Friends of the Opposite Sex for Married Men

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I am in a very similar situation. My wife had an emotional affair with my daughter’s teacher, being that she sent emails, many texts, facetime, even a picture of herself (not at all seductive). I saw his response via email that was very suggestive in nature – wanting to spend time together alone, etc. I was devastated. When I confronted her about the email she was very sorry and apologetic, but then put a password on her phone, got a separate email account, and generally told me that she needed her space to have friends. Since then I have discovered that they met together at lunch. All of this signified her building walls of secrecy between her and me.

She is currently at times very unhappy and feels trapped with her life and is in the middle of a mid life crisis. While she loves me deeply and would never leave me (nor I her) we have worked out that you need definite guidelines and an openness about what is acceptable and what is not. She insists that she has not violated our marriage vows and would never do so. My opinion is that while there is a line that should not be crossed–don’t run right up to it. Stay a safe distance because you never know when you can trip up and cross that line, inadvertently or not.

I feel the spouse gets to decide how much communication you have with the other sex, with careful and loving consideration given to one’s needs for friends. This need for friends is very deep, so do not lightly dismiss it. If feel my wife is a very loving, kind, and generous person, but also lonely at times.

I understand that male and female friends bring a different experience to friendships. I know that I cannot be all that she needs in life regarding friendship.

Purchase a book. It is called “Not Just Friends” by Shirley Glass. It was important to me to see it written down what someone going through an emotional affair will feel. I asked her to read it and she did. She has since given me the passcode for her phone and I have talked to her male friend and have come to an understanding. And so I have allowed them to continue their friendship in a very restrained fashion. Hope this helps and good luck!
 
UnCatholicBride said:
I understand that you were hurt by his past behavior. I guess I’m just struggling to understand what exactly about his vacation emails, thank you emails, or box of chocolate was so hurtful that it damaged your trust and marriage so deeply. Did the emails cross the line with I love yous or naked pictures? Did the time that he spent communicating with the friend take away significant time from your marriage (I guess I’m envisioning hours of text messages here)
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These are good questions and it might be helpful to some of us to get a better perspective on your situation if you answered some of them, OP. It sounds like you are saying you’re ready for divorce, because your husband has contact and an occasional lunch with a female. You mentioned that he refuses to let you see his phone or Facebook, but you mentioned that you have access to Facebook? Is the nature of the messages you’ve seen inappropriate, or is just the whole idea that he is in contact with a woman inappropriate to you?

He should certainly care that you are bothered by it, and I do believe that your feelings should matter more than his casual friendships. But it’s hard for me to ascertain from what you’ve posted whether he is actually having some sort of affair, or whether he is just friends with women and you don’t like it and want him to stop.
 
Aside from the recent message just found, I honestly couldn’t tell you if there are more friends. Because of his history and lack of trust and his inability to keep safe boundaries, I am dead set against female friends where is is having phone contact, FB msgs and lunch. Please keep in mind that he is the one that initiated lunch with this last one. He told her to call or text anytime and to give him date, time and place and he would be there. There will be no more of that for me. He can continue to lie to himself thinking he is doing nothing wrong.
 
justamon said:
Aside from the recent message just found, I honestly couldn’t tell you if there are more friends. Because of his history and lack of trust and his inability to keep safe boundaries, I am dead set against female friends where is is having phone contact, FB msgs and lunch. Please keep in mind that he is the one that initiated lunch with this last one. He told her to call or text anytime and to give him date, time and place and he would be there. There will be no more of that for me. He can continue to lie to himself thinking he is doing nothing wrong.
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Yikes. Yeah, that’s not good.
On the other side of a coin that is not yours…I made a friend here on CAF, and his wife told him that he could not PM me or else she’d divorce him. Obviously I have not spoken to him since. All we ever spoke about was religion, and we only spoke online maybe 4 times. I was floored. It never occurred to me that anything inappropriate could be construed from our conversation. BUT…she said he had had an affair before. So…bingo. NO trust. Now he can’t converse with anyone on any topic because of the bad mistake he previously made. Everything looks like flirting to her. Poor woman. I suppose she had been through hell.

