This kind of situation has led to problems for many people. Not EVERYONE, of course, but it seems a natural way that affairs or problems in a relationship might develop. So my attitude would be to keep the lines of communication open with your SO about the potential for problems or issues that might come from this close relationship with an opposite gendered friend. And to talk about what to do if either of you starts to feel uncomfortable or notices any warning signs. If you’re both aware of these risks and remain committed to sharing with one another your feelings and thoughts, then you’re probably fine. You know your husband best, so you get to decide about your comfort level with their relationship.
I do think it would be a mistake to ignore the potential for problems to arise, because lots of people who think of themselves or their spouses as constitutionally incapable of having an affair actually end up having one.
It may be an unsinkable boat, but basic risk management suggests that you still need to check the weather, take depth soundings occasionally, watch out for icebergs, and make sure that there are sufficient lifeboats available.
Biggirl, I get the “how can you be comfortable knowing that D. is out with Susan, or Lindsay, or Aimie, or Cindy, or insert female name here” question all the time too. In fact, D. has lost (female) friends who accuse him of treating me badly because of all the time he spends with them!
D. and I have talked about it, and I think it’s more a matter of the accusers are insecure. They assume their guys or girls would cheat on them, so they assume yours would cheat on you.
Sadly, most of the time there’s nothing you can do about it. They are the same kind of people that come up to you on the street to tell you they don’t approve of your lifestyle, and since they know everything, what are you going to do about it?
If it is a really good friend, who is concerned for your mental well-being, you should be able to put their mind at ease. They’ll know both you and your husband, and know it is innocent. If it is just a nosy acquaintance… it’s really none of thier bloody business!
A lot of people have concerns about this situation because a lot of people have seen to what it can lead. It doesn’t mean that it will lead to something, but it’s in the danger zone.
It’s a lot easier to step over the line when you’re standing right next to it.
This is a question for the people, especially Skipmagic, that acknowledge that their opposite-sex friends are attracted to them. Do you find these people attractive as well? I ask because I have a very good male friend and while I sometimes get the feeling that there is an underlying attraction to me on his part, I have absolutely no attraction to him whatsoever physically. Even if that weren’t the case, he is not someone I would ever date (if I wasn’t married) because we have completely different ideas about relationships.
These facts make a significant difference to me, as I completely agree with Astro and would not feel comfortable having such a close friendship with him if the situation was anything other than what it is. I think it’s playing with fire.
I love seeing a relationship that works, and this seems to be one of them. Good for you.
That said…
my wife once told me that if I ever did have an affair, the thing that would hurt her the most would be the time that I had spent with the other lady; not the emotional response, or sex, or whatever I might have spent on her, but the sheer number of hours out of the week that I would have been spending with the other lady, rather than with my wife.
. . . and really, how many (sane) women can a man hope to attract with a stained-glass unicorn hanging over his bed?
Well, shit. Scratch the hidden video cameras in your house, secret belt-buckle tracking device, computer chip implanted in your whoozit, and 24-hour surveillance by a private investigator . . .
But let me tell you one thing, Buck Rogers. I’m keeping your love, respect, and affection no matter what. Yep. Says right here in the fine print underneath this giant ball of SkipMagic’s Eternal Devotion: Property of auntie em. Remove and face the wrath of a freshly-waxed, sleepy, starving woman with PMS. And her little dogs, too!
But your friend? I like her. Trust her? I don’t really know her well enough to know, but the way I figure it, if you’re willing to give up–ahem–THIS for the ersatz pleasure of a borrowed hunk of what Chuck calls home, your ass ain’t worthy.
My hubby is a nurturer. He’s everybody’s mother hen, and he checks on his “chicks” to make sure they are safe and sound. It’s in his nature, and I would never stop him from collecting his lost souls and little-old-ladies. He has several female friends, one of which is a “couple friend”, I love that term! I’ve met most of his friends casually and all have been nice, but…
Dharma (she looked like Jenna Elfman). Dharma was sick and going through a rough time at work and in her marriage. Hubby was late home a few times from talking to Dharma, and she called the house for him a couple of times. No big deal. Then he told me he saw Dharma often in the grocery store (near our house, no where near her’s). That was a blip on the radar.
Hubby always shops at the same market - same time, every week. SOOoooo, I stop on the way home and meet him for market. We’re wandering through the store and who should show up but Dharma, whom I had never met. Small blonde perky (the anti-DeVena), she took 1 look at me then physically stepped between Hubby and me. I was sized up and found wanting. :dubious: I don’t THINK so!
So I tried to talk to her and she pointedly ignore me and chatted up Hubby. : tap foot : So, being born and raised in the South, I did what any good woman would do. We call it “going Scarlett” in my family. When you can say absolutely anything to someone’s face and follow with “Bless your heart, you poor thing.” And I set her right back down. All Hubby knew was Dharma was getting mean with me and I was just being sweet as sugar to her. When we got home, I told him what happened from my point-of-view. He was oblivious. But he kept his distance from Dharma (who has since left her husband and married her boss).
Trust your husband - but don’t trust any woman who treats you badly.
In this case, sure… back in high school when I first met her. I mean, I ain’t saying she isn’t a hot tamale now, but I just don’t feel tempted by her the same way I felt tempted all those years ago.
