There was a thread a while back about whether female dopers would let their male SOs go on a gambling bus trip and then there is a Pit thread floating around about women not letting boyfriends see their female friends that is a bit incoherent but it brought this to my attention: I hear a lot about guys saying “I can’t go, my lady won’t let me” or something similar. It makes me raise a brow because I’ve never witnessed a situation in my own life where one half of the couple has had to ask permission to go out.
I can understand how in some cases it would be ‘Do you mind if I go out tomorrow night?’ ie. Do you need me at home tomorrow night for any reason; people coming around, planning to do a large chunk of housework that requires four hands, need help with the kids or something similar, but is it ever really “May I please go out?”
As for guys having obviously platonic female friends, is there ever really a case of ‘You can see your guy friends but not her’ or are the guys just avoiding friends because of their own agendas?
So Dopers, with this in mind, I ask for your experiences with asking/telling SOs about your plans which don’t involve them, if they’ve reacted negatively or otherwise and anything else that strikes you about this particular topic.
I’m not in that type of relationship, nor would I be, but I cut people that are some slack. It must work for them, or they wouldn’t still be in it, and if they’re happy, I’m happy for them. They’ve made their choices about who they want to be with and what kind of relationship they want to be in- who am I to get indignant on their behalf?
Besides, sometimes when wife/girlfriend says, “Oh, you can’t go golfing tomorrow because you promised to paint the bathroom,” or whatever, it gets translated into “She won’t let me” to the guys.
I think Alice has got it right. It’s usually not a case of “I forbid you to do that” as much as “I thought we had already made other plans for that day”. Or even more likely a case of “I already told my wife we were going to do something else and I’d rather tell you no than disappoint her.”
It’s also possible that some people are lying when they say that-they don’t want to accept the invitation, but are too chickenshit to come out and say, “No thank you”, or what have you, and just make something up.
I mostly ask my SO if I can do things when it might be weird for him. For example, I’m a female, I was a co-ed fraternity and I have a male ‘big sib’. I still talk to him and hang out. A few weeks ago I wanted to spend a few days at his newly purchased house to hang out since I hadn’t seen him for 6 months. In that case I asked if it was ok because I didn’t know if my SO would feel awkward about me spending the night at a male friend’s house for a few days, even if it was to catch up and just hang out.
FTR we’re in our mid-twenties and we’ve been together for 6 years. So our asking each other to do things are usually formalities. About 50% of the time I tell him what my plans are and about half of those times if he would like to join me. But for important things we consult with each other so we know we have time to do whatever apart/together. It’s more fun to compromise anyway.
There’s also the notion of knowing when to pick your battles.
okay…not “battles” but…how do I explain?
If I push my luck with my wife and go out without her on a few consecutive nights, she may get upset. I love my wife and I don’t want her to be upset. So if I’m looking at a week with an invite to poker game, and rock concert, and a bachelor party…I might just pick one event to attend. It’s not so much that “My woman won’t let me…” as much as it is “I’m making a choice–granted, it may not bethe chioce I would have made before I was married–but I’m choosing not to attend the poker game tonight.”
For the record…my wife is very cool and never gives me grief over going out or having female friends. I also thinks she thinks I’m pretty cool and I don’t go off and do things without her all the time.
Generally, the only places I think ‘permission’ is applicable is in matters of shared resources – whether that’s committed time, jointly held finances, or whatever else. When I’ve had regularly scheduled date nights with a partner (for a while my husband and I always spent Thursdays together, for example), I would ask permission to use that time on something else. If I want to take a trip to San Francisco or buy a parrot, those are both tapping into joint resources beyond our free-to-spend-on-whatever personal allowances, and thus needs to be jointly agreed to; when he decided he really wanted a new fridge (the old one works fine, it’s just old) he needed to get my agreement.
We check on things that touch on joint resources – like if he wants to have someone over for a Warcraft raid, he’ll check with me to make sure it’ll be okay with me. (I have occasionally asked for him to raid at her house because I just don’t feel like dealing with the people around.) He’s also not always good at keeping track of his commitments, so he’ll double-schedule himself intermittently, which makes for stupid drama when he has to figure out which one he has to say “I’m sorry” to.
I would consider asking for permission for how to spend my own resources creepily juvenile – it comes across to me as imposing a parent/child dynamic over what’s supposed to be a relationship between adults. I’m sure that other people don’t see it that way, but I can’t get over the “I’m a grown woman and you’re not my daddy/I am so not your mother” reaction to the concept.
I also think that sometimes people assume this is the reason someone won’t go out even if it isn’t stated–buddy gets new girlfriend and quits coming around nearly so often, people assume it’s because she won’t “let” him, when really it’s more that he’d rather hang out with this new person–sometimes the start of a new relationship reveals the banality of some of your old relationships.In other words, buddy was hanging around because he didn’t have anything better to do. Now he does. That’s not flattering, so it’s easier to assume the new girl is stopping him.
I should admit that I’m a dick and have used this sort of thing as an excuse to avoid going out drinking with my work buddies a few times.
It’s easier than saying “Spend a significant portion of my Friday night with you losers? Cha, right!”
Then there are a few things where it’s a little more honest – I’ve opted out of a couple of all-night MDMA-fueled party-type situations, because she’s made it gently clear that she doesn’t approve. She always says “I’m not your mom, do what you like,” so it’s not so much that she won’t let me – it’s just that I know that it would harm my relationship with her, and I value that relationship more than any party.
I think a lot of times it’s less “won’t let” and more either “doesn’t approve and her approval is important enough to me that I’ll voluntarily skip it” or “already got plans with her that I don’t want to cancel for you” with the occasional using it to substitute for “don’t want to”.
“Wife won’t let me,” is just not a part of our marriage. A gambling trip is a bad example for me, because I don’t like gambling, but I’ve gone on men-only fishing trips without any resistance. If I were to decide, on the spur of the moment, to join friends for a trip to Indy to go to a strip bar, I’m sure there’d be no static from Mrs. Nott.
My Hunk-O-Twee and I might actually say, “Can I go [insert activity here] with [person] on Friday?”, but usually it’s not a request for permission so much as it’s (a) a heads-up, and (b) an invitation for the other person to bring up any issues the “requester” might not be thinking of (like “OK, but remember we have to help your mom clean her garage the next morning, so you might not want to stay out late/have more than two margaritas” or “I think that’s the night we’re supposed to meet Uncle Joe for dinner”).
And honestly, even if my husband ever did say "NO, you cannot do [reasonable activity, not like “go have sex with my grandpa”] AND I chose to “obey” him, there’s no way I’d actually say to anyone, “I would love too, but SkipMagic won’t let me.”
I’d be too embarrassed.
Is it a gender thing, I wonder . . . ? Because most of the conversation around this topic on the boards tends to be about MEN telling their friends that their SOs “won’t let” them do something.
We’ve been together for about 2 and a half years, and trust each other enough that permission isn’t needed. The only occasions I’ve asked “Are you okay with this?” were when an old flame was back in town to visit me (just friends now, nothing more). I knew the answer would be yes, but I ask out of respect for his feelings, and on the off-chance that he isn’t comfortable with something.
He’s never asked my permission to do anything, but does frequently come back with tales of aggressive women. I’m actually the sort of woman that encourages him to go out with his buddies and have a good time.