Chapter Text
r/relationships
Am I (24M) homophobic, because I don’t like when my friend (24M) flirts with guys at work?
Hi. First time poster here. I guess I’ll just get straight into it.
My friend, let’s call him Edwin, recently got a job at the music/video rental store I work at (yes, they still do exist).
I knew Edwin before he got the job (about a year) and pretty much right from the start I knew he was gay because he is up-front about it. It was never a problem for me. At some point, he started feeling comfortable enough to joke about it with me. For example, he would jokingly flirt with me or tease me for being straight. He says other straight guys would be put off or threatened but I really don’t have any problem with his jokes.
In the beginning, working together was great. I think we got to know each other even more with how much time we spent together during our shifts and shared lunches.
Here’s where the issue started: Edwin is a passionate, extroverted guy. He often charms the customers (usually male), tells stories, and even compliments them. It was all fine at first, but then I started to feel uncomfortable every time he would playfully talk to some guy at work.
To be honest, I can’t even pinpoint when exactly it started to bother me, but there’s one situation that stuck in my mind.
We were at work. Edwin was at the front of the store and I was just a few shelves away. A regular customer came in (male, around our age) and greeted him. Soon they started talking, Edwin leaned in and he was smiling and touching the guy’s arm. And when I saw that I swear I wanted to throw up. My stomach was in knots and it was the strangest feeling because I couldn’t stand to even look at them. I had to hide in the back until the customer left. I felt horrible about my reaction but I thought maybe I was just annoyed that the customer didn’t greet me or something.
But after that, I noticed Edwin’s flirting way more often. It’s not like he throws himself at every male customer. It doesn’t happen every shift, but when it does, I’m always around to witness it and it makes me feel like shit because there is NO reason for this type of reaction.
I’m worried that if that’s my reaction to him just flirting with some random customer, how would I react to him finding a boyfriend? I don’t know what I’d do.
I think Edwin noticed and it's starting to affect our friendship. After he flirts with a guy I automatically get pissed off. Once I took it out on the customer he was flirting with by being passive-aggressive. Right after, Edwin asked me what my problem was and I didn’t know how to answer, but then he asked if it was because it was a guy, and I said no.
My response somehow made him even more mad and he lashed out at me, saying I can’t complain because I constantly flirted with girls at work and he never criticized it, but that “as soon as he flirts with a man, it’s suddenly a problem”.
(I used to flirt with a lot of girls coming to the store, back when he wasn’t my co-worker yet and I guess he witnessed it a lot because we were friends and he hung out at the store. But I stopped around when he started working here.)
I didn’t want to fight so I just apologized. I said I had a rough day, blamed my outburst on the stress, and said I don’t care if he flirts with men at work. It didn’t help. Edwin still looked really upset and I felt terrible.
He asked something like “and it’s okay if I flirt with guys outside of work?” and I said it’s none of my business what he does after work, but when he asked that I felt sick to my stomach and couldn’t stop thinking about it.
For the rest of our shift he avoided me and after closing, we were supposed to grab something to eat, but he said he needed to figure something out and just went home. He didn’t even let me drop him off.
I feel like I really fucked up. We never fight and I can’t even blame him for lashing out at me because he thought I was judging him for flirting with men. Now there’s this awkwardness between us that has never been there, even if he acts as if nothing happened. I really want to be friends with him, but he’d never want the same if he knew how disgusted I felt when I thought about him with other guys.
I’ve been an asshole in the past (in high school) and I know I hurt people. I thought I changed for the better, I cut ties with toxic people and made new friends who are the best people ever… but I clearly haven’t changed? I’m worried the cycle is continuing and that no matter how hard I try, I’m just a bad person.
I feel this way only towards Edwin. I have other gay friends, my best friend is a lesbian and I never react the same way toward her. Maybe I don’t have a problem with lesbians but I do with gay men? Because of fetishization or something like that? Has anyone ever experienced something similar? What do I do? I don’t want to end our friendship, but if I can’t change my reactions I’m scared I will have to because the last thing I’d want to do is hurt Edwin and I know I will if I keep automatically reacting like that.
How do I deal with this/stop being such an asshole?
TL;DR: A friend who is also my co-worker keeps flirting with men at work and I thought I was okay with him being gay, but I guess I wasn’t because I feel like shit when I see him do that. It’s affecting our friendship. How do I deal with this/stop being such an asshole?
64 comments:
Contestedshark34 commented: “Are you sure you’re not just jealous?”
Tearz_4_.Fearz replied to Contestedshark34: “I don’t think I am. If I wanted to, I could easily flirt with customers, too. Even get some dates out of it, but I just don’t want to. I think it would be weird to be this jealous over something like that.”
Contestedshark34 replied to Tearz_4_.Fearz: “No, no. I meant - are you jealous of those customers? Because you want Edwin’s attention for yourself?”
Steve abruptly stopped reading the recent comment under his post. The mouse cursor lingered on the response button but… nothing. He couldn’t figure out what to say to that. He slowly closed his laptop and sat in the darkness.
He couldn't deal with this alone.
___________
“Okay, you’re seriously freaking me out.”
Robin shifted in her seat opposite Steve. Thirty minutes ago he ushered her out of their shared apartment after waking her up in the middle of the night just to cramp her into a McDonald's booth, two milkshakes in hand. Now he was silent with an eerie expression on his face.
“Like, seriously,“ she nudged him with her hand. “What is it?”
“I know, just… listen, let’s just...” He ran his fingers through his hair and exhaled, clearly upset. “Give me a minute.”
She nodded and took another sip of her milkshake, waiting a little impatiently… but come on, Steve looked like he just killed a man and didn’t know what to do with the body stuck in the trunk of his car. He was definitely going through something.
As Robin pondered different ways to dispose of the possibly-existing dead body in her best friend’s car, Steve took a deep breath and finally spoke.
“Robin, am I homophobic?”
She gave him a blank stare. Then his words caught up with her and her eyebrows shot up to her forehead.
“Homophobic? Homophobic being inherent biases that are wired in your brain because of the world we live in and all your years conforming to it? Yeah. Even I catch myself being homophobic sometimes, we live in a society, Steve. But homophobic being you hate gay people and want them dead? I don’t think so.”
He finally looked up at her, defeated.
“No, Robin, of course I don’t want you dead, I just… how can I fix being the… the other homophobic part?”
“Steve… what is this about?” she wasn’t as worried now, but definitely not weirded out any less. Plus, she had no idea where Steve was going with this.
He sighed and handed her his phone opened on a wall of text. She squinted and brought the phone closer. A post. From Reddit.
“Steve.”
“Just read it. Please.”
So she did.
At first, she was really confused. However, the dots started connecting pretty quickly, especially because she was an unmentioned third co-worker in the story and had to watch this go down for the last three months. She told Eddie the whole “flirting-with-customers-to-get-over-Steve” thing was going to backfire but she didn’t know it would result in Steve questioning his morality. At best she thought Eddie would break his own heart in the process but this? This was amazing. Much better than any of her “best case” scenarios.
“This is why you think you’re homophobic?” she finally spoke.
“Yes, Robin, what else am I supposed to think?”
“Don’t you think it sounds like you have a crush, dingus?”
___________