Your situation sounds very serious. I’m sorry you are having so much trouble. Counseling. Get some. Try to make it work. We’ll pray for you and your marriage.
God bless.
 
justamon said:
Aside from the recent message just found, I honestly couldn’t tell you if there are more friends. Because of his history and lack of trust and his inability to keep safe boundaries, I am dead set against female friends where is is having phone contact, FB msgs and lunch. Please keep in mind that he is the one that initiated lunch with this last one. He told her to call or text anytime and to give him date, time and place and he would be there. There will be no more of that for me. He can continue to lie to himself thinking he is doing nothing wrong.
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Honestly I can only speak to what you have shared, but if your mistrust is really all stemming from an email about his vacation, a thank you email, and a box of chocolate given to a coworker, then I’m going to have to side with your husband. You seem very controlling and unreasonable
 
Have you read all the posts? Do you not understand he has a pattern?
 
justamon said:
Have you read all the posts? Do you not understand he has a pattern?
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Yes. I have read all the posts. From what I can tell this “emotional affair” was him sharing about a vacation with a coworker, thanking a coworker, and giving a coworker a box of chocolate.

He also apparently talks to his friends, and has lunch with them on occasion.

Outside of texting, facebooking, and the occasional lunch get together, he apparently has no social life, because you said " It isn’t like he goes out, because he doesn’t. He works, comes home and is always home on weekends."

You don’t get to dictate your husband’s social life. Being polite and genuinely kind toward friends is NOT cheating. He already doesn’t socialize with others, and you telling him that he’s not allowed to interact with women at all is honestly abusive.

I agree that you both need counseling, but it’s not for the reason everyone else thinks you need counseling.
 
mrajax said:
I don’t get the guys who say they CAN’T be simple friends with a beautiful woman. If you have no bad intentions in regards women, if you don’t want to seduce them or think badly of them you have no reason to not be friends with an other wise good but beautiful woman. If you’re connecting with a woman who happens to be beautiful/pretty/has a great figure on an emotional level and you deliberately go out of your way to sabotage your budding friendship it’s not healthy it’s misguided and inconsiderate to the woman you’re ‘rejecting’.
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Dear mrajax,

I can’t speak for other men, but looking at my own soul, I admit that it is very difficult to be friends with a beautiful woman. This is because of my own personal weaknesses, as well as the fact that the devil will play to my weaknesses.

I believe that there are men out there who have heroic virtue of fortitude. So, they’ll be able to have a normal relationship and not suffer from interior turmoil. Most men don’t have that grace (yet).

The situation gets more complicated, too, if I somehow connect better emotionally with another woman than with my own wife. This can slowly corrupt my heart.

In sum, we were created good and are supposed to be able to have normal relationships with the opposite sex, but because of our woundedness we tend toward things that are bad for us (i.e. concupiscence). A husband who is aware of the triple-threat of concupiscence would be wary to develop any close relationship with another woman who is not his wife.

With respect,

KfG
 
"Is your online friendship becoming an emotional affair?
  1. Do you find yourself coming to bed later at night because you are chatting on-line?
  2. Do you ever exit a screen because you do not want a family member to see what you are reading or writing to a chat room member?
  3. Have you ever lied to your spouse about your personal Internet activities?
  4. Would you feel uncomfortable sharing your Internet correspondence with your spouse?
  5. Have you ever set up a separate e-mail account or credit card to carry on a personal correspondence with an individual on-line?
  6. Has your Internet correspondence had a negative effect on your work or household tasks?
  7. Have you ever lied in response to a question from your spouse about your e-mail correspondence?
  8. Have you ever exchanged photos of yourself with a secret e-mail correspondent?
  9. Since beginning a secret e-mail correspondence, have you experienced either a loss or an unusual increase in sexual desire with your spouse?
  10. Have you made arrangements to talk secretly on the phone with your e-mail correspondent?
  11. Have you made arrangements to meet with your secret e-mail correspondent?
Two or more yes answers to questions 1,2,3,4 indicate a potential Internet romance is developing. It is time to either share you on-line correspondence with your mate or break off the correspondence and begin to examine how to improve your marriage. A yes answer to any of questions 5, 6, 7 indicates you are crossing the boundary from an Internet friendship to an Internet romance. Acknowledge this relationship for what it is about to become and take action to preserve and enhance your marriage.
A yes answer to question 8 or 9 indicates you have begun a fantasy romantic relationship with your on-line correspondent. Even if it never moves to a physical stage, this relationship has great potential to damage or destroy your marriage.
A yes answer to question 10 or 11 indicates that you have taken positive action toward initiating an extramarital affair. Consider the impact this will have on your marriage and your children and take steps to sort this out with a professional. "

