I’m reading a book called, “Emotional Infidelity: How to Avoid It and 10 Other Secrets to a Great Marriage,” by M. Gary Neumann, and his first principle is: Protect your marriage from emotional infidelity by avoiding members of the opposite sex.
He’s dead serious about this; as he says in the book,
(Page 24)
I am absolutely not sure about this. My first reaction is that I can have friends of both sexes, and as long as boundaries are observed, there is no danger. But not having male friends means that the temptation to stray would be greatly reduced, and is my marriage not worth more than the possible benefit of having a male friend or two?
I’d like to hear some opinions on this (and not just knee-jerk, “of course you should have friends with anyone you like” ones, please).
Hmmm. Well, it’s true that if you never, ever drink alcohol, you’ll never drive drunk. His advice is kind of like that.
My opinion is that there is no absolute truth here that covers all individuals. Some people can do it … some cannot. Some partners/spouses are comfortable with it … and some aren’t. The answer to this question is heavily dependant on an individual’s situation.
So he’s falling back on the “When Harry Met Sally” theory huh?
I myself have several male friends and a commited boyfriend. I don’t think of any of my friends in a way that would lead to taking a risk like that. As far as my mind is concerned, they’re all eunuchs I guess. This is just me, but I’m pretty sure that not everyone thinks of all people thay associate with as potential sexual partners.
On preview, I agree, it depends on the individual.
I’m not terribly forgiving of the whole “temptation” concept. If someone doesn’t want to keep commitments to me, there’s an easy way for them to do this: not make 'em.
I think the idea that people should avoid friendships with members of the sex to which they are attracted when in a partnership is … creepy as all get out. It’s like some sort of social construct version of the creepily possessive spouse who wants to control all their partner’s social contacts so they can get away with whatever crap they want to pull.
I know of no relationship I could possibly have that would be worth not only betraying existing friendships but actively isolating myself from forming other ones. Further, anyone who thought that sort of behaviour reasonable would be on my “No way in hell am I being your partner” list faster than blinking.
Sorry, but I think this is stupid advice (and heterosexist as well). People in good marriages have friends. Friendships are typically considered good for marriages. Over-involved, romantic friendships, sure, that’s a problem.
In the interest of honesty, I must shamefully admit that I can be a pretty jealous person. I trust The Boy implicitly, and there is no rational worry in my mind that he’d be unfaithful, but the jealousy is there (and has been with everyone I’ve ever dated.) I keep a pretty tight rein on it these days, and I can recognize when I’m being unreasonable, but the fleeting sick feeling I get when I see him hug another woman seems to be a permanent feature.
Would I be happier if he didn’t have female friends? Part of me would, yeah. More to the point for my particular circumstance, would I be happier if he didn’t get along so well with most of his psychotic ex-girlfriends? Most definitely.
Would I ever ask him not to have female friends? Hell no. Even if I thought he would tolerate such a domineering request, I’d never ask.
Not only do I think it’s possible to have a close friendship with the opposite sex without any danger of infidelity (emotional or otherwise,) I think the occasional crush on someone other than your partner is natural, and even healthy, as long as it doesn’t go beyond that. I know better than to use the word “everyone,” but I’m willing to bet that the vast majority of people in committed relationships occasionally fantasize about people other than their partner, and while infidelity is by no means uncommon, not everyone who does so cheats. From my personal experience, I find that on the rare occasion that I look at someone and think “hrm…I wonder…” I end up appreciating The Boy all the more. YMMV.
Besides, if I asked him not to be friends with anyone of his gender-of-interest, I’d have to expect him to reciprocate, and I’d be doomed to spending the rest of my life hanging out with my family. :eek:
I was 28 when Mr SCL and I married, and he was 31. I think it would be idiotic to expect someone to give up lifelong friends because they have gotten married. If I didn’t think I could trust Mr. SCL to have female friends that are just friends, I wouldn’t have married him.
Can gender-of-interest friends be a temptation? Absolutely. BTDT.
Does this mean I’m going to give up 20- and 30-year friendships (or expect my partner to do so), just to be absolutely sure there’s absolutely no temptation in our lives? Not no, but HELL NO.
Besides, whom would bisexuals get to have for friends? Michael Jackson?
I used to occasionally go out to bars and dancing with my best friend, Jill. She’s married (and her husband always stayed home when we went out), and nothing ever happened between us. My wife liked her so much that when we got married, she asked Jill to be her maid of honor.
Anecdote, sure… but I think a blanket condemnation of opposite-gender friendships is silly.
I would plain and simply never be with anyone that wouldn’t let me have male friends. Friends are the ones that are there for you when the one that you thought would be the one walks out on you. I have several close male friends and my other half doesn’t care. He has female friends. If they wanted to go out and reminse about old times that I wasn’t there for, sure, have fun, I’ll stay home or go out with friends he’s not as close with. I think that is the most unhealthy thing I’ve ever heard.
