When you realize you are not invited but you are there....

[ilrag]

Oh man I hope Emma is done being anything more then roommates with John.

[TurtleDove]

How awkward!  I think if Emma is okay with John seeing other people, then great.  It sounds to me as though John is playing the field and maybe Emma did not realize this.  The problem with "kinda seeing" someone is that there is no commitment, no boundaries, no real legitimate beef if the person does not treat you as a significant other.  John isn't wrong for seeing multiple people.  I can see where Emma would be hurt - I think we've all been there - but she shouldn't assume a relationship where it has not been specifically discussed and agreed.  Emma should figure out what she wants, but if it's a relationship with John I don't think she will get it (unless she talks to him and he agrees he wants to be just with her).

It does seem odd that John would invite Emma if it truly was a date with Carol.

[bonyk]

Emma needs to ask John what the deal is.

Maybe:
1)  He invited Emma as a buffer.
2)  He invited Emma to give her the message that he's not into her.
3)  He invited her to assuage his guilt about going out with Carol.
4)  He's just that clueless.

[Hmmmmm]

Poor Emma. 

We don't really know John's motivation for including Emma in the invite.  My initial reaction is he was using her as a buffer.

In reading the OP, this is the scenario that I imagined.
Carol comes over to discuss business.  John is really interested in the work, but get's the vibe Carol is interested in more than a business relationship.  Carol invites him to dinner to continue discussing the work.  He gets a little uncomrtable so when Emma text him, he thinks, great I'll include her as a buffer.  He stupidly doesn't say that Carol was treating him to dinner.

Carol is completely clueless about Emma and John's relationship being more than roommates so feels free to continue flirting.  John doesn't want to burn bridges because of the job and continues to engage in the flirting and again doesn't respect Emma's feelings enough to refrain.  He then acts like an idiot and suggests that Carol should pay for Emma's meal too, making both women feel really uncomfortable. 

John's a jerk.  Emma needs to stop all additional benefit.  She should not attempt to 'formalize' their relationship because if he really wanted more from her, it would have already been discussed. 

[Shoo]

Carol obviously thought she was on a date with John.  And it sounds like she plans on there being a second one.  This is not going to end well for Emma.  I'd advise her to stop all "relations" with John at once.  The whole situation is awkward.

[Cat-Fu]

Yikes! How awkard. I do think FWB stuff can work out, but it is **very** important to have mutually agreed upon ground rules. For instance, "don't bring me along to dates!"

Also, the point of FWB is often that both parties can still date other people... if she doesn't want him dating other people, then she can't be in a FWB relationship. And honestly, the best-case scenario generally speaking is that FWB will fizzle out into plain friendship. It doesn't usually result in a relationship, so if that's what she is hoping for, she needs to be honest with both herself and John.

I agree w/ PPs in that John was the rude one here.

[Amava]

For the sake of etiquette, let's try to take the friends-with-benefits thing out of the equation for a moment.

Let's re-write this situation with three men. Let's assume there are three men, all three of them 100% hetero, just to take all romantic and sexual clouding out of it.

John would STILL be wrong.
If one friend offers to treat you to dinner, you do NOT drag someone else along. You just don't do that. The friend has offered to treat YOU. They have invited you. Not someone else.
Either you're comfortable going to dinner with them alone, if they invite you alone, or you're not. If you don't want to, you politely decline. You don't change the rules of their invitation.



Let's take a different situation now, the other extreme: let's say that John and Emma are a married couple. A third party, whether male or female, invites John to dinner to treat him as a thank-you for helping them out or whatever.

John would STILL be wrong to invite his wife along. Again, if he's not comfy going out with the inviter alone, or if it's "not done" in his marriage to go out without his wife and with another woman... he can politely decline. But you do not, when invited to be treated, take the initiative to take someone else along: not your wife, not your friend, not your mother, not your child, not your friend-with-benefits.

So no matter what, John was rude to Carol for inviting someone else along when she had invited him to a dinner - her treat.

John was also rude to Emma. Regardless of their relationship. It's always awkward to feel "unwanted" by the "host" or "inviter" if you realise they didn't want to invite you and someone else has invited you while it wasn't their place to do so. It is not cool to put your friend, wife, lover, coworker, dog, child, in short anyone in that position.


