Dear Sasha, My best friend is gay. Our families have known each other forever and he came out to me last year. He’s scared to death tell anyone because we live in a small town where most people aren’t very accepting of gay people, his parents included. So he asked me to be his fake girlfriend when he came out to me, which was almost 9 months ago. I didn’t really mind cause I never had a boyfriend, and my best friend was also being teased a lot at school cause he’s a bit effeminate. My problem is that I’ve been talking to an amazing guy online for over 3 months now. We video chat and call each other almost every night. He lives like a 45mn drive away from where I live, and we’ve decided that we want to meet in person and be officially together. He’s a little bit older, I’m 14 and he’s 17 and just got his license, so he’s planning to visit me. So the problem is that my best friend want us to pretend to date all the way through highschool, then break up before we go off to college. We’re both planning on applying to colleges out of state. But now I really want my actual boyfriend to come and I want to be able to introduce him to my parents, and I want us to be able to walk downtown holding hands and everything, but I’m torn because my best friend is still being teased at school, but the gay jokes have kind of stopped since we started “dating”. I haven’t told my boyfriend that I’m pretending to be dating my best friend, and my best friend knows all about my boyfriend but he doesn’t know that we’re planning for him to come visit and that we want to be officially together.
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I know the perceived problem is what to do with faux gay boyfriend vs real boyfriend, BUTTTT can we hit the f-cking reverse button for a second and check the real problem at hand, which is, you met some total rando dude on the internet and have decided he’s your boyfriend? I don’t like this. At all.
I gotta pull old person rank on you and warn you J that you need to proceed with caution on this one. I know you don’t want to hear this, but you’re only 14 years old and while the age difference between you guys may only be three years, that’s decades in teen years. No matter how wonderful, smart, talented, and funny you are - and I don’t doubt you’re all of those things – no 17 year old boy wants to or should want to date a 14 year old girl.
If you think I’m out-of-touch, fine, bag that argument. Instead let’s tackle the thing that bothers me the most: you’ve never even laid eyes on this guy in real life! So seriously, how in the f-ckity f-ck can you even start to think that this person is someone you want to be with? Come on, I know you know about Catfish.
I’m not saying don’t date, all I’m saying here is you need to slow your roll with this total stranger. Trust me, he’s not going anywhere, so take your time getting to know him, don’t rush into anything and most importantly please don’t meet him alone. If you take away anything from this, just promise me that.
As for your best bud, I don’t think it’s time to throw him under the bus for this new guy. But if and when you’ve taken my advice and still want to be with this new guy then hit me back up and we’ll sort out a plan. Deal?
