Can people in committed relationships have opposite sex friends?

In My Humble Opinion
81

!DING!
Winner, we have a winner.
What was that line Ron White used in his CD?
If you don’t have sex with me, I will go somewhere else. I know, I’ve seem me do it.

FTR I have been married 33 years next month. I have from female friends that are ex girlfriends that date back 36+ years.
I just walked one of these ladies down the asile and gave her away at her marrige. It was an honnor to be asked, and I was proud to do it. I will admit that I told her just before we started down the asile, that we could do a Graduate if she wanted to. This made her :smiley:
My long time female friends aren’t a threat to my marriage. Halle Berry in a bar when I am on the road is a threat to my marriage. (like that is going to happen)

82

I’m finding myself agreeing quite a bit with Sam Stone, featherlou, Dangermom and Renee. But they’ve all expressed it much better than I could. :slight_smile:

I wouldn’t want to end the friendships I have with women other than my wife and I wouldn’t want to force her to do the same. But I would try to keep it at a reasonable level and in a way that it doesn’t worry my wife. That would include spending too much time with the opposite sex friend, especially alone.

83

Hear, hear! I mean, after all, isn’t he the guy who was afraid to even get out of his friggin’ car? You know:

Here in my car
I feel safest of all
I can lock all my doors
It’s the only way to live
In cars

Oh, ooops . . . nevermind. :wink:

Seriously, though, I think there’s an important distinction to be made between avoiding/severing friendships with anyone having the “special parts” to which you are partial, and avoiding situations that could lead to infidelity, the latter of which could, theoretically, be anything from a Nude Crisco Twister tournament to a Baptist church picnic, depending on the individual. A huge oversimplification on Mr. Neumann’s part, I’d say.

84

Sure we can! Just so long as we forgo any long term romantic relationships.

I’m not going to cheat on my boyfriend. Ever. But if I were, it wouldn’t be because I was friends with someone else and couldn’t resist climbing into their pants. It would be because my relationship with my boyfriend was fucked up and not working anymore. And that wouldn’t be the fault of my friends, it’d be because of me and the boyfriend.

85

I don’t think someone should have to sever long-term, important friendships to placate the jealousy of a significant other. I am friends with a lot of guys I know from college, 15+ year friendships, and those buddies are not going anywhere. Nor would I expect my boyfriend not to talk to his female friends, who admittedly are not numerous.

That said, if my boyfriend suddenly had this female friend with whom he wanted to spend a lot of time alone, I think that would raise serious red flags. It would be out of character and therefore suspect. So maybe that’s the crucial distinction here, for me.

86

I’ve been married for 13 years now and all of the female friends I’ve had before the marraige I’ve been able to sustain without a problem. I do admit that they’re limited friendships and I rarely see these friends, but not because of the marriage.

I also admit that I’m zero for one on friendships that have occurred after the marriage. To me it was a slippery slope and I found myself in way too deep before I knew what was happening. …That’s not true, I knew what was happening and I liked it too much to stop it. I ended up sleeping with “my friend” and ever since I’ve been trying undo the whole thing. It’s just something that cannot be undone. I’m now (as I’m sure my wife is) questioning everything I ever thought I knew about myself.
I think it’s possible but maybe just not for me.

87

My closest friend (apart from my husband) is bisexual and makes no bones about the fact that if it weren’t for her religious belief and my invincible straightness, she’d have launched a full-scale epic attempt to get into my pants years ago. She also makes it totally clear that of the two things, it’s the latter that’s the more serious bar.

Now, given that scenario, am I expected to break off our friendship for the health of my marriage?

The friendship predates the marriage by some 8 years (and has weathered with grace and verve law school, living in different states for 9 of the 11 years we’ve been best friends, her marriage and subsequent divorce, near-death experiences, her passionate rededication to her faith (which I do not share), life-threatening illness, and various and sundry other slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. It’s fair to say that the relationship I have with my best friend is as important to me as the relationship I share with my mother and more important than the relationship I have with my siblings.

It’s safe to say that at one point at least, she had romantic inclinations in my general direction. It’s also safe to say that if I were to suddenly have a revelation in which I alter my sexual orientation to swing more to the distaff, I might have similar inclinations in her general direction. I still wouldn’t leave my husband for her - I already have romantic inclinations in his direction :smiley:

She possesses precisely the same danger to my relationship as a male friend to whom I am not attracted.

In other words, no danger at all. The danger to the marriage would be my behavior. If I chose to behave in a manner that threatened my marriage - i.e. if I gave intimacy to someone other than my husband that should be his exclusive province as my husband - then that is my behavior that’s problematic. Has nothing to do with the gender of my friends. What it has to do with is my choice of the person to whom I form and maintain the bond of trust and intimacy that are foundational to any marriage.

That being said, people who pretend that being friends with your preferred gender is no different than being friends with people not your preferred gender are smoking crack. You can be close friends with someone and not betray your marriage or be in danger of infidelity, but you have to take extra care to avoid it. Avoiding couples sorts of activities with your preferred-gender friend is a good plan, lots of group outings, making sure your spouse is always invited, never doing anything you wouldn’t want your spouse there fore, etc.

