“My Brand New Husband Keeps Liking Another Woman’s Comments on Facebook”
Please note that my husband has many female friends, very attractive at that, but I see nothing excessive or inappropriate in their behavior. I know his exes and even have a soft spot and liking for some of them. But this classmate of mine irks me for some reason.
When I asked questions, very kindly and politely, pointing out that other friends had questions too, my classmate acted resentful. She even made me look like I was a bully!!! So, my husband got mad at me too. How could he know I wrote to ask her things if she didn’t tell him? Or forward him my texts? I knew because my husband would talk about things she and I talked about, even using some phrases from those texts. I believe she manipulated him and I also feel like they “ganged up” on me. But I stayed very kind. After all, the woman in this case is my friend/classmate. Yet she made me look like I was so mean when I never was in my queries or approach. It hurt a lot.
Anyway, it caused a rift between my husband and me, one that escalated into my crying for a week. My husband berated me as if I were so horrible to her when I truly was not. After that bad time, he kept his distance from her for a while. He cannot have forgotten how I felt, so why is he going back this month to liking her posts, and even commenting too, after what he and I went through just weeks ago? And the woman is liking his comments as well. How can they be so forgetful and insensitive?
They BOTH know I was very uncomfortable, so why are they being like this? I have since stopped going on Facebook so I don’t have to see their reacting with each other. I’m also afraid to bring it up again to my husband after how I was treated the last time by them both. — Wishing They Weren’t Friends<
I’m not sure I understand. You call this woman a friend, you invited her to your wedding and she came. And yet, you’re super offended that she’s friends with your husband on Facebook and that they like each other’s posts? That’s not… normal. It’s not normal to be so threatened by a friend and so distrusting of your brand new husband that the idea of their being Facebook-connected freaks you out this much. Why be friends with this woman if you don’t like her or trust her? Why marry your husband if you have so little trust in him that his Facebook “friendship” with another woman would upset you this much?
I can understand why you’d be peeved that it seems they are discussing you behind your back — that this “friend” would repeat to your husband the “questions” you “politely” asked her (I’d love to know what the polite questions were!), but what I don’t understand is getting so offended and freaked out by this friendship in the first place. There must be some reason you’re so threatened by it. THAT is the part you need to focus on. What is it you’re afraid is going to happen (or is happening) by your husband and this woman being connected on FB? What do you think it symbolizes? There must be some concern you have about your husband (and this woman, but she really shouldn’t matter) that this connection is affirming for you. And to have that kind of concern about your husband, especially as a brand-new newlywed — that is the problem. That your husband seems to have so little regard for your feelings about this isn’t anything to shrug off, either. Even if your concerns may seem invalid to him, he owes you the respect of considering your feelings more than some woman he met through you at your wedding!
Something is definitely off here — something more than just a few FB likes. You have a lot to discuss with your husband (with your husband, not the “friend”!) — how you have some trust issues, how you resent his disregarding your feelings and seemingly siding with this random woman over you. If you can’t work this out on your own, seek counseling. It’s a major red flag to be this “off” immediately following your wedding. It tells me that something was likely “off” before the wedding and this whole situation is simply bringing to light what wasn’t dealt with adequately (or at all) before you got married.
He told his friend about your abortion?! Oh, hell no. Your boyfriend can be “disappointed” in potential difference in values, but unless you actively did something to him, he has no reason to be “hurt” by a personal decision you made two years ago that doesn’t even affect him. You had no obligation to tell him about your abortion. But you did — one would assume because you love him and trust him and wanted to share this with him because you think it has some bearing on who you are and maybe decisions you make now. He should have felt honored that you trusted him enough to share with him — that you loved him enough to want to be open about something that was likely painful and unpleasant. And instead of reacting lovingly, he tells you he’s hurt, he wants to end the relationship, and then he goes off and shares your private experience with his friend and says he wants to forget you? And you think you can’t “afford” to lose him? Fuck that! This guy is a Grade A asshole. If you can’t afford to lose a loser, then you need more help than I can give in a short advice column.
Honestly, you can do better. And when you do, if you decide to share the personal history of your abortion, find out first how the guy feels about a woman’s right to choose and be in control of her reproductive health decisions and her body. If your values don’t align, not only should you resist sharing your experience, but you should also probably re-evaluate the relationship. What a man thinks about a woman’s right to choose can tell you a lot about your compatibility, especially since you may have to make decisions in the future regarding your reproductive health that may directly affect him. If you value your right to be the primary decision-maker in choices that directly involve your body, stay away from men who don’t think you should have that right.
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If you have a relationship/dating question I can help answer, you can send me your letters at [email protected].