Very silly. But I think it can be true that boundaries with friends which might not have existed as a single person can become more important as someone in a couple. I would certainly never tell my boyfriend what he can or can’t do with his friends, but some things do make me uncomfortable - bed sharing, telling them things he feels he can’t tell me, and having a key to their place would be examples of that.
Well, without pointing out the obvious, if I was going to be tempted by my friends of the opposite sex, they wouldn’t be my friends - I would be boning them.
Seeing as how that hasn’t happened, I can’t imagine suddenly becoming tempted by them when I’m in a committed relationship. That’s just dumb.
I think I would be more reluctant to start NEW relationships with members of the opposite sex - not because I would be tempted - I’m just not wired that way, if I’m with someone, I’m with HIM - Brad Pitt could sit down beside me and I would be indifferent - however, I wouldn’t want to give some new guy the wrong impression.
Just because I don’t go for extra-curricular activites doesn’t mean that the new guy would know that, or necessarily agree.
Yeah, same here. I love my wife. I’d never cheat on her.
That said, most of my friends are women. That’s just how it is when you’re a male librarian. We joke around and shoot the shit, and somehow the topic of illicit sex in seedy motels never seems to come up. Just about all of them are married with children.
I cannot even imagine what they’d look like naked and sweaty, and to tell you the truth, I really don’t think I’d want to.
I’m with the “It depends on the individual” crowd.
This issue is more relevant than it used to be since I think the generation of people in their 30s are the first to come of age in a period in which close friendships with the opposite sex were pretty typical: my impression, at least, is that that pattern simply wasn’t as common in the decades previous to this–there just weren’t many opportunities to develop close co-ed friendships.
“Opposite sex” is rather too broad a brush, but I think you could make an arguement that you should avoid friendships with people you could fall in love with. I love my husband–when I count my blessings, the fact that I have a happy, healthy marriage with someone that is a match for quirky ole me is always number one–and I have a lot of blessings. But I have met a handful of people over the last decade where I thought “Hmmm . . .if I wasn’t in love, that’s someone I could be in love with”. It certainly isn’t every man I meet, or every man I meet that I could be friends with. When you have that sort of reaction, I think it’s probably best to not encourage a friendship to develop. Emotions are fickle things that we have imperfect control over, and I think there’s something to be said for avoiding the near occasion of sin.
Not all friendships can move into the danger zone, but some certainly can. You’re the only one who knows when to tap on the breaks. Unless you don’t want to.
I am a married male and I have mostly female friends. Some are friends independently with my wife and others are just mine. The vast majority of the time it is no problem and my wife actually seems to like it. She was the one that encouraged me to move in with her roommates two summers in college while she went away for 4 months after all. Girls seem to be the ones that flock to me much more as friends so that is usually who I end up with. Sometimes they call me at home but I know they feel reserved because I am married. It has only come to the breaking point only once when I got along with one way too well. She left for a different job and the situation was diffused. I consider that a rare occurrence and I tend to relate to females in a different yet same way during social interactions and I think most pick up on that. I don’t buy that monkey-boy Billy Crystal shit either. Maybe he does but I don’t naturally think that way.
I have heard the advice for committed people to avoid being alone with members of the opposite sex, and that I do not think is unreasonable. For example, it’s great if you have a work buddy, but if you go out to lunch with him alone a lot, that’s edging into a danger zone; there’s no particular reason not to ask another friend along and make it a group thing. Because it’s very easy to start looking forward to those lunches, and pretty soon he’s your best friend and you’re telling him all the stuff you should be telling your husband, and then you don’t want to put on the brakes by the time you realize you like him too much. A lot of affairs start like that, so it’s not uncommon for marital counselors to advise people to simply avoid spending time alone with opposite-sex friends. (Not, obviously, that you’re going to fall into an affair the minute you find yourself coincidentally alone with a guy in an elevator, but that it’s easier to avoid certain situations in the first place if you don’t give them a chance to develop by hanging out.)
I have not heard of giving up every opposite-sex friend entirely, and I do think that’s unreasonable. There are guys I enjoy conversing with, sometimes more than I like spending time with their wives. I don’t hang out with them alone, but I see no reason not to talk with them when we have another couple over for dinner, or whatever.
I have close male friends and it doesn’t bother my boyfriend at all. However, one of those friends has had tons of trouble with girlfriends over it. Drives me batty and makes me furious - I don’t think I’ll ever quite forgive him for the time he suggested that I get out of the car and walk back to where I parked because his girlfriend got to his apartment early and, you know…
I didn’t. He didn’t ask again. He acted like it was a joke, but it wasn’t really. It still really irritates me that they don’t trust him or me, but then he attracts mostly crazy bitches anyway.
