As the others said, simply hoping it will happen doesn't make you wrong as long as you don't take action about it...mitchell271 said:I've got a bit of a moral dilemma here. There's a girl I like...
[HEADING=1]Don't close the page[/HEADING]
There's a girl I like, and she's in a relationship with a guy. Now, both of these people are my friends. The one I'm interested in lives in my res section and we see each other every day. The other is a rowing buddy of mine from the fall and while we don't talk all that much, we can converse for a while and we're on good terms. They've been dating since late January but with the year winding down, and the fact that they live in different cities separated by a 5 hour drive, there's a possibility that they'll break up over the summer due to lack of contact.
And that brings me to my question. Is it wrong to hope they'll break up so I can at least try to ask her out?
... The problem is, now that we've validated your feelings on the matter, you probably will take action about it whether you realize it or not. You've got an agenda now, and psychologically you will interact with these two with that agenda fresh in your mind every time you see them. Whenever either of them brings up the other or their relationship, whatever words you say to them will carry that agenda. It doesn't need to be as direct as actively sabotaging their relationship through spreading rumors or anything so bold as that. I cannot stress enough how easy it is for anyone to be acting upon their own desires, whether through the words they speak or the tone they speak in, and not even realize it.
Let me explain why I feel this way. Two friends of mine were dating a while back. They dated for a couple years but the guy broke up with the her. The reason being he figured they were going separate ways in their lives, but there was also a lot of the little things she did started to bother him. In the tail-end of their relationship, he would talk to me and my other friends sometimes about arguments they had or the things that annoyed him. Being his friends, they would take his side always. He'd tell them she was being difficult, they would agree with him that she was being difficult. If he thought something was bullshit, they agreed with him that it was bullshit.
All of this was negative reinforcement and validating his negative feelings toward her until their eventual break up, but at its face-value, it was just a group of friends allowing their buddy to vent about his girl-trouble. None of them would ever claim they were trying to get him to break up because they weren't. However, I know for a fact that many of them thought he could do better and some outright didn't like her despite only meeting her once. I, on the other hand, knew her very well and knew she had about as many flaws as anyone here. The problem comes from the fact that he focused on those flaws and emphasized them due to the sub-conscious validation his other friends gave him.
This is the ultimate point I'm trying to make: it's alright that you hope they they will break up eventually, but you must now determine two things: Do you want one or both of them to be happy, and are they happier together than they would be apart? Think carefully about this and make sure it is not driven by your own desire for them to break up. Once you've determined this, you can be confident in knowing that whenever either of them talk to you about their relationship, you will take their best interest at heart and answer them accordingly without having your own desires subconsciously answering for you.
Do what is best for your friends, or at least for the girl you care about. Maybe you are what is best for her.