Well, he told she asked him to stop being your friend. That could be an exaggeration of whatever really went down.
By the way, I think I get confused or misled by the way people use the word “friend,” these days. When I see that word, I still assume some kind of active, real space relationship. Internet correspondences (or facebook “friends”) isn’t the kind of thing that enters my mind, so I might have been inferring some deeper, more personally interactive relationship than what was necessarily intended to be implied.
So, was he asked or told? It seems like a petty distinction, I know, but one implies a completely different relationship dynamic than the other.
For the record, I got no problem with either scenario. Both partners are, presumably, adults with free will, and part of that is being able to decide for yourself what you can and will tolerate and what you can’t or won’t. As such, Partner A is free to tell Partner B that it’s not a dealbreaker, but the ex is an issue and he/she would be much happier if contact were cut off or at least severely curtailed. Partner A is also free to decide that the ex is a dealbreaker and to tell Partner B that. Partner B is then free to decide whether cutting off or backing away from the ex is something he or she is able and willing to deal with. This dude had the freedom to walk away if cutting you out wasn’t something he was okay with. That puts ending the friendship pretty solidly on his head, not hers.
Here’s the other potential disconnect–more often than you’d probably care to think about, it IS. I know from experience on both sides of that particular issue (I was a dick in college, let’s say).
“Forbidding” is, admittedly, a strong word. I don’t have a problem using it for a unilateral declaration though.
To my way of thinking “friend” implies the kind of emotional closeness you’re assuming, too, regardless of whether the physical proximity is current or historical and/or potential–I’ve got the idea from the thread, uncited, that their friendship was currently mostly via e-mail but didn’t preclude spending time together when circumstances once again permitted, so it probably amounted to the same thing (“I’ll get a beer with you when I’m in your town next” to me, is functionally equivalent to actually doing so, in an age of global communication and cheap travel).
I agree about the different dynamic, but I’m not sure of the answer. I’m trying to think of what it was he said about it, but my memory is failing me.
If it matters, and I genuinely don’t know if it does or doesn’t, she made it clear to him that she was uncomfortable with me from early in their relationship, but it didn’t come to a head (as I understand it, anyway) until after their wedding. We had slowly started to drift apart to some degree anyway, what with living in different states, him becoming involved with her, me becoming involved with my husband, life happening. After they got married he sent me some pictures of the wedding, and I emailed back how happy I was for them, and how great they looked, etc. There was absolutely nothing in that email I’d be afraid for her to read, for my husband to read, for the entire readership of USA Today to read. They were that innocent, and, let’s face it, boring. Except that she read it and apparently didn’t realize that he and I communicated at all anymore, so it was a terrible shock to her. That was the point at which I was told that the friendship had to end.
I agree with this too.
Yep, this is right. I’d been out of state for a number of years when this happened, though my husband and I were making plans to come back. I was hoping they could meet, and I thought if his wife met me with my husband it might be ok.
It’s ok that she’s not cool with it, and a part of me does understand. I guess I just feel like Red in Shawshank Redemption: I just miss my friend.
If you are suspicious for very good reasons, your relationship is already screwed. If it’s true that your SO is going to cheat the moment temptation shows up and that they only way to prevent that is for you to make sure your SO does not get tempted…your relationship is already messed up.
If you are hurt, grow the hell up.
A better metaphor for your “I decided tone down the weekend partying” is if your wife asked you to stop playing music, since musicians only do it to get laid. Would it be reasonable for an SO to ask you to give up a much-loved hobby that otherwise was not causing trouble, simply because they are “uncomfortable” with it?
Sure it would. Dio is, and was, a grown-ass man fully capable of telling her to go screw herself if he didn’t like the request.
That’s the thing about a truly mature attitude toward relationships–you have to accept that other people have the right to ask for what they want, and to give what they’re okay with giving. Even if those things aren’t what you would want to ask for or give in their position.
I’m a little late to the party here, Gomi5, but your sadness over the loss of a friendship is perfectly reasonable.
I was in a similar situation – I kept in touch with an ex boyfriend of mine until he got married. We live far enough apart we only emailed each other. His new wife wasn’t crazy about me even though she’d never met me.
I told him if it made both of them more comfortable, I’d copy her on every email I sent him. And I gave him my hubby’s email and told him he could copy hubby on everything he sent me, if he felt like it.
Hubby thought the whole thing was ridiculous and set up an email filter to dump all of ex’s messages in a folder that he has never opened.
Ex still emails me, but mostly just forwards jokes. I get actual news about once a year or so. I miss him, but I get it.
(For those who care: He’s not a booty call on retainer, because we never slept together at all. Yet wifey doesn’t like me. Go figure…)
Have you been in many LTRs? You don’t seem very willing to compromise much in relationships, and that’s what successful LTRs tend to require. A sign of maturity is a willingness to make certain compromises for the greater good of the relationship. Asking your SO to make compromises is not indicative of a selfish or immature person, nor is being willing to make those compromises. No one is perfect, no relationship is perfect. Leaving, rather than changing any behaviors whatsoever or asking your SO to change their behaviors (what you seem to be implying) is NOT a healthy way to go about a relationship.
I agree that relationships require compromise.
I also agree that some expectations / requests / demands would be experienced as unreasonable to a given person. It is important to talk about this kind of thing in the process of getting to know someone, on your way into a relationship.
