Dear 4-Way,
About a year ago, I met a great woman. Our relationship quickly developed into a strong friendship and she became someone I socialized with regularly on the weekends. Until recently, she was dating another woman pretty much the entire time we’ve known each other. After their breakup, I noticed that she had a trait I hadn’t experienced while she was dating her ex-partner: she’s extremely competitive when it comes to meeting women. I’m a lesbian too and I’ve noticed that now, when we go out, it’s impossible to talk to any women without her joining the conversation—and pretty much taking over the conversation—and flirting her ass off with them and completely ignoring me. I know I need to talk to her about it, but how? I don’t want to lose her friendship but this new dimension of her is confusing to me.—BB, Seattle, Washington
The gay man’s perspective: Darren Maddox
Oddly enough, I had a similar situation occur not too long ago when meeting a guy at a party. A mutual friend brought him in hopes of introducing him to me (I like to think). As the night progressed, I noticed my friend was making moves on him as well. It was awkward and got to the point of twelve-year-old behavior until, with the help of my friend Mr. Jose Cuervo, I summoned the nerve to call him out on the situation at hand. He was shocked I said something and even more shocked with my timing. Mr. Cuervo has no watch and I made my point in front of others promptly clearing the room and creating an even more awkward situation for each of us.
The awkwardness continued into the next day when we hung out again, but we maturely discussed what had happened and chose to handle it as any adult gay men would do. We came up with code words to avoid this situation from occurring again. We thought long and hard over beverages for the right words to alert each other of our intent to pursue. It had to be words easily worked into a sentence that also stood out at the same time. But what? We chose “pineapple” and “coconuts.”