From the book “NOT Just Friends” by Shirley Glass. I highly recommend the book for any who are concerned about maintaining healthy boundaries to protect their marriage.

Also, I recommend the Love Dare iPhone app. It is helping me to get my mind straight about what I can do to strengthen my marriage.
 
Well, if we’re now making lists of “what is this behavior”

Signs you are in an abusive relationship:

Does your partner:
act excessively jealous and possessive?
control where you go or what you do?
keep you from seeing your friends or family?
limit your access to money, the phone, or the car?
constantly check up on you?
criticize you and put you down?
blame you for their own abusive behavior?
humiliate or yell at you?

Warning signs of abuse:
Controlling Behavior:
They may try to lay down the law on what you can and cannot do. He/she monopolizes your time, who you talk to or may not allow you to make decisions about your clothes,finances, home, etc.

Isolation:
You no longer keep in contact with your friends, parents, or neighbors. Criticizes and does not like any of them. You don’t say hello to people for fear that your partner will get jealous and angry.

Unrealistic Expectations:
Abusers can be overly critical. They may expect their partners to meet all their needs. He/she expects you to be the perfect spouse, lover, and friend.

Hypersensitivity:
An abuser is easily insulted or hurt, and takes the slightest setbacks as personal attacks.
 
Obviously, not knowing the content of his emails or texts to these female friends, I cannot be sure, but my instinct is to say that emailing or texting a female friends is not objectively inappropriate.
Why do you equate the vacation messages and the thank-you gift of chocolates as an emotional affair? Is there more that you haven’t shared that would help us to understand your position?
Would you like to meet your husband’s female friends and be included in the friendship? How would he feel about scheduling a lunch visit to include you both?
Does your husband spend time alone with these female friends? You indicated that his whereabouts were easily accounted for, so I wonder what makes you believe he has had an affair. Did he confess as much, or does he maintain his innocence?
If you could answer some of these questions, we might be able to better advise you.
 
I never indicated that he was currently having an emotional affair. What my concern is and was is that because this has hapened before and the fact that he gravitates towards female friends, I am not open to this type of friendship again. He simply cannot be normal friends, he has to take it another level and be extremely friendly.

Counseling was nothing but arguing last night. Counselor will see us each alone next week. She said we are in very different places and there is a lot of hurt, anger and resentment on
both parts. We did not talk all the way home or last night.
 
justamon said:
I never indicated that he was currently having an emotional affair. What my concern is and was is that because this has hapened before and the fact that he gravitates towards female friends, I am not open to this type of friendship again. He simply cannot be normal friends, he has to take it another level and be extremely friendly.