Wendy, I mostly agree on LW1, but there’s a difference with “why are you threatened that he’s friend’s with one of your friends on Facebook” and “why is my friend liking every single post he has made since 2008, talking about me behind my back?” I think LW made it pretty clear she is comfortable with the vast majority of women in his life, including exes, so I don’t think it’s fair to paint her with the broad stroke of just being jealous/insecure. It wouldn’t be the first time in history that someone picked up on inappropriate behavior and their partner was gaslighting them over it. I think too often women are told to place nice and not follow our instincts, and unless this was part of a larger pattern of her being jealous/insecure, I’d err on the side of believing the LW that this was odd behavior.
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However, LW should NOT have gone to her friend over it, she should have talked to her husband about it. I agree with the larger point that your husband should not be dismissing your feelings and that you two need to have an honest talk about boundaries and trust.
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LW2: Everything Wendy said! Please know that abortion is a personal, medical decision and that guy is a total asshole. You are young and have your whole life ahead of you to grow and develop and meet way better men. Please leave him, you deserve someone better.
I agree with you that the LW picked on something from the friend. Seriously, who goes back almost 10 years to like another person’s FB posts? Who in the hell has that kind of time? And why is so willing to invest that kind of time in a man who’s already married? I wouldn’t do that for a guy that I’m working on a relationship with.
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I imagine the real life equivalent is laughing way too much at his jokes, when the jokes aren’t really that funny. I think it feels flirty but not overtly so, and the LW can’t pin down why it makes her feel uncomfortable.
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I do think she should have addressed it with the friend because she is the one who started out behaving inappropriately. The husband shouldn’t be let off of the hook because his reaction feels over dramatic, and as if they are doing something.
I agree on LW1; there’s something going on there that doesn’t pass the smell test. Why is this chick going back almost a decade in her friend’s husband’s Facebook history? Why is the LW ‘nicely’ confronting her friend rather than bringing it up to her husband? Why is the husband sticking up for some woman he barely knows over protecting his wife’s feelings? There seems to be an awful lot of drama happening between these three which leads me to believe Wendy’s main point is correct-whatever is going on has more to do with the couple’s relationship than some nonsense on FB.
I completely agree that liking posts going back almost ten years is weird, and if I were the LW, that might raise some red flags for me. But the part that got me is in the fitst sentence when the LW says that her friend sent a friend request to the husband without mentioning it to the LW. I’ve friended lots of my friend’s significant others over the years and it never occurred to me to mention it/ask permission first. That was a first clue to me that something besides the friend’s weird preoccupation with the husband’s FB page is off. I think that is potentially weirder, frankly, that the friend liking pictures from nearly 10 years ago. I guess I wouldn’t think it THAT strange, for example, if a girlfriend of mine liked a few photos on my husband’s page if they were of, say, me (or me and him). Or if there were very few photos to begin with, as someone else suggested, and it might take a few seconds to go back far enough to see photos posted from 2008 onward.
Anyway, I agree that the LW’s “friend’s” behavior is deeply suspicious (especially the part about her continuing her behavior even after the LW let her know it made her uncomfortable!). But I also think there was something off to begin with, before the “friend” even entered the picture (no pun intended).
That part bothered me too. That the LW was upset that her friend didn’t give her a heads up or ask permission to “friend” her husband on FB. I’ve never mentioned to someone that I’m “friending” their significant other on FB.
I don’t think it can be dismissed as a few posts when she talks about his posts in the past few weeks. He sounds like someone who posts regularly and he and the friend seem to be on good enough terms that the friend feels comfortable messaging him the contents of the texts. Who feels that comfortable with a total stranger. Most people wouldn’t demand that the husband, who they don’t know, validate them in an argument with the wife. Most people who found her insecure or overboard would just back away and feel sorry for him but wouldn’t try to pull the husband into it. It feels very off, to the point I have to wonder if something happened between the friend and the husband just before or after the wedding.
Wild speculation, but I think this former friend is someone the LW never really trusted or liked to begin with. She runs in the same circles, so she’s a “friend,” but not someone the LW feels super close to. And therefore her fixation with the LW’s husband (and yeah, liking every single post back to 2008 is fixation) reads as more threatening than an actual friend’s.
And the husband is a total idiot/jerk for his reaction to the whole thing.