It is possible that John likes Emma more than some posters think, and that he didn't want to go out with Carol, and indeed used Emma as a "buffer". But while doing so, he trampled all over etiquette AND made it awkward for Emma.
If he wanted to use Emma as a buffer and make it clear to Carol that "this was not a date", he should probably have done better trying to include Emma in the conversation much more.

It is also possible that John is "not that into" Emma and even that *Emma* is okay with that. I didn't get from the OP that "Emma saw her world falling to pieces at the sight of John flirting with someone else", or anything. Just that Emma found it awkward that it was done in front of her. Maybe Emma wouldn't have minded if John had honestly and openly said: "Hey, I'm going out for dinner with Carol today, don't wait up for me". 

But what is a red flag in the OP for me is that it is worded as "They don't have a label YET". That sort of hints to me that Emma is hoping for the future and that in her mind, they are more than in John's mind. And she has to be careful with that, and realistic. 

[amylouky]

I think a, John is clueless; b, John is not (or was not) interested in Carol; and c, Emma needs to decide what she wants in her rel@tionship with John and clarify it.

It sounds to me like John considered Carol's dinner invitation as just an extension of the business part of the evening, but Carol was angling for it to be more of a date. John probably figured it was casual, Emma and Carol get along, why not invite Emma to dinner too? The fact that he invited Emma, given their more-than-friends status (assuming he's not a sociopath who gets a kick out of hurting her), tells me that he's not interested in Carol. If he was, why would he want another woman along on their dinner?

Anyway, I think Emma needs to figure out if she wants to be with John. If so, she needs to find out if they're on the same page or not. If not, she needs to be okay with him dating other women and decline if invited to join again.

Ps - I'm also assuming there was a typo in the OP and that John said that HE would pay for Emma's dinner, not volunteered Carol to pay for it. Because if that's the case, then, wow. Very rude.

[LifeOnPluto]

Emma needs to ask John what the deal is.

Maybe:
1)  He invited Emma as a buffer.
2)  He invited Emma to give her the message that he's not into her.
3)  He invited her to assuage his guilt about going out with Carol.
4)  He's just that clueless.

My guess is: (5) He wants the best of both worlds.

I suspect John is flattered by Carol's attentions, and wants to see if she's a good prospect (whether it be for a "scrabble buddy", girlfriend, wife, or whatever it is he's looking for). So he accepted her dinner invitation.

But at the same time, he doesn't want to lose Emma. She's his back-up, in case things don't work out with Carol. He doesn't want to put Emma offside by telling her he's having dinner with Carol, and she's not invited. So (in his mind) the easiest solution is to bring her along to the dinner.

As for the flirting between John and Carol, that was rude, regardless of Emma's "status". It wouldn't have mattered if the "third wheel" was John's sister, mother, or platonic male best friend. If John and Carol were structuring their social interactions in a way that excluded the third person sitting at their table, it was very rude and disrespectful.

I am also curious as to whether Carol is aware of Emma's feelings for John. Because if she is, and went ahead and flirted shamelessly with him in front of Emma, Emma needs to drop her as a friend.

As for what Emma could have actually done during the dinner - I don't think there was really anything, sadly. It sounds like she behaved very maturely and graciously in the face of an awkward situation.

[NyaChan]

OP, any updates on this situation?

[RavenousEdenFleur]

I do!

Thank you for the advice Also just to clear up the question, there was a typo in my OP. John did offer to pay for Emma, he didn't ask Carol to do it.

I'm not sure if Carol is aware of Emma's feelings for John, but I know Emma spoke with him the next day and asked about the invite, she felt like maybe Carol didn't realize she was going to come, and mentioned it was really uncouth to have invited her and the behavior that night was awkward.He said he thought she would be mad if he went to dinner without her... she said she could have eaten on her own and if it was a work thing or a date thing, she didn't have a reason to be there!

He claims to have been oblivious to the flirting of Carol and felt like it was just a business thing.. Emma told me she is not impressed and is cooling things off and remaining just friends, because anything else is WAY too stressful.

[StuffedGrapeLeaves]

I do!

Thank you for the advice Also just to clear up the question, there was a typo in my OP. John did offer to pay for Emma, he didn't ask Carol to do it.

I'm not sure if Carol is aware of Emma's feelings for John, but I know Emma spoke with him the next day and asked about the invite, she felt like maybe Carol didn't realize she was going to come, and mentioned it was really uncouth to have invited her and the behavior that night was awkward.He said he thought she would be mad if he went to dinner without her... she said she could have eaten on her own and if it was a work thing or a date thing, she didn't have a reason to be there!

