Friends with the Opposite Gender
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Tina, I’m going to be blunt, and it’s going to sting. I’m sorry.
The biggest problem in your life, the biggest cause of pain, is not his “friend,” and it’s not your husband.
It’s you. Your reaction to this situation is, frankly, irrational. You’re not emotionally well. And your life is not going to get better until you get yourself into professional mental health care.
You keep coming back to us with ridiculously obvious variations on the story because you want us to tell you that everything is ok and he really loves you. We won’t ever do that, because it’s not true. And the longer you keep up these delusional posts, the more years you’ll throw away on an empty marriage to a man who lies to you and goes off to be with the woman he really wants.
Get help. Please.
Yeah, at this point you are wasting time you could be spending getting yourself well, meeting better men, possibly even meeting the real person you should be with. It is you that is holding you back from a more fulfilling and happy life. Being alone would be better than this. You are desperately clinging to a sinking ship of your marriage. It’s very, very sad to see this post and know you’re still in the exact same place you were months, probably years ago. This isn’t the first time he’s cheated and now he’s pushed you so far with his manipulations that you are still trying to silence the gut feeling that’s telling you exactly what you know to be true.
I haven’t seen Tina’s posts. BUt I have one comment on this post: it is not because your husband is cheating under your nose (he shows you his messages with her, he tells you that he hangs out with her, and so on) that he is not cheating. He just does it under your nose.
You are perfectly within your right to state that this is not OK for you, this is way too much presence of an other woman, and you ask him to scale it down to once a month. No one needs to meet a “friend” once a week, to reserve a week-end night for a “friend”: come on!
If he won’t accept it: well, hire a divorce lawyer and take him to the cleaners. No woman should live in this charade of a marriage.Your husband is cheating on you and he doesn’t love you. He keeps you around because he knows no matter what he does you will stay. No one here is going to feed into your delusion that hes a loving husband who just needs a friend, doesnt matter what details you change.
I would really love to hear from somebody who has not posted or is new to the forum. Here’s the deal, there have been a lot of changes that have happened and that I am thankful for. For example he only hangs out with her in a group setting, he invites me to join, he doesn’t go out drinking with her anymore late at night.
Those are the things that I asked for that I said would make me feel respected and more comfortable. And he is doing them.
I do feel like it sounds controlling of me if I were to restrict him from hanging out with her to once a month. That is where I am trying to get some clarity. What is a controlling partner versus reasonable?
He tells me he would never restrict me seen my friends. Which is true. so why should it matter if she is a woman versus a man. We live in a progressive society.
So that is why I am trying to get perspective from somebody as to my original post yesterday.
How much is too much? What do friendships look like with your opposite gender friend? how can I request my knees without coming across as a controlling and jealous woman.Yeah, but what you didn’t include when you were trying to get advice from “new” people, is that he’s had sexual relationships with at least two other women in the past, doesn’t want kids, and is an asshole. If you want real advice, you need to give the real picture.
I have to admit, when I first read this I thought “Tina? Is this you?”. I haven’t seen any mods confirm it, so I’ll have a non-tina and Tina answer.
Non-Tina answer:
A friend isn’t ‘established’ if they barely know them a year. Isn’t it weird that a guy who’s so far gotten along fairly independently has suddenly gotten very close with someone to the point he’s talking to them all evening? You don’t mention how they know each other.It’s odd to text intensively every day- those of us who are grown ups and busy don’t usually have the time to text close friends every day, let alone spend hours on the phone with them. We usually reserve that kind of time for people we are dating. If they were teen friends that might not be unusual, but a grown man with a wife really should have better things to do than be hung up on the phone all day to a woman he sees all the time. When I think of people I’ve wanted to talk to that intensely, I can’t think of a single person that I didn’t have a crush on. And the friends I’ve known who had intense friendships like that were either crushing or in very codependent and unhealthy situations.
So he gets together with her every weekend, and now wants to take off every friday to spend alone time with her. Where do you fit in all of this? When you have a life partner, you do not arrange your *entire social life around one friend*, let alone someone you barely knew a year ago. It’d be douchey even if the friend was a man – I wouldn’t date a man who was so unavailable all his free time was spent with his dude and acted like he “couldn’t get enough” of any one friend whom he already saw regularly. I would not be happy whether the other figure was a man or woman.
“It’s just like he can’t get enough of seeing her and the frequent texting makes me feel like he is thinking about her a lot.”
You are jealous because you are justifiably picking up that the person he thinks about most is her, not you. You’re right to point out that you don’t have any friends you’re that obsessed with hanging out with.
He spends minimal time and effort being with you (presumably because you live together), whilst spending all his time and energy thinking of how to spend more time with her – not how to make time with you fun. Individual time is good, but he plans his weekends and days off around this woman who he sees constantly and is not his wife – that is not normal. Even if it’s not sexual, it’s putting your relationship in danger because it’s making you feel pushed out and neglected – and making you question why your spouse’s entire life seems to revolve around another person.Also, there is either ‘no sexual chemistry’ or they ‘both find each other attractive’. What you you think chemistry is, if not attraction? If you think they’d boink if you weren’t in the picture, then there’s chemistry. You don’t have to play the cool girl, you can admit if you’re jealous.
