Lovehacker: My Married Friends Are Ruining Board Game Night By Banging Each Other

Dear Lovehacker, you might need a notepad for this bizzare love parallelogram. I am friends with two married couples. Let’s call them Sally & Steve and Greg & Amelia. Greg and Amelia had been arguing recently, so Steve hung out with Amelia to console her. One thing led to another and they started banging. Amelia kicked Greg out and he worked out why. He still had the keys to their place, so he snuck in one day when they were going at it hammer and tongs. He snapped some pictures and sent them to Sally. And then things got even worse.

Devastated, Sally sent the pics to a bunch of other people, including Steve’s parents. Then Sally and Greg started seeing each other but it didn’t seem to work. Sally and Steve eventually got back together. (Greg and Amelia are still broken up.)

My question is – how do I organise board game night with these people? They all still want to be invited despite utterly ruining each others relationships. I don’t know if I can deal with the epic drama and social awkwardness involved in having them at the same table. We still see each other occasionally through mutual interests, but I really want to kick them out of our board game circle. Does this make me a terrible person? Sincerely, Very confused.

Dear Very Confused,

Damn, son!

That is the juiciest question I have ever gotten and for that I thank you.

What a hot god damn mess. [related title=”More Lovehacker” tag=”lovehacker” items=”5″]

Firstly, I have to say that I’m really disappointed in Sally. Sending all those pics around was a baller move, and then she gets back with the dude anyway?

Not only is that showing very little respect for herself, now all those people know exactly what he did (with visuals) and have to pretend to be happy for them. That sucks.

I also feel like the Steve and Amelia stuff was possibly going on beforehand. At least a flirtation. Maybe that was the underlying cause for the arguments.

But I digress! This is about you, not my chaos worship and loving sick on this narrative.

You are not a terrible person at all. Who would want to deal with that shit storm?

I get why these people would want to try to get things back to normal, including their social lives. We all make mistakes and shouldn’t be punished for them forever.

If you’re uncomfortable, that’s just fine and perfectly justified. This all sounds relatively recent and it isn’t your job to patch things up. It’s okay to give it some time – you may even feel differently down the track.

This has all been very public and they need to understand that. People aren’t going to be able to pretend it didn’t happen.

I mean, seriously. One of the couples are still broken up, the other got back together and they’re all still trying to hang out? That’s a really unrealistic expectation to place on both themselves and others. They need to stay the hell away from each other.

If you want to be kind, just invite some of them to certain games nights so they don’t have to interact. Go with the ones who are less likely to stab each other with a Catan road piece.

Or if you want the harsh approach, don’t invite any of them for awhile.

That being said, I would absolutely be interested to see how this garbage fire plays out. So if you ever give in, let us know! And if you feel like being a troll, here are some games you should bust out on the night:

Bang!

Taboo

Paranoia

Pass The Blame

Risk

Sorry

Gloom

Trouble

Lovehacker is a weekly relationship and sex column where our resident Agony Aunt answers your questions. Need help? Drop a comment below or email [email protected].