This is basically it - they are fine people, but this is a point of friction between the two. They aren’t as extreme as portrayed in the quote, but those are the basic forces at work…she over-monitors him and he is not nearly as intense about work as she is but he isn’t an apathetic bum…
I’m going to go against the grain here. If one of my buddies is on the phone and I’m grabbing a beer and want to see if they want one I’ll track them down, stick my head in the room and pantomime a drink.
That is because I generally assume if someone is on the phone when I’m there they don’t want me talking. If that was that guy’s SOP as well that I could see being a little pissed because he was expecting you to follow common courtesy and by not doing that he got busted.
On the other hand if it’s normal for you guys to yell back and for while someone is on the phone he’s over reacting and just pissed because he got busted. More of a preemptive kick the dog scenario.
See - there’s the rub; I definitely get this and it is the source of any doubt I have…
Now, see, if one of my friends went into another room with a phone call, I’d assume that meant the call might be about matters he wouldn’t want me to overhear. So if I was headed into that room, I’d call out something beforehand to let him know I was coming in so I wouldn’t have to hear about his prostrate problems or whatever.
So I think the OP is in the clear. But I’m even more glad that I’m friends with both members of the married couples I know; when we hang out, everyone is there and so there’s no feeding of the drama llama.
I’m with Smashy here. He’s passing around the frustration for two reasons. Number one, you did dime him out, regardless of whether you should have known it or not. So for him, it would be better if you hadn’t been around at that time. Number two, he needs to beef back up the ego he just took a hit to. His wife just smacked him down and he needed something reassuring, so he kicked the dog, so to speak. By bitching at you, he’s repairing his own psyche.
There’s also some guy interplay here. It’s like if you’re playing catch with someone and you muff a sorta-difficult catch. It’s clearly your fault. You blame the thrower, he blames you. That way, it’s really no one’s fault and no one loses any cool points. It’s the same interplay you see when two guys get in an argument but don’t want to fight. There’s a lot of threats and posturing thrown around and then they both back away. Both want to let the issue pass, but they can’t do it calmly or else they lose some manliness status in the eyes of observers (say, their SOs).
Your key role here is to defend yourself and then back off making him feel bad about it. In other words, register disagreement, then back away. In essence, he’s arguing with you so that he doesn’t have to feel like a tool. That’s all. I guarantee he’s over it.
Does she bring out his ballsac ever once in awhile so he can take a peek at it?
WordMan, twern’t your fault he lost his stones.
I think this is fair and yeah, I suspect he is past it. I registered disagreement in low-key way, not confrontational, but let him stew about his impending conversation with his wife. I emailed him this morning about a minor To Do we had discussed and he replied to me about it very cool.
I know that this will be one of Those Things™ that he will try to hold over me over beers down the road “…and then, dude, when you gave me up to my wife that one time…” and I have been debating how much I am prepared to accept that version of events…
While I still think he was remiss in not giving you some clue about what he wanted, I wonder about this. Why announce what you’re doing? Seems to me you could have grabbed a beer without saying anything.
That’s another thing - I clearly didn’t have to announce it. I brought over a different kind of beer - he had Coors Light 
and I brought over some British ale (Old Speckled Hen in cans that come with those “widgets” that make the beer creamy when you poor it into a glass - mmm, ale) and he had mentioned wanting to try one…I was just asking if he wanted one…“e.g., dude, I’m grabbing one of mine - want one?”
From a Man standpoint, I could just have easily shut up - he could have come back, seen I had a beer and chosen to get one for himself…
oh, and above where I state “he replied to me very cool” - I can see where that came out wrong. He came back to my To Do email in a nice, regular sorta way - he was cool about it…so I am inclined to think he had worked through it. But I am still processing through the initial situation…
I couldn’t agree more. Bro needs to man-up and explain to his wife that he is not a child and refuses to be treated like one. Unless he is financially dependent on her he needs to tell her to shut her pie-hole. Of course, it sounds like at this point that he’s already turned in his man card and lets her lead him around like a puppy on a leash. Which, if that’s his thing, there’s nothing wrong with that, but expecting you to be as emasculated as he is - that’s a problem in my book.
No kidding.
I am a woman, and if one of my woman friends did this to me, I would tell her she needs to sack up and get over it. If I wanted to sneak around silently at someone else’s home, I’d have an affair.
[sub]Well, I wouldn’t have an affair for that specific reason, but you know what I mean …[/sub]
The problem is that you treated your friend like an adult with a wife, not a little boy with a mommy . . . which is a role you’re not required to play along with.
Ouch - for him.
I had originally thought about sending him an email with a link to this thread so he would see other points of view, which is why I tried to lay out the situation objectively, and openly acknowledge stuff I did which could be interpreted as not cool…but given a few of these replies and the fact that he seems to have gotten over it, maybe not! 
…well, unless he does try to lay a guilt trip on me sometime down the road…
I hate it when Mulva ride my ass too…makes me wanna kick the pope in the nuts…