But to me, it doesn’t matter if I’m attracted to her or not. I have a choice, basically: I can screw around with another woman (friend, stranger or a particularly yummy mannequin–except, with her, to the stylistic sound of Starship playing in the background) and mess up the great thing I have with Property Master auntie em, or I can not screw around, keep my fiancée AND my friendship with the other woman. Kind of a win-win there if you ask me.
Obviously there are many ways to look at a situation where you’re attracted to two women, but I usually boil it down at the back of my brain box to a simple black-and-white decision: choose one. In my case, I’ll always choose the woman who has the most money.
Wait…
I meant to say the woman to whom I’ve pledged to bother and annoy for the rest of her life. (Or my life if she ever finds out where I keep the sharp knives.)
Well, I managed to snag you. Although, truth be told, it was probably more the wine that did it than the unicorn. The way I figured it that night was that I would have to keep you soused for the rest of your life so that you won’t realize you’re dating a guy who keeps a stained-glass unicorn above his bed.
Now that you’ve brought it up, though, I think I need to call my supplier and have him deliver another cask of Hennessy to your office. So you’ll have something to sip as you drive home.
The hidden cameras, Babe? They’re still there. Why do you think the last time we were, um… playing with that unnatural echo-making device of yours that you kept asking, “Was that a flash I just saw?”
And why would I ever lower my devotion of you, eh? Have you seen how gorgeous you are? Who’d want to give up that booty thang?
That’s all I’m sayin’.
Oh, wait. Maybe if you fell under some baaaaaad voodoo magic and ended up like this. Then, yeah, we’d have to renegotiate that whole “Eternal Devotion” thingy. :eek:
I sort of think that if you trust your husband not to cheat, and you don’t feel jealous, that’s terrific. Keep livin’ your life.
I personally would feel jealous (even though I trust my SO not to cheat) because I am an insecure person. I do, however, see this as a flaw in myself rather than as a reflection of what should be goingon.
All of which is to say: your husband isn’t going to cheat on you, so if it doesn’t bother you, don’t worry about why it doesn’t or whether it should.
Yeah, but presumably Harry and Sally were “Meant To Be.” And hell, I’m not going to get in the way of Divine Intervention. Probably wouldn’t work anyway. I mean, the Goddess wants what she wants.
So this girl is calling every night. That doesn’t mean that she is looking for a replacement.
A co-worker of mine, a guy, was having trouble with his fiance about a 1 1/2 years ago. He called every night, sometimes twice a night, sometimes for me, sometimes for my wife, for a couple of months. I barely knew the guy, and my wife met him one time. I found out much later that we were not the only ones that he was calling. People in “trouble” call anybody that will listen just because that is what people do. They want reassurance that they are not the one in the “wrong” and will call anyone and everyone that will listen to their pleas and pains. It doesn’t mean that they are looking for a replacement.
If I or my wife gets anything resembling a personal call, we will leave the room out of courtesy to the other. We don’t want to bother each other with noise. It’s not a matter of trust.
People who have lost a spouse or equivalent in this type of situation, I hate to be an ass, but the problem perhaps wasn’t the caller. If the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence to someone, it’s time to water your own lawn, not blame someone else for using better fertilizer.
I’m with you Biggirl baby. Your friends who are appalled are insecure idiots themselves. If you have to compete with somebody else for what you perceive as love, it isn’t love. You rock, sugar!
I know it’s possible for men and women to be friends. Mr Mercury is much more introverted than I am (not a phone chatter, likes to do computery-things alone, etc), but we both have more female friends than male. He’s a great friend for a woman to have. He’s protective but not patronising, funny, sweet and sensitive. I know that at least one of his female has had designs on him, and it doesn’t bother me in the least. I trust him. Last summer my dad had a total fit because he was hanging out with a female friend of his without me. I didn’t see the big deal.
That said, he occasionally needs to be reminded that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. All of my close friends are female, except for one. I don’t believe that it could bother him that I am friends with this guy, as there’s no attraction of any sort between the two of us. I have no problem talking to said guy (or any of my friends, for that matter) in the same room as Mr Mercury, but we recently came to an agreement that all phone users would leave the room. (He hates listening to people on the phone, I hate talking on the phone while someone is watching TV in the same room.
Although it’s up to each member of a couple to define their relationship with one another (and I’m definitely not disparaging Joe’s and your level of communication), I disagree with the notion that you need to share everything with your spouse.
I feel it’s perfectly healthy for the partners of a relationship to keep details about another person’s life a private matter between the one partner and the outside friend. Frankly, in my humble opinion, unless the friend has specifically asked the one partner to include the second partner in on the sharing of private details (this is for most cases, mind you; I’m sure we can come up with many exceptions), then, really, the details are not the business of the second partner.
Being in a relationship is a wonderful thing, of course; in fact, I share most everything with my future wife (except that stained-glass unicorn–oh, and my Buffy DVDs), but when it comes to private, emotional details my friends have shared with me in confidence (regardless of my friends’ genders), auntie em does not get unequivocable access to that information without my friends’ approval.
That said, I realize that not every couple out there share that view with me, so when I tell a married (or otherwise deeply involved) friend something private, I do so with the understanding that his/her partner may also hear this information.
Biggirl’s husband did nothing wrong, I feel. In fact, I think he was acting very respectful.
