Just rambling

How do you become a non-judgemental confidante for a co-worker friend who is starting to get on your nerves?

Once a upon a time, everyone hangs out together for breakfast or lunch or tea in a doomed place where several institutes are housed in one high-tech scientific biomedical hub. N is my co-worker female friend and is probably one of the nicest person on the planet. B is a good-looking married expat who works in another institute, and who N befriended and often hangs out with.

N is single, and in her early thirties, and who wants to settle down someday. N had made a lot of caucasian friends since a couple of years back. If you didn't knew her, you'd think she's a desperate SPG, but in decent clothes and NOT with a Philipino/Thai accent, though you'd notice she does fake a bit of accent when she speaks to the ang mohs. It's very contradicting. You love as a friend but you wonder why she's like this. She seem to have placed the Asian males a class lower than the more preferred ang moh male potential partners.

One day, N confessed she had been having an affair with B for amost a year. I would never have guessed it, because I thought N was someone who knew her limits although she appears flirtatious.

For almost a year, they had met for regular 'dates' in town when the wife is working during weekends and steamier rendezvous was at his apartment or budget hotels. After work, they would have drinks at the cafe down our work building. Him, her and some other friends. Nobody suspected anything.

The relationship started to strain recently when N became obsessed that another woman was 'eyeing' on B. She caught them together having coffee. She caught them having a puff. She caught her sending him to work in her car. All those supposedly harmless sightings became a threat to her.

Then B wanted to break up. There was a growing amount of stress and guilt in him. He just wanted to end it. N was not happy of course, she loves him. She started to fall apart.

All these while, everyday, she tells me about her feelings and little little things like she bumped into him today and the stuff they talk about. I was there for her. I did not judge her. I did not support nor condemn her either. All I can do is listen.

Is that a good confidante?

My advice has been same. "Let him go". "Forget about him". And as a human, I know this is hard to do. Saying it was easy for me. Eventually I told her "Feel what you want to feel. Do what you want to do. Whatever I say right now will not matter, because you are not yourself and you are someone in love".

I am a horrible confidante to a person who knows they are making a mistake and still go on to do it.

I get angry when you dig your own grave, KNOW that it's a grave and jump right into it, then talk to me incessantly about it and all the minute little microscopic detail about your insignificant stupid mistake you made. And on top of that, you make it sound like you're the victim. "How can he do this to me", she keeps lamenting. "How can YOU do this to yourself", I thought.

There. I got it out.

I'm her therapist, and I need therapy now and then too.

I am no one to advise N because I am not in her shoes. But what I could offer was sane advice. Logic.

"Obviously, he is not that into you. What can you do? Ultimately, it's him who holds the card. If he leaves his wife to be with you, good then, everyone is happy, but is he doing it? No. He is messed up, and feeling terrible. He doesn't know what he wants. If he wants you, he'd want you from the start".

I've always been very black and white on such matters of the heart. You either want or don't want. I hate guessing games. They are tiring and pointless. Paul never let me guess. That is why I mothered his child.

I could see that N still wanted answers. She said she doesn't want to see him again, but when there were chances, they'd have a conversation. And after every conversation, there were no conclusion and it made her more frustrated every time.

Then I realized something. She wanted answers that she wanted to hear. B clearly wants to sort out his personal problems first and his marriage, but N still persisted for an answer. An answer that sounded like "I love you and want to be with you"

B and his wife are seeing a marriage counsellor. They are getting a divorce, I heard from her.

Once a upon a time, girl meets guy. Guy is married, girl is flirty and attracted to him and KNOWS he is married. Girl asks guy out for dinner, guy thinks girl is interested for a fling, and initiates sex. Girl wants it too.

So you tell me, is that digging your own grave?