Person A is going to be very unhappy unless Person B stops going to church at easter and christmas. Person A is an atheist and has been very open about it. If Person B cares about Person A’s feelings, this business of trotting off to some freaking church at ceremonially important churchy-times of the year should STOP…? Umm, maybe. Maybe not. Person B has feelings too. They should talk. (They should have talked about more of this earlier on, perhaps).
Person A is going to be increasingly unhappy until Person B stops communicating with anyone that was once a lover. If Person B cares about Person A’s feelings, Person B should cut off all such friends? What is Person B is going to be increasingly unhappy until Person A loosens up and agrees to try out a bit of wife (or husband) swapping?
That “wife-swapping” analogy is completely asinine.
Exactly. It’s all about communication and compromise. Even sven seems to think any requests for change or compromise are unreasonable, and the person making them immature because you should love them JUST the way they are and not change one little itsy bitsy thing. Ever. That’s just not reality.
By all means elaborate. I would not want to put words in your mouth or attribute sentiments to you based on a lot of guesswork.
I can tell you that it has happened. To one of my close female relatives. The person she married did expect her to at least give wife-swapping a TRY, even if she wasn’t inclined on her own, but as a favor to him at least, you know, SEE if maybe she’d take to it. I mean, she really oughta do that much if she loved him, yeesh. Etc. (She swapped him for a different person, which wasn’t quite what he had in mind)
In what ways are these not both examples of one person making what they consider a reasonable request when it might be considered by the partner to be intolerably intrusive?
Pressuring an SO to have sex with people they do not want to have sex with is not the same as expressing concern or hurt about behavour they are already engaging in. That’s an infliction of hurt and pain, not an expression of it.
Because you’re talking to Dio, and he has VIEWS on non-monogamy.
I tend to agree with you, and further think “We should be completely open to sex with other people” and “You must never talk to anyone of the opposite sex” are two ends of the exact same spectrum of behavior–which, by the way, is why it’s not asinine but actually pretty spot-on as an analogy.
In exactly the same way as pressuring a SO to drop long-established friends who happen to have the wrong gender or history is ALSO an infliction of hurt and pain.
I’m confused, AHunter3. Are you arguing that it would have been better for your relative’s marriage if her husband had never brought the subject up and instead continued to be silently dissatisfied with the situation for the rest of their lives? Because that’s what it sounds like you’re saying, that the man had no right to ask for such a thing, even if there was a chance she would be amenable to the suggestion.
But that seems at odds with what I remember of your previous positions in relationship threads, so I don’t think that’s really what you mean. Could you clarify, please?
I personally feel that everyone has the right, if not the obligation to express serious dissatisfaction with the status quo and request changes that would make them more satisfied. Even if those reasons for dissatisfaction and desired changes strike me as petty, stupid, unreasonable, or unfair. You don’t have the right to have those changes automatically granted as a matter of course, nobody gets to rule the relationship with an iron fist (unless that’s what you both want), but you do have the right to ask for what will make you happy.
Because, honestly, if you’re in a relationship where you can’t say, “Look, I’m not happy. What can we do about the situation?” why on Og’s green earth would you want to stay?
No, not at all. It was reasonable — heck, it was important — for him to bring this up if he knew it was important to him that anyone he was in a long range relationship be open to such explorations. His problem was that he just assumed that insofar as she loved him she would do this for him when he did get around to asking it of her. Which was after they were married and a long long time after they were doing the initial exploratory “what kind of stuff are YOU looking for” talks. Assuming they did those at all. She (my female relative) is also rather inclined to think that whatever she wants is universally THE thing to want, so they may not have done.
And THAT’S the important part. People should NOT assume that what they want out of a relationship is what any person who isn’t a blithering idiot or a selfish asshole would also want. People want DIFFERENT THINGS.
It was still OK for him to bring it up when he did. It was NOT OK for him to be giving her emotional ultimatums, “If you loved me you would”. He was opaque to how much it meant to her to NOT do anything of the sort.
It is good to bring such issues up, to identify dealbreakers for you and dealbreakers for the other person, to identify things that you COULD put up with as a compromise and things that you both actively WANT, and see if on balance you are, in fact, a good match. People when they are courting and dating need to DO that. If you DON’T, you wake up one day and find out that Person A totally expected to have 6 kids and send them all to boarding school, while Person B totally expected them both to get sterilized so as to prevent accidental pregnancy. Or wanted kids but intended to quit his job and stay home with them as a full-time Daddy until the youngest is 18 and goes off to college.
Back to the OP, the person who expected that anyone she got seriously involved with would have no further contact with anyone he had ever had intimate relations with NEEDED TO SAY SO, during the exploration & talking-things-out phase. Insofar as she apparently didn’t, she is not inherently in the right nor inherently in the wrong, and BOTH PARTIES need to listen and realize that due to lack of having talked about this early on they have to hash it out NOW.
Thanks for the clarification. It sounds like we’re on the same page, then–people can and should ask for what they want, and it’s up the partner to decide if that’s what they also want, or at least if it’s something they’re okay with. Different things are okay with different people, and just because something isn’t something would ask for, or acquiesce to, in a relationship doesn’t make it bad and wrong, nor does it make either partner bad and wrong.
As for the OP, it sounds like the wife made it clear from the very beginning that she was uncomfortable with the friendship, and thought up until not long after the wedding that it had already ended. When she realized it hadn’t, she spoke up about her feelings, and they hashed it out then. I don’t really know what more you could reasonably expect in terms of her being open about her feelings on the subject–if she thought the friendship had already ended, why would she bring it up again?