"My husband's best friend is a woman and I feel sick about it."

Having been together for almost 10 years, I’ve come to know my husband’s friends quite well.

Generally, they’re a good bunch – we’ve had some fantastic times and I’ve grown close enough to some of them to consider them my own good friends too.

But there’s one I just can’t get along with – my husband’s best friend Billie. And yes, she’s a female.

They became friends a few years before we met, so I appreciate that she’s been around longer than I have, but I can’t shake off a bad feeling about her and it’s getting steadily worse.

On our first few meetings she seemed nice enough and made an effort to make me feel welcome in the friendship group.

Things started to change when her relationship with her own boyfriend began to deteriorate. Suddenly she was texting my husband Paul constantly, having long conversations into the night as she confided in him about what was going wrong with their relationship.

I was fine with this – she was obviously going through a tough time and I was glad that Paul was kind and compassionate enough to support her. Plus, if Billie were a man, I’d have zero problems with it, so I wasn’t going to make a fuss because of her gender.

Then they broke up and Paul became her go-to whenever she had a spare moment. They’d go out together and wouldn’t return until 3am without so much as a text to let me know he was alright or on his way home.

She invited him to a number of weddings as her plus one and I was faced with an inundation of couple-y photos and updates of the two of them on Facebook.

His parents always asked about Billie. Asked when she was coming for dinner and how much they’d enjoyed the last time she was over. I lost count of the number of times his other friends commented that they’d always thought they’d end up together, and how funny it was that they hadn’t.

I didn’t find it funny at all.

Watch the video below about the moment women knew their relationship was over (post continues after video).

Movie dates popped up out of the blue and it wasn’t uncommon for our date nights to get rescheduled so he could catch up with her for dinner “when she needed some company”.

No matter what the plan was, I was never extended an invitation – even halfheartedly. Not wanting to cause problems, I never said a word to Paul. I’m not really sure why. I think I wanted to pretend to be the “cool girl” who wouldn’t get upset about seemingly petty things.

The breaking point came when a group of us went on holiday. Having been excluded for much of the friendship, I’d never actually spent much time with them together. Watching their exchange almost broke my heart.

The flirting was so obvious and open, she used any excuse to touch him and if there was ever a need for partners (we played a lot of tennis) she snapped him up before I could even get close. Observing the group of us, you’d think they were the couple and I was just an outsider.

‘Is it just me? Or is anyone else noticing how awkward this is?’ I thought to myself, trying to keep calm.

That night at dinner, I lost it. The conversation had somehow turned to Paul’s past girlfriends, and Billie was delightedly going into detail about everything that had happened with the girlfriend before me, namely Holly, who has been a cause of conflict in our relationship previously.

It was obviously awkward, and despite attempts by others to change the topic of conversation, quiet pleas from Paul and the hurt and embarrassed look on my face, she refused to let it go. After she looked at me with a smile, I realised she knew exactly what she was doing and she was enjoying it.

I excused myself from the table and told the others I was going for a walk. I was seriously debating about leaving the holiday for good, but in the end decided against it.

When we got home, I finally told Paul how I really felt about Billie. He laughed it off which only made me angrier. I asked if anything had ever happened between them and he said that he liked her when they first met, but nothing ever eventuated.

It’s now proven to be a thorn in our relationship. Knowing that I don’t like it when he sees her, he now doesn’t mention whether they’ve spoken or when they’re catching up. The other week, he went to see a film with her that I’d been asking him to watch with me for ages and he’d refused.

The whole thing has made be resentful, insecure and jealous. It’s petty and I know he’s chosen me, but I just can’t get over it.

My mind has been poisoned by the constant comments that people think they’d make a great couple and their friendship keeps coming up as the source of arguments between us – even more so because he’s said to me in the past he doesn’t think men and women can ever “just” be friends.

Have you had trouble with a partner’s close friend?

This post originally appeared on The Glow and was republished with full permission. You can read the original post here.