Part of being partners is about being each other’s confidant and enjoying spending time together – what you describe doesn’t sound like he puts any effort or joy into spending time with you. You’re his flatmate with sex. She’s the woman his life revolves around.
You have a right to object even if it’s not sexual. There’s a big difference between partners having thir own hobbies and friendships and your life partner spending every scrap of spare time obsessing over how to spend more time with this friend. It doesn’t matter if it’s sexual if you feel pushed out. You need to talk about how you feel – explain if you’d like him to spend more time with you, and that you need to feel that you are the #1 priority in his life.
If this is Tina – your partner won’t change, and he’s clearly continued to be obsessed with his ‘friend’. Until you leave him, you won’t be happy because he puts her first. veryone here has told you to leave him 100 times, and the answers won’t change. You’ve tried confronting him and he doesn’t learn.
And Tina, this does NOT sound like they only hang out in a group:
“ So far he has been getting together with her every weekend (again either as a group or they go for lunch/brunch/happy hour). This weekend they are getting together two days in a row. It’s just a lot.. I saw one of his text messages (he is open about that) and he told her she should try and get Fridays off work so they can make Fridays their “hang out day”. It’s just like he can’t get enough of seeing her…”
You’re either lying to us or he’s lying to you, because no way do they go out every weekend, sometimes twice, always with a group. No way. And trying to make Friday “their day?” The hell?
So he only hangs out with her with you now? What’s the group setting? If this is the case, what’s the problem, Tina? You don’t trust him. And you have plenty of reason not to.
He’s had multiple affairs.
He’s prioritizing her over you.
He is an asshole to you and your family.
He doesn’t want kids and you do.If he doesn’t want reasonable restrictions seeing his fuck buddy, he should be a single man.
And Mellanthe, Kate is a moderator and has confirmed it.
You’re so naive and honestly, you know that you are unhappy in your marriage. You KNOW he’s cheating on you. And I’m not sure why you’re still trying to pretend like that’s not what is happening. That’s why you’ve written in so many times about the exact same problem. The advice is never going to change. The issue is still the same.
His power of manipulation over you is pretty amazing. He’s had multiple affairs and has figured out the magic to gaslighting you so good that you now defend him. Incredible. It’s like Stockholm syndrome.
If you truly believe him, go out with him every time. Swing by where they say they are going to be. Does he share his location on his phone with you? Ask him to.
Make a new, attractive male friend. See how he reacts. You and I and everyone else on this forum knows there is more going on. I bet all of his coworkers and friends do, too. He’s probably bragging about how you’re cool with it. And it’s not because men and women can’t be friends- I have friends of the opposite sex. It’s because friends don’t see each other 3 date nights a week. No one has that kind of time on their schedule unless it’s a sexual relationship.Correct, no grown married man has a friend they go out with multiple times a week and now pushing for all day Fridays as well. That’s not ok or normal by any stretch.
Oh, so this is Tina after all.
“Those are the things that I asked for that I said would make me feel respected and more comfortable. And he is doing them.”
Except he still spends every day obsessing over how to spend more time with her. He may be seeing her in groups, but he’s still spending his evenings messaging her like a lovelorn teenager and planning all his days off around her.
That’s why we’re not saying police him. We’ve spent months telling you that his behaviour is not compatible with a happy relationship and that you need to leave him. Even when he agrees to change, he still acts like he’s obsessed with her – there’s no indication here that he cares about you or thinks of you at all.
“What is a controlling partner versus reasonable?”
A reasonable partner would never have to control their SO because their SO would have reasonable boundaries. This is why most of us can be perfecly happy even if their partner has female friends – because there are appropriate boundaries and the SO isn’t making their life revolve around a ‘friend’. My BF has a ton of female friends he’s known for decades longer than he’s known me but I’ve never felt any of the vibes you complain of. Your situation is simply so far removed from the normal ‘man with close female friends’ dynamic.
It’s not normal for your SO to obsess over any one friend and structure their entire life around them. And yeah, it wasn’t appropriate for him to ‘sleep over’ and drink with her and leave you out for all those months til now.
He gave you what you said you wanted, but he’s still besotted with her and structuring his entire life around her. This is in no way a healthy friendship with healthy boundaries. You’re unhappy because his ‘friend’ is clearly the priority. She’s still the priority – if anyone were to compare the amount of time he spends thinking about or talking to the pair of you, everyone would assume she was the partner and you were a flatmate.
It’s pointless asking for new opinions, or leaving out information. All the old information matters. And even when we think it’s not you, we still give you the same opinions anyway.
Most people here are are never going to think your husband is acting OK. We’re always going to tell you he’s overinvolved with, or obsessed with, or emotionally or sexually cheating with this woman. There’s no way you can edit the facts to give a different answer, because normal 30 something married men don’t text attractive women they’ve known for a year like lovelorn teenagers and spend all their time mooning over them.