This friend only knew the husband for 3 hours. They just met. She was only invited over because she lived nearby, and they haven’t seen each other for 20 years. Now this old friend of the wife is suddenly wants to be close friends with the husband? And she never includes the wife. After all, the wife is away, on the other side of the globe, on her job. Yes, I hear she has spoken to the husband and her “polite queries were just to ask if her husband and friend had issues that they needed to talk about, and it would be nice to be included in their conversations to help”. It seemed strange since they knew each other for only 3 hours. It doesn’t help that the wife has a job to finish up so far away either in the meantime. Anyway, the husband is okay now. Besides, what choice does the wife have being stuck at work 5,700 miles away but to just trust her husband and leave it be. But the long lost friend? Weird and overbearing.
Yeah, I had so many emotions in the first few sentences of LW1’s letter! When I read the first sentence, I assumed LW was overbearing and cooky because who asks for permission to friend another person on Facebook? Then I read about the “friend” liking every post since 2008, and I was like, “Okay, I guess the ‘friend’ is a nutjob.” Now I think the friend is a nutjob and that something is going on between the nutjob and the new husband. It just doesn’t add up that the husband would be rushing to defend the nutjob instead of his wife. But yeah, LW, you have things to discuss with your *husband.*
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I will say, though, that on two occasions several years apart, I’ve inexplicably hated two women based on Facebook alone. Both turned out to be the women with whom both of my serious exes were cheating on me with. I told myself I was crazy rather than confronting anyone, because who gets mad over Facebook? But I do think it’s possible to get the sense something is off without knowing what or why. LW may be saying things that are cookier than she’d normally say because she’s picking up on something being off. And it does sound like something is off.
LW 2 please dump your boyfriend hard. In no way do you deserve to be treated that way. He is a total dickhead.
Liking every single post on Facebook since 2008 is extreme. I’ve never known anyone to do something like that. It sounds like she was obsessed with him to do something like that. Who would even go back that far looking at that many posts. It was extreme enough that other people noticed and commented on it.
I think you should have talked to your husband rather than trying to talk to the “friend.” She is no friend to you. You needed to go directly to the person who has a vested interest in your relationship. You needed to point out to your husband that you felt it was wildly extreme to go through and like every single post of his since 2008. You should have asked why he thought anyone would do that and why he would continue to be friends with her on Facebook. If you can’t talk about it you should go to couples counseling and if he won’t go you have to think about whether this marriage can last. You are barely married and already have a huge breach of trust and respect. You should be in a happy, golden honeymoon stage right now and instead you can’t even talk about an issue. It’s a bad sign when he takes the side of the outsider in your marriage. It’s also a bad sign when you talked to that outsider rather than talking directly to him. The two of you don’t sound like you were ready for marriage. You have no communication skills. If the two of you can’t find a way to talk through this and find a resolution that works for both of you I think you should consider moving out.
I think that it is a little bit off what the friend did, but some people do this when they friend someone. It is NOT, certainly, a reason to end up having the type of disagreement that ends with you crying for a week. It’s the kind of thing that merits you talking to your husband and calmly saying it makes you uncomfortable. I think you both of you reacted poorly. You will face bigger problems in your marriage than this and you will have to figure out how to communicate.
How many people have you know who did this? I’ve never seen it. If someone liked every post of mine going back nine years I’d find it creepy. I’d show it to my husband and talk about how weird the person was and then defriend them. It has a stalkerish feel to it. If someone did this to my husband I’m sure he’d show me wanting to know what I thought because it is so out of the norm. Who has the time or the interest to go through nine years of Facebook posts so that they can like everyone one of them?
I think it depends on how much people post. So My husband never posts. It might only take 20 posts to get to 2008 where for me, it would take 20 posts to get back to the beginning of 2017.
It sounds like he’s posting more than occasionally. If someone posted a few times a year it would be easy to go back nine years. If they posted once a week it would be tedious to go back nine years. If they are posting more than once a week it is even worse. She is talking about his comments in the past couple of weeks so it sounds like he is routinely posting.
Yeah, so like a year ago, I added a guy from my gym I had a crush on as a Facebook friend. He accepted, and liked a few things on my page after he did, including a post from about a month prior. I’m not a daily poster, or even a weekly poster, but even then I found it a bit strange that he’d even gone a month back on my timeline. Not creepy, but I was surprised he was curious about me at all. (But he was hot, so I thought it was strange but flattering.)
LW 1, I don’t think your former friend had to “inform” you about sending a friend request to your husband. That’s normal. But liking all of his posts since 2008 is creepy stalker territory. Unless that’s how she acts with everyone—in which case, big surprise that she has boundary issues.
I also think your husband is being a jerk. Unless you have a pattern of being unreasonable about his social media activity, or if you were REALLY cruel to this woman, it just wouldn’t be hard for him to stop liking and commenting on her posts. She’s an acquaintance. They are easy to drop. Instead, he ganged up against you with her and they are still chatting to this day.
