My Boyfriend’s Secret Girlfriend Was My Best Friend
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We were all students of a small music program at a private college, which meant that I was the last person to know. I stepped offstage from a violin recital and checked my phone on the way to the reception where my colleagues and parents were waiting. My friend had sent me pictures of her with my boyfriend on a recent camping trip. I thought back to the previous week, my boyfriend lacing up his hiking boots, telling me how excited he was to take our future children camping together one day. And now, on my screen, the reality of his trip: two of the people I had loved and trusted more than any others, kissing beneath the bright hot sun.
In the following days, friends, acquaintances, and even professors came forward. Everyone, it seemed, had seen them at the library together, heads bent too close, or with their hands grasped too tightly in a practice room, his car parked on her street on successive nights. I was gutted, not only by the private violation, but by how public it all turned out to be.
I left the apartment I shared with my boyfriend, moving in with some people I knew only peripherally. He moved out, tooâinto the apartment he had kept in secret. But it wasnât enough. I felt an ongoing and deep sense of embarrassment. I have a memory of retrieving my violin from my locker and overhearing friends discuss the situation; it was old news to them. I started avoiding campus and stopped interacting with most of my friends, feeling like I couldnât trust anyone. I began to drink excessively and visit strip clubsâvery out of character for me. I wanted to leave my body, enter the body of someone this wouldnât have happened to.
A week later, I was surprised by how easy it felt to forgive him. I gave him his mail, and felt no ill will. I suppose I had been socialized to expect this kind of betrayal from a man. But the betrayal at the hands of one of my closest friends was something I was wholly unprepared for: the grief, the inability to understand, and the slow and horrifying realization that I still loved her.
I had just finished reading the Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante, and Ferrante’s depiction of a world created and run by men, but also rejected by women inspired me: What if I didnât allow the world to pit us against each other? What if I didnât have to lose her?
The author, Ling Ling Huang.photo: V.J. Alcantara
We spent a lot of time together in the next few weeks. We pieced things together as if we were litigators on the same case. I learned that whenever I suggested a new film or restaurant to try with my ex, he would later take her there. I had shown him around Toronto the year before, and he followed the same itinerary with her. Most importantly, I learned that my ex had lied to her too, telling her we had broken up. Maybe it was willful ignorance, but she also saw herself as his victimâto her, I was the other woman.
I tried not to take their affair personally. They fell in love, and however hurtful it was to admit, I was little more than a very inconvenient obstacle. But it was hard. I often failed, spiraling into blame and envy. The problem, I began to think, was that I was not enough like her. If only my body type or face shape was more like hers; if only my mind was as precise and intellectually engaging.
I also began to realize that competition had always been present in our relationship. She and I had been co-leaders of a womenâs bible study group, and every week, under the guise of getting closer to the Lord, we competed. Who could find the deepest meaning of the scripture? Who could better inspire our fellow sisters? Because we had the same violin professor, we heard and critiqued each otherâs performances often. There were the things we said to each other, to sharpen and challenge and help one another improve, and there were the things we held back, to keep ourselves superior.
The realization of how layered our friendship had always been made me spin. Our closeness had always been a result of the things we had in common, but now I could only perceive our differences and the contests between us. And I knew that she felt the same. In a confessional moment, she had admitted it. I started to wonder if there wasnât something slightly punitive or retaliatory about the affair. Maybe even for both of them. The year before, I had beat both her and my ex in our school-wide competition.
I had a brief, but intense fling shortly after the breakup. A couple weeks later, she called to explain that she had slept with the same person. She gave a lot of the same excuses, much less believably this time.
As the character of Laurie (Carrie Coon, preemptively campaigning for her Emmy) says in the season finale of White Lotus: âI just feel like as you get older, you have to justify your life, you know? And your choices.â I wrote my second novel in a kind of attempt to understand my friendâs choices and the complex dynamics at play in almost all female friendships (in my experience), to comprehend the circumstances that can poison one friend against another, and how vying for individual success in a patriarchal field can make one discount everything we already are and yearn instead for everything someone else is.
In the aftermath of the breakup, at my lowest points, I would think about a quote from one of Joan Didionâs essays, âJealousy: Is It a Curable Illness?â Didion writes that âto be jealous is alternately to hate and to adore the object of that jealousy,â and I admit to finding some comfort in that. Proof that she loved me, too, and just didnât know how to show it. She and I donât speak anymore, but I think of her often. As complex as my feelings about her are, almost no relationship has shaped me more.