He claims to have been oblivious to the flirting of Carol and felt like it was just a business thing.. Emma told me she is not impressed and is cooling things off and remaining just friends, because anything else is WAY too stressful.

Good for Emma.  I think she is doing the smart thing by stepping away from John.

I'm with the posters who thought that John was simply trying to keep both options open, or he loved the idea of getting attention from two women at the same time.

[Amava]

I do!

Thank you for the advice Also just to clear up the question, there was a typo in my OP. John did offer to pay for Emma, he didn't ask Carol to do it.

I'm not sure if Carol is aware of Emma's feelings for John, but I know Emma spoke with him the next day and asked about the invite, she felt like maybe Carol didn't realize she was going to come, and mentioned it was really uncouth to have invited her and the behavior that night was awkward.He said he thought she would be mad if he went to dinner without her... she said she could have eaten on her own and if it was a work thing or a date thing, she didn't have a reason to be there!

He claims to have been oblivious to the flirting of Carol and felt like it was just a business thing.. Emma told me she is not impressed and is cooling things off and remaining just friends, because anything else is WAY too stressful.

I think she needs to do what feels right for herself. If a friends-with-benefits relationship starts causing stress and heartache, that is indeed a sign that it is not completely what she is looking for.

[Raintree]

Actually I can believe that John was oblivious to Carol's flirting. Some guys really are that clueless. Was John flirting back? The OP describes it as a "getting to know you" session between John and Carol, but was that because Carol was masterfully directing the conversation towards herself or asking questions directed only at John?

I think Carol was annoyed to have the OP along, and it must have been especially annoying to have John offer to pay for the OP. I think the fact that he invited the OP (he clearly realized the one-on-one with Carol would be inappropriate given his relationship with OP) shows more respect for the OP than if he had just gone out alone with her.

But I do respect the OP for deciding to scale it back with him, because a lot of awkwardness could have been avoided if John had been clear with Carol that he had a relationship with the OP. Not calling it a relationship opens the doors for a lot of blurred boundaries.

[RavenousEdenFleur]

Emma's updated me on a few things with her, Carol and John... it was pretty quiet for a long time, basically she would come over and work and Emma would be as cordial as possible. Carol would continue to come over and work and they would be as nice to each other as possible, but at events she would offer to buy John drinks and food and take him away from Emma's side, annoying but nothing egregiously against etiquette, until a month or so ago. During this time John was adamant that Carol had no feelings for him and would just complain about Carol and how terse she could be and basically was focusing on his relationship with Emma, and Emma started to really fall for him.

It was the closing party to the project that they were involved in and Emma and John went together and she was very excited because she had gotten to know a lot of people involved with it and she actually ended up doing some work on the project! John started drinking right away and was ignoring Emma all night and making comments on how hot the other women were and slapping women on their bums and basically just being rude, Emma kept to herself and ended up wanting to leave, she was going to go off with a couple people to a small concert at a coffee house and relax. Then John started puking. Carol immediately told Emma to take care of him, she said even though they were not really a couple it was her responsibility and she is the one that drove John to drink.. she was dumbfounded and told Carol that they were in a relationship yet he spent the whole night ignoring her, focusing on Carol the whole night so she did suggest to Carol that she take care of him. A lot of tension and some arguing ensued according to Emma and she accompanied John home in a taxi.

The next day Emma spoke to him about it and he felt awful and tried breaking up with her... because he said his behavior clearly showed that he did not want a relationship with her. Then he changed his mind a few days later and they attempted to mend their relationship.

Emma was concerned about everything that happened and decided to email Carol about the strain between them.Carol said she was sorry that her intentions were misinterpreted and that she has no feelings for John at all romantically and all of the dinners and drinks were actually an arrangement with them for extra work he was doing and all the times Emma thought Carol was inviting herself out with them, it was John who invited her inititally. Then Carol became insulting and rude and I guess there was more arguing..

So the etiquette question now is, Emma still lives with John and she is getting ready to move out within the next couple of months and she is trying hard to get along with him. He finally confessed he had some feelings for Carol so Emma's fears were not totally off base but it didn't matter since Emma lived there and Carol didn't want him. However now Carol is saying she no longer wants Emma in the house while they re working together... which is insane,but what can Emma do to be  cordial person? Does she need to leave the house or stay in her room when she is there? What are some good etiquette tips for when Emma has to work with Carol again?