The hell? Your husband is a fool for getting in the middle of a fight between friends by texting with her. He’s doubly a fool for choosing a rando (which is what she is to him… I think?) over his wife.
It’s also kind of icky that the friend was messaging the husband and demanding he take her side. Who demands that a man that they don’t know take their side over his own wife and what husband goes ahead and does what that friend wants.
This marriage is screaming for counseling and if it doesn’t get it I can’t see it lasting very long.
I wonder if the friend made those demands though. I think it’s likely that the friend said, “hey your wife sent me this weird message, what’s up?” Without making any demands. I suspect that they weren’t very nice or polite.
But what’s weird about it is that this is the WIFE’s friend, who wasn’t friends with the husband until after the wedding. Why is she going to all this trouble to communicate privately with him?
That makes sense to me, I’ve done that when I’ve had accusatory emails from girlfriends before. I don’t see anything remotely weird about doing that, the rest of it is ridiculous however.
But is it not weird for the LW’s friend to contact the LW’s husband, who she met once, to talk about the LW?
LW1) I, too, disagree with Wendy. Normally, I’d say that the LW had real issues… except NOT only is it bizarre and excessive — not to mention creepy! — to retroactively like somebody’s post going years and years back. So much that OTHER people notice. But then, also– there IS the husband’s reaction which is just off and, frankly, suspect.
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LW2) Sometimes its best to leave the past in the past. That said, the guy IS being a jerk although do we really know if he blabbed about the abortion to anybody? One can easily tell a friend they want to forget somebody without saying why… guys especially.
On LW1, if other people are commenting on the woman’s weirdness in liking everything someone else’s husband ever posted, then it isn’t all in the LW’s head and she deserves a little more kindness than she got…
LW2: dump his ass and forget this loser immediately. He has zero right to judge you for a decision you made about your reproductive health and any man who doesn’t full support bodily autonomy shouldn’t be getting laid at all.
not to mention, he’s actively stigmatizing you using this information. complete asshole.
That is what really gets me in this letter. Not only is he not supportive and empathetic regarding her very difficult decision, he blasted the information to a third party. Fuck that noise
LW2 – You were not dating this guy when you got an abortion and he was not the father of the fetus therefore he does not have the right to shame you and then tell other people about a decision you made two years ago. If he is fundamentally against abortion due to religious or moral reasons then it means you two are likely ill-suited to be dating. As others have said, dump him and move on to someone that respects you as a person.
LW1 If you think the friend took your posts and twisted them to make you look like you were saying things that you weren’t why haven’t you shown the entire chain of messages between the two of you to your husband? Show him that she is the manipulative one and then ask why he jumped to defend her. At the very least you should be able to expect your husband to have your back unless you do something that is wildly inappropriate.
For LW1, the liking of posts from 2008 is definitely weird, but the thing that really got me was this:
“So, my husband got mad at me too. How could he know I wrote to ask her things if she didn’t tell him? Or forward him my texts? I knew because my husband would talk about things she and I talked about, even using some phrases from those texts. I believe she manipulated him and I also feel like they “ganged up” on me.”
Are Husband and Friend texting each other after having only met at the wedding? My red flags went up reading this letter, though everyone just reacted poorly all around.
No kidding – how does he even have this woman’s phone number to text her? Or are they private-messaging through Facebook? Either way, that’s extremely suspect. EVEN IF the LW was overreacting to the strange over-liking, the husband and “friend” talking behind her back is pretty awful.
LW1: Maybe instead you could try “I’m uncomfortable with this person going through 10 years of your Facebook so could you not like their comments?” Instead of “this is a huge betrayal, you and her are both mean, and you ganged up on me!” Focus the conversation on how you feel. Remember, what they are doing isn’t objectively wrong, and your way isn’t better. It’s just different preferences. Which is easier, convincing him to listen to Bon Jovi in the car because you prefer it, or convincing him that Bon Jovi is objectively better than Smash Mouth and he should feel bad for liking Smash Mouth and he’s mean for listening to it?
Although I agree liking everything since 2008 is weird, I think your idea of kind, polite, and mean are skewed. First of all, there is no way to kindly, politely confront a friend/acquaintance about why they are friends with someone on Facebook. And why would she possibly keep it secret that you confronted her? If someone asked you out of the blue “why are you friends with so-and-so on Facebook”, is this something you would treat as confidential? Or would you message your friend so-and-so and say, “hey what’s going on with your nosy friend?”
Secondly, if your texts and conversation were so kind and polite, why is it mean for your husband to quote them?
I’m sorry, but if my boyfriend said “you have to stop liking this person’s Facebook or I’ll cry for a week”, I would feel controlled.
