Dear boyfriend of my best friend,
Let’s cut to the chase here. You and I, we have one main common interest: my best friend. My best friend is amazing, and we both know it. But our bond goes way deeper than your relationship that’s been based on a few movie dates and weeks of ‘talking,’ so excuse me if I don’t put your relationship on par with our friendship just yet. Now, I’m sure you’re expecting the cliché spiel where I threaten to end your life with a violent act that doesn’t mesh at all with my seemingly cute, nonthreatening exterior if you ever hurt her—but if I were ever so inclined, I’m definitely smart enough not to write it down in a letter to you and possibly incriminate myself, so I’ll just let you imagine that part in your brain. Instead, I want to remind you that by dating my friend, you’re allowing yourself to become an integral part of her happiness, which is extremely important. Never—I repeat, never—assume that your actions concerning her won’t have consequences. If you ignore her texts, she won’t want to let you see how much that hurts her because she doesn’t want to be ‘that girl.’ But guess what? I’m absolutely going to hold you accountable. Because when you date my best friend, you aren’t dating a girl with a one-size-fits-all personality—I have much higher standards when I choose my close friends.
When it comes to dating my friend, there are a few things that I’m going to need you to remember:
1. She is hilarious, so appreciate it.
2. She cares. Even if it’s something you love and she doesn’t understand, if it’s important to you, she automatically cares.
3. You’re enough for her, so show her that she’s enough for you.
Now, I could keep writing and pen you a long, drawn-out letter that states all the things I could possibly think of in one sitting about why my friend is amazing and why you should cherish her, but that’s been done many times before, and I’d probably still end up missing a bunch of things. So instead, I’ve chosen to keep mine short and sweet and end it with the most important thing of all:
For the entirety of your relationship with her (I’ll instinctively be expecting something bad to happen—not because I want it to, but because I need to be prepared on the off-chance you end up breaking her heart), my best friend’s heart isn’t something frivolous and prone to falling in love with everything and anything—if she falls in love with you, then you’re special to her. And when something happens to that love, it has the potential to destroy her. So I need you to remember that when you enter into a relationship with her, until you have a rock-solid foundation of love, trust and respect, you can consider her to be on a loan from me. And if your relationship ends and you return her to me broken in any way, I want it understood that I’ll hold you accountable then, too.
Sincerely,
Alex
