Like most people, I have some bad qualities about my personality but for the most part I think I am a pretty good person. One thing that is very important to me is honor and trustworthiness - which I suppose are kind of the same thing.
I've always felt like as far as friends are concerned that quality is far more important than quantity and I have certain expectations of myself as a friend as well as quite high expectations of the people that I call my friends.
You may recall from my 4 part saga of Never go back to an ex and how that kind of wrecked havoc on my life here in Da Nang over the past 5 weeks or so. But in case you don't know about it I will summarize briefly so you don't have to read the 4000 words I already wrote about that.
An ex-girlfriend of mine that I lived with for years recently moved back to Da Nang. Our breakup was a surprise to me because we never really fought with one another and had a relationship that others envied. Ours seemed to have zero problems and I would have agreed with that notion. Well on a trip back to Korea to visit family she just decided while she was there that we were done. This was a huge shock to me and really caught me off guard. It messed me up for a while because even she said that I didn't do anything wrong. I suspect she met someone while she was there and we all know how this goes but whatever, it doesn't matter.
after some time went by - quite a while actually - I came to terms with it even though it was really hard on me. It was one of the toughest times in my life mentally and I suppose I am happy that I live in Vietnam where getting sedatives is something that you can just do because you feel like it and don't need a prescription.
Well, years went by and she moved back to the same city that I live in. She didn't know anyone here anymore since the population here changes pretty frequently and asked me for help in a number of ways. This is where I made a crucial mistake because I should have just said "no." However, since I am a nice guy I helped her out and even introduced her to some of my friends. It wasn't long after that introduction that she had hooked up with one of the guys that I considered to be quite a good friend of mine. I was obviously wrong about the friend who is now an ex friend and I shun him when I see him in public.
Getting back to the present day. The shock of her hooking up with my friend is something that I have already kind of gotten over, although it created a great deal of rage for me at the time. I have come to find out since then that she has gone home with a bunch of other people, one of which is someone else that I know but he was unaware of the fact that this girl was my ex. He did not live here when we were together and they met on Tinder. He was absolved of any wrongdoing because he was innocent. He did however apologize profusely and continues to do so to this day. I didn't want any great details about what happened because who wants to hear about the sexual exploits of their ex? But he did tell me that he wasn't going to see her anymore even if I hadn't told him that she was my ex.
Apparently, my ex is a bit of a slut now and there have been other stories, one of which I simply overheard at a bar I was at about a Korean with a small dog that is very "thirsty" (meaning that they are easy and will go home with a bunch of people). They could only be referring to my ex because she is the only Korean that hangs out with the Western population in this town and the having a small dog is a dead giveaway because she does have a small dog and takes it with her everywhere. It is obvious that this stranger I overheard in the bar was speaking of her as well. She has lived here just over 3 months and of the people I am aware of, she has gone home with 6 people... one of them was me.
People like to have sex. I like to as well. So I am not judging her or anyone else for that. Where we run into a problem is where we have my now ex-friend who was very aware of the fact that she was my ex and that we had lived together with for years in the past. I distinctly remember speaking to him one day about how I felt I had made a terrible mistake by introducing her to my friends and that she was going to end up hooking up with one of them and how that would make me feel really terrible. It is a bit ironic that out of all the people I know, he was the only one who promised that he would never hook up with her no matter what. Then I suppose it was 10 days or less later, that he did precisely that.
He tried to make excuses about how he was drunk and how she was very forward etc but honestly, if you are friends with someone I don' think there is any acceptable excuse for what he did.
Is there not a code among friends where you NEVER date/hook up / sleep with an ex of a friend? I'm not talking about someone in my past that I went out on a date or two with... I'm talking about people who lived together and had a long-term and meaningful relationship.
Even though I had nothing to do with it, their "relationship" fell apart in record-setting time but now a rift has been created in our group of friends because even though I didn't really tell many people about it because I was humiliated by the situation, his drunk ass was telling everyone about it, even people who don't know me or my ex. He wasn't gloating, he was telling them about how much he seriously regrets what he did and how sorry he is for it. This falls on deaf ears as far as I am concerned though because in my mind, this is the ultimate betrayal of a friendship.
I remember years ago I was dating someone and it didn't work out. We only dated for a few months and she was more of a regular hook-up than a girlfriend. However, when we were done a friend of mine wanted to go out with her and he did the right thing by coming to me first and asking if it would be ok with me. In my mind this is what real friends would and should do. I granted him permission and as far as I know the two of them have a wonderful relationship and are still together to this day. He was much better for her than I was since for me, she was just a "side chick" of sorts.
But here is where the real question comes from me to all of you people out there in internet-land.
Is there not a code between all friends, male and female, that you don't date / hook up with / sleep with your friends' ex's? Is this not one of the PRIMARY codes of all friendships? In my mind it is and I don't think I am alone in thinking this. Am I crazy here? I feel like this is pretty universal.
The good news is that I have kind of moved on from the whole thing although it did cause me a great deal of pain at the time when it happened. I know now that she is the sort of person that just goes home with a lot of people and since this community is very small as far as the expat population is concerned, she already has a reputation that I don't think many women want to have. She is seen as an easy slut and honestly, let's be honest boys and girls, does anyone actually want to be in a relationship with an easy slut?
When I was reflecting on it, it occurred to me that while I didn't take her home the first day I met her, I actually never went on a date with her either. She just went home with me one day and for whatever reason, we kept seeing eachother. As far as I know she never cheated on me either but perhaps she was always this easy, including when she decided to go home with me.
I kind of pity her in a way because she has only been here a few months and when she walks into certain places everyone in the place kind of ignores her. Then as the night goes on and she gets drunk people know they can take her home with them if they want to. I have limited the amount of people that I have told that I once had a real relationship with her because dude, that is humiliating for me.
Anyway, for those of you out there that actually care about others in the world just know that I am doing mentally a lot better now and got past it a lot faster than I thought I would. I limit the amount of time that I spend with her even though it isn't easy since she has set up shop in the same local pub that I go to.
Also, if you are not a sociopath I think that you should never hook up with a friend's ex without their permission. It's just a shitty thing to do to someone else and if you do that sort of thing, you are a shitty friend.