88

I am not married, so I don’t know how I would feel about it at that time. I can say, however, that of the 5 men I have ever had sex with, 3 of them were very close friends that I had no interest in for the bulk of the length of our relationships. Even though we were not attracted to one another for years, it sometimes just takes one small change to tilt the scales towards the sexual end of things.

89

Isn’t this rather obvious?

90

Whereas I have never hooked up with a long-term platonic friend in whom I didn’t have romantic interest from the beginning. Sometimes I had an attraction to someone, became friends with him, then we hooked up, but I had no illiusions about my interest. Maybe people are different in this way and it’s not a universal truth, so some people feel safer with (and maybe ARE safer with) friends of their preferred gender.

91

One of the very pertinent points (in my opinion) that was brought up earlier in the thread was about the significant other doing something that was out of character.

Related to that, I pose a geniune question to those of you who feel that you or your SO should avoid preferred-sex friendships: if it was in your SO’s nature to be gregarious and friendly with their preferred sex before the two of you were together, are you saying that you feel it’s appropriate for them to change who they are (or for you to change who you are) for the sake of your relationship? I guess what I’m driving at is, didn’t you get together with them in the first place because of who that person was as a whole?

92

But did you have sex with them while you were ostensibly in a monogamous relationship with someone else?

I’m not faithful to my boyfriend because I don’t find anyone else attractive. I’m faithful because he’s my boyfriend, and that’s the deal. Fidelity, in my opinion, should come from a commitment to the relationship, not lack of opportunity for extracurricular sex. If I locked my SO in the basement, he’d certainly be faithful, but it wouldn’t mean much.

93

Wow…well said, seriously.

94

I have a group of friends that I’ve had since my second year of college. They’re all guys, because as it was the engineering field consisted mostly of guys, and I spent most of my time with them, we all ended up being really close.

Five years later one of those guys got a psychotic insecure girlfriend who was appalled that I was ‘invited’ to guys night out at Dave & Busters.

My friend, great guy that he is, explained to her that the group of us had all been friends far longer than he ever knew her, and that I did not need an ‘invitation’ to be at guys night out, because my presence was expected.

She, being the psycho hosebeast, insisted on attending and trying to pressure me to stop going. Didn’t take long before the whole group pointed out to her that this was unacceptable to them. She never attended again, and a few months later he dumped her because she spouted off to his mother about how much money he would be making in his new job and how she was going to spend it.

Any guy I date has to understand and accept that these guys are a part of my life. They may not be blood, but they are family, and family is extremely important.

95

Here is my reply…

When I first met my boyfriend, who is now my husband, he had a female friend whom he had been friends with since the mid 1990’s. They were in their early twenties when they first met. We first met in 2012. My husband and his female friend would hang out alone at her place when they were both single. They met at work through a male friend of his.

At one point he my now husband and his female friend dated for a couple of months, but it did not work out. So they went back to being friends. This was well before he met me. She also dated my husbands male friend off and on. At one point they also chose to be friends.

He introduced me to her when we became a couple. He also told her and his male friend that he was in a serious dating relationship with me. All four of us would hang out together either at her place or at my husbands male friend who was friends with his female friend.

One time when all 4 of us were hanging out, she mentioned that she wished that she had a man in her life. A couple of days later told my boyfriend via text that she wanted him to come over to her place alone on a Friday night to 1) hang stuff from her ceiling, 2) have dinner with her, 3) watch tv, 4) stay up late talking, 5) he would sleep on her couch, and 6) the 2 of them would go out for breakfast the following day.

I was not comfortable with that situation, and I let him know. He called her to let her know how I felt, and she insisted that the entire get together was not a date. I had reservations about the entire situation. He ended up cancelling.

He found out from their mutual male friend that 1) she was mad at him and 2) she was not talking to him for a while.

I wondered if she missed the idea of dating when we became a couple, and so she arranged a “pretend date” with him while insisting that the entire get together was “not a date”.

I just do not understand why a long-time female friend would do this… especially when she knows that her male friend is in a serious dating relationship.

96

Let’s just be real here:

It’s all gravy unless your SO’s friend is more attractive than you.

97

Zombies don’t have friends or committed relationships.

Thread is almost 8 years old.

98

I think zombies have friends to die for

99

I can’t answer this question as asked, but as a gay man, all my closest friends are also gay men, and same for my boyfriend, and I don’t find it the least bit threatening and neither does he. I can’t imagine why it should be any different for heterosexual folk.

100

The author is completely full of horseshit. He doesn’t trust his marriage, himself or his wife.

I should give up friendships to prove they aren’t that important? WTF? Something tells me this guy was not the most popular kid in school.

I’ve been married for 16 years. My Wife and I have a great relationship.

One of my very best friends is a woman that I’ve know for 25 years. We get together for a beer about once a month. She lives in a different town, and depending on circumstances, sometimes I will stay at her house.

My Wife has a very good male friend that she has know for 30 some years. When he was a park ranger a few years ago, she would stay at his cabin about once a year.

Oh. Zombie. Well, my comments still stand.