mellanthe
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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.
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.
Anon,
You’ve been with him for years – has he ever said he has any interest in giving up, or is that something you’re hoping for despite all evidence for years? If he does’t want to give up, and has never given up, despite you bouncing out of his life repeatedly, it honestly doesn’t look like he will ever change.
And I agree with @PDX816 – you can’t go into or stay in a relationship hoping somoene stops doing things that they’ve always enjoyed because you demand it of them. I personally couldn’t be with someone who smoked anything, and I can understand you are feeling let down and irate, but it’s also not fair to demand someone give up something or change for you if they don’t want to. You can explain why it bothers you, and what might make it better, and you can even explain it’s a hard line for you and you may not stay if they continue.
I think @curlyque is right – you need to discuss when he smokes and how he can support you looking after the kids. Couples counselling might definitely be a good idea to help you get on the same page when it comes to couple responsibilities – because this sounds a lot more like you’re mad that he’s shirking work (and therefore you have to do more than your fair share) than about smoking per se.
I’m sorry to read everyone’s stories. I hope you all stay strong, and that you’ll be reunited in happier times soon.
I’m in a similar situation – live apart from my BF. We were together when the news of the UK lockdown came through. Realistically, with our accommodation and jobs being how they are, moving in together last minute was never an option for us. He’s more optimistic on when it’ll be lifted. It sucks because he’s been furloughed, and I’m still busy, but we do get to talk every day, and do lots of fun things ti make up for it, so it’s not all bad. But it doesn’t replace being together.
I’ve already stayed apart from my family for months so as not to pass on the bug – I work in healthcare so it’s a big risk. I had to self-isolate recently and lost my sense of smell, so odds are that I had it and luckily didn’t pass it on to any of them because I wasn’t seeing them.
I’ve had friends cancel weddings, others who are engaged and now see no point in organising things because you don’t know when things will lift, or which vendors will be around. I’ve had friends recently have babies – what a scary time to bring a baby into the world.
I’m sorry, that’s probably the worst way to find out. And you’ve been able to get very little information to give you closure.
It sounds like your family love you dearly. Your dad loves you, and that’s the most important thing. But it’s understandable to want to know your biological family – so it’s easy to understand the desire to keep looking.
Be wary; there may be very good reasons that your mum hid the truth from everyone – it doesn’t seem like there’s much information among your family regarding your birth father. I hope he’s someone worth meeting.
Ugh, it’s never easy when it’s like this.
I’m not even gonna touch the Nice Guy creepiness cos others have explained that.
If a friend who has declared feelings can’t keep it to themselves and maintain a respectful friendship when you tell them their feelings aren’t reciprocated, then the safest thing to do is to give them space to move on. It’s often hard for people crushes to move on whilst they are still close to their crush, so complete distance is usually best.
