I knew the moment we poured that second glass of wine that the night had shifted. Kimberly and I were in the middle of our usual girls’ night—chick flicks, Mario Kart, and enough gossip to fill a novel—when she said something that made me put my controller down. “I still can’t stop logging into Kyle’s Facebook. ”
I blinked at her.
“What are you talking about? What do you mean, you log into his Facebook? ”
She shrugged like it was nothing. She still had his password, she explained, and had been using it for almost a year now, ever since they broke up.
In the beginning, it was nearly every day. Now, a few times a month. “That’s creepy, Kimberly. That’s beyond creepy, and it’s unfair to your new boyfriend.
”
She got defensive. She said it was harmless, that she just wanted to check on him without having to actually talk to him. She said she didn’t see the big deal. “How would you feel if your boyfriend was doing that to you?
” I asked. She waved me off. “I wouldn’t care. And why do you care so much?
Maybe you should mind your own business. ”
The night fell apart after that. I let her crash on my couch since she’d been drinking, but I went to bed early. She left the next morning, and we hadn’t spoken for three days.
Kyle and I were still friends on Facebook. We barely talked, just the occasional like on a status, but I had his contact info buried somewhere. I kept thinking about sending him a message, telling him to change his password. But that felt like ratting out my best friend.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d be throwing away a twenty-year friendship over something that wasn’t even my business. But I also couldn’t stop thinking about how wrong it was. Kyle didn’t know she was inside his account. He didn’t know she could see his private messages, his conversations, his life.
And her new boyfriend had no idea she was still pining over the other man while lying next to him. I posted about it, looking for advice. Most people told me to warn Kyle, to make him change his passwords. Some told me to re-evaluate my friendship with Kimberly.
But I couldn’t do that. She was like my sister. I couldn’t throw her away over one mistake, even one she kept repeating. I decided to try again, but this time sober, and this time smarter.
I found Kyle’s number, just in case. And I texted Kimberly, telling her I missed her, that I got a new coffee creamer she had to try. She came over. We sat down with our mugs, and I apologized for being blunt the last time.
“But I’m not sorry for what I said,” I told her. “What you’re doing is really messed up. And I love you too much to let you keep doing it. ”
She stared at the floor and didn’t say anything.
“I’m giving you one chance,” I said. “One. If you don’t text Kyle and tell him to change his passwords, I’ll do it for you. ”
At first, she got angry.
She started to rage, to push back. But I told her the truth: the only reason she told me her secret was because she knew it was wrong, and she was asking for help without being able to say it out loud. That broke her. She started crying, and once she started, she couldn’t stop.
She told me she was still in love with Kyle. She thought about him every day. She couldn’t stop wishing for him even though she knew they weren’t meant to be. Her new boyfriend helped numb the pain, but it always came back, and logging into Kyle’s account was her way of being near him again, of checking if he was happy, if he missed her at all.
She knew it was bad. She just couldn’t stop. I let her cry. Then I told her she didn’t have to do it alone.
I would sit with her while she sent the message, and she could word it however she needed. She sent him a simple note saying that she realized they hadn’t updated their social passwords in a while, and it might be a good idea to change them. Kyle texted back within twenty minutes: “Duly noted. Thanks for the heads-up.
”
I made her block the number after that. We went shopping, and I mentioned therapy. She was ashamed, but she also knew she needed help. We found a therapist through our old university on a sliding scale, and she booked an appointment for the next week.
That night, I sat with her as she tried to log into Kyle’s account one last time. The password didn’t work. He’d changed it. She cried hard, but she said it was for the best.
She thanked me for helping her. I’m not going anywhere. She’s my sister, and she’s starting to heal. She’ll take things one day at a time with her boyfriend, and if she realizes she’s not over Kyle, she’ll let him go and give herself time to be single and work through her grief.
I’ll be there for her through all of it. The day I found out my boyfriend left our romantic Valentine’s Day dinner to go hang out with another woman, I told myself it was fine. She was his best friend, after all. They’d known each other forever, and she had a boyfriend of her own, so it wasn’t like there was anything going on.
I accepted it. I even liked her. But over time, the pattern became impossible to ignore. He was reluctant to introduce us at first.
He said she wanted alone time with her bestie, which I understood. But then he started choosing to hang out with her one-on-one over me. At the mall, he’d spend time with her first and maybe invite me at the end of the trip. On my birthday, after our romantic dinner, he went straight to meet up with her and her boyfriend.
I wasn’t invited. On Valentine’s Day, the same thing happened. The worst part was when he told me, with complete sincerity, that she was “marriage material. ” He said she was the best person ever.
He never said that about me. I came across a comment from someone saying I was just his plan B, that he was waiting for her to become available. It stung because it felt true. He carpooled with her to work every day, and he still wanted more time with her than he did with me.
On work days, he was never alone with me, but he was alone with her. I tried to talk to him about it. He gaslit me, made me feel like I was the crazy one, like I was reading too much into a perfectly normal friendship. And for a while, I believed him.
I told myself I was just jealous, that I needed to be more understanding. Then came the day he exploded at me for not hanging out with him. He had changed our whole group activity plans because of his “marriage material” best friend, and I had made other plans with him—plans he’d ignored. He yelled at me like I was the one in the wrong.
I realized then that he was never going to see me as anything but a placeholder. He was in love with her, and I was just the person he used to fill the time between her moments. I dumped him over text. I normally would have done it in person, but I didn’t want to be gaslighted again.
I told him to leave me alone, that I wasn’t a side piece or a seat filler, and I hoped he one day came to terms with his feelings for her. I know I made the right choice. He was so controlling that he once told me I wasn’t allowed to pet other people’s dogs, because men with dogs were dangerous and might try to flirt with me. He didn’t want me shaking hands with good-looking men, either.
When I ran into an old classmate and shook his hand across a table, my boyfriend called it “too intimate. ” He didn’t even want me sitting with my friends. I spent eight months shrinking myself so I wouldn’t upset him, while he ran around after another woman. I’m done with that.
I’m done with being his backup plan. I deserve someone who’s all in. Not someone who’s pining after someone else and using me as comfort until she’s available. It took me a while, but I finally saw the windshield for what it was—completely shattered.
And I got out.
