeover Kit.
Stay strong!
Dr. Michelle
