The Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Sometimes a single female such as myself will find herself the victim of a beast more terrible than she could nightmare up: The Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

Although there may in fact be nothing remotely romantic or physical going on between you and your male friend who broke her heart, the fact that you are friends may be enough fodder to awake the beast. For whatever reason -- maybe you share a hobby with said male friend -- you are spending some time with the guy, he's helping you out, and then you encounter Crazy. Crazy will do anything to manipulate situations to make you feel smaller than her and establish herself in some imaginary fourth-grade seat of power. The worst part is, no one else in her sphere sees this because the rest of her domain consists of mostly men, who we all know are mostly blind to the manipulative workings of a woman - especially if she's hot - which suprisingly Crazy often is. Hot generally masks the Crazy for a good period of time.

After trying to be the bigger person and just let things go, and knowing full well if you bring things up with your male buddy that you will come off as the crazy one, there may come a point where a line has been crossed and a conversation must be had. Although frustrating, you may find that in most cases, Crazy is just incredibly insecure (which you probably figured) + incredibly un-self-aware. Not a good combo, and equally hard to reason with as an actual insane person. But with some willingness to confront Crazy and stand up for yourself while giving a little dallop of ego massage and extra measure of grace, things can be smoothed over.

In my own encounters with Crazy, I have had to swallow a rather large pill of pride. Although I did get a lot of trying to turn the tables on me, very little acceptance of responsibility and a very begrudging apology, it was an apology nonetheless and I needed to forgive her and be the bigger person because you can't really blame Crazy for not knowing any better. I don't know what her background is, but it's safe to assume Crazy generally wasn't loved enough as a child and that deserves compassion. Even if she was taking that out on you in the process. Crazy and I will probably never be best friends or even close, but at least civility and, more importantly, accountability have been reached. Thank God one of us at least has taken in some hard lessons in dealing with conflict -- it sure as hell prepares you for the ultimate test of managing Crazy.

Mental note: Crazy Ex can be a red flag for any guy you might be interested in. Especially if he still doesn't see it.