I think the issue with him quoting the conversations is that it would mean that the husband and the friend apparently text with each other, despite the LW being led to believe they only know each other from the wedding and him being added on Facebook.
I mean, yeah, Facebook likes aren’t worth crying over, but it’s a big red flag if he and the friend are talking about this stuff behind the LWs back and somehow have a secret friendship she doesn’t know about.
I think LW1’s mistake was bringing the friend into it at all. The person to talk to was the husband. If this were my marriage, the conversation would be something like, “Woah! Gertrude sure is getting stalker-y up on your Facebook page. Creeper alert!” and my husband would be like, “Yeah, weirdo! I’m gonna hide my posts from her.” We actually have had this conversation about a friend of his from college that liked EVERY post of his within seconds of it being posted. The fact that LW1 didn’t bring this to her husband first, and the fact that he berated her to the point of tears, is not good. The problem is not the “friend” so much as the husband.
I was thinking the same thing, this is a husband problem. For most people it would have ended the moment they saw that she had liked every single comment over a nine year period. They would be saying this is too creepy and then they would delete her as a Facebook friend and that would have been the end of it. Instead of finding it creepy, stalkerish, he seems to have liked it and wants to stay engaged with her even if it harms his marriage. He has been given the choice of choosing between his wife and this friend of his wife who has never been his friend. Why choose the never been a friend rando woman over the wife and care more about the rando and her feelings than the wife and her feelings.
Yes, this exactly.
He’s “disappointed” in you? What is he, your dad? He’s being a dick and isn’t worth your time. Bet you money that if you guys get back together, he’ll hold this over your head somehow and you’ll find yourself trying to make up for something you didn’t do to him.
LW1:Annulment.
LW2:Ditch the judgemental asshole.
LW2 In the future I’d definitely find out their view on abortion before confiding in them and if their view is the opposite of yours you know you need to move on.
I don’t think this guy is horrible. If he was raised in a home where women who had abortions were always considered selfish, baby killers and he has never had someone confide in him that they had an abortion he has never had to confront his beliefs. He probably has one point-of-view about women who have abortions and another point-of-view about you and suddenly “those women” don’t match what he thinks of you. He probably won’t reconcile this at this point in time. You will probably shift into the column of “those women” and he’ll move on because it is hard to confront a lifetime of ingrained belief. I think he was stunned and confided in a friend because he was shocked and didn’t know what to do.
I think the two of you have opposite values and you won’t be able to patch this up.
LW1 – I think you need to start speaking to your friend in person. Even when you say you asked nicely, it might not have come across that way over text. I think you need to be having real life conversations. With your husband, see about trying to build a better relationship and better communication.
I almost get the feeling that the LW and the girl might have a “frenemy” relationship. If the friend is manipulative, the LW should not open that can of worms by addressing the situation further with her and instead just talk to her husband. She cannot control the friend’s behavior, but she can calmly and clearly communicate with her husband.
Yeah, sure. Normally. But his reaction here is VERY off.
LW2- if you feel like you “couldn’t keep it a secret anymore” I also hope that you have friends, family or a counselor you can confide in. In future relationships, you can choose whether or not this is something you want to share with your partner, or that this piece of your past isn’t for them to judge.
Why do I put money on LW2 immedietely insisting on an abortion if she turned up pregnant in a week? This guy angers me. Disappointed in her? What the actual. However I see ZERO reason for her to have told him. Had nothing to do with him. I can maybe see this coming up when they were long together as my boyfriend has been with my in my OBGYN appointments (I had a tubal pregnancy that required emergency surgery) and Dr did ask (as all new OBGYNs do) “how many pregnancies, how many to term, how many miscarriages, how many terminations”? I can’t think of any reason other than that type of thing he’d even know frankly.
I guess I’m sort of curious why, too. Because she had one abortion already?
She definitely didn’t NEED to tell him, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. People like to share information about things that have happened to them with their partners.
I think “LW2” was a typo and Janelle meant to say that the guy would insist on an abortion. It makes more sense with what she wrote.
LW2: A good boyfriend wouldn’t shame you for an abortion. Even if he is morally opposed to them, he should have enough compassion to not treat you like crap. There are plenty of guys who won’t judge you.
My first thought was this friend is a crazy person, then I went to crazy mistress.
yep ^
My question is: How would the LW even know that this woman liked every post going back to 2008? What does she mean she found out about this because other friends were asking about this woman? There is way too much facebook monitoring going on here. Honestly, I don’t ever notice who likes or comments on my husband’s facebook posts much less my friend’s husbands facebook posts. The whole thing is so weird. My advice to the LW is to stop being insecure and stop looking at facebook!
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