Counseling was nothing but arguing last night. Counselor will see us each alone next week. She said we are in very different places and there is a lot of hurt, anger and resentment on
both parts. We did not talk all the way home or last night.
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No, I am sorry that my question was not clear. Did he confess to the emotional affair in the past, or did he maintain his innocence? I am confused about that aspect. From your description, it sounded like he didn’t see anything wrong with his past behavior but that you felt it was an emotional affair. Maybe I have got the timeline all wrong. Your posts have been brief and without a lot of details, so I think that is why so many of us are confused. I thought it might help if you explained the history a bit. But of course, that is your prerogative.
 
mommamaree said:
No, I am sorry that my question was not clear. Did he confess to the emotional affair in the past, or did he maintain his innocence? I am confused about that aspect. From your description, it sounded like he didn’t see anything wrong with his past behavior but that you felt it was an emotional affair. Maybe I have got the timeline all wrong. Your posts have been brief and without a lot of details, so I think that is why so many of us are confused. I thought it might help if you explained the history a bit. But of course, that is your prerogative.
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Quite right. If he had a genuine emotional affair in the past, then yeah, I think limits for the sake of your sanity are something to which he really has to agree. It’s not “normal” for him to be restricted to having no female friends, but it IS normal for that to be a consequence of past immoral behavior.

If his past behavior was more along the lines what you, justamon, are talking about with this latest stuff… I don’t really know what to say. He should be totally open to your knowing what he’s saying to her and vice versa, but otherwise it seems like pretty normal behavior.
 
The_Bucket said:
Quite right. If he had a genuine emotional affair in the past, then yeah, I think limits for the sake of your sanity are something to which he really has to agree.** It’s not “normal” for him to be restricted to having no female friends**, but it IS normal for that to be a consequence of past immoral behavior.

If his past behavior was more along the lines what you, justamon, are talking about with this latest stuff… I don’t really know what to say. He should be totally open to your knowing what he’s saying to her and vice versa, but otherwise it seems like pretty normal behavior.
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I know if my husband was questioning every single conversation I had with a man, I certainly wouldn’t be providing details willingly. I wouldn’t lie if he asked, but I wouldn’t be volutneering information that would send him into an irrational rage.
 
UnCatholicBride said:
I know if my husband was questioning every single conversation I had with a man, I certainly wouldn’t be providing details willingly. I wouldn’t lie if he asked, but I wouldn’t be volutneering information that would send him into an irrational rage.
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Did you previously have an affair? It’s kinda different at that point.
 
Linusthe2nd said:
My opinion, as a general bit of advice, is no, absolutely not. He should not be seeing or contacting another woman other than a cousin or sister and definitely not alone.

Linus2nd
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This is nuts! I am a Catholic man, husband and father. I communicate often via Facebook and text with women. I am an Asst DRE at a large parish. We have 1300 kids in our program and for the most part, moms handle religious ed in their families. Over the years I develop friendships with these people. Because of who I am (perhaps like the OP’s husband) and my position I am approached for council or insight. Because they are actively involved in our parish we become friends. If they see me at the gym, we may stop and chat. I also have guy friends. My wife is not jealous of these women and the social contact I have with them.
 
dconklin said:
This is nuts! I am a Catholic man, husband and father. I communicate often via Facebook and text with women. I am an Asst DRE at a large parish. We have 1300 kids in our program and for the most part, moms handle religious ed in their families. Over the years I develop friendships with these people. Because of who I am (perhaps like the OP’s husband) and my position I am approached for council or insight. Because they are actively involved in our parish we become friends. If they see me at the gym, we may stop and chat. I also have guy friends. My wife is not jealous of these women and the social contact I have with them.
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You are probably a trustworthy man and have no history if infidelity correct? Not the same.
 
The_Bucket said:
Did you previously have an affair? It’s kinda different at that point.
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The OP hasn’t actually confirmed that her husband ever had behaviors that the majority of people would consider to be an affair. She’s dodged the question that has been asked multiple times.

Like you said- if her definition of an “emotional affair” is exchanging pleasantries, sharing about a vacation, and giving someone candy, then the problem here is NOT the husband.

Since I can only judge the situation based on what OP has shared, currently I’m on Team Husband here.
 
Well it’s her choice as to whether she wants to air out all the laundry, even if anonymously. By inference I’m gathering that there was indeed something that went beyond his present behavior.

And the secrecy is really bad if you ask me. Especially if there was misconduct in the past. You’ve got to be an open book at this point. Hassling about every conversation might be a bit much, but you can’t have any secret emails and texts and whatnot. That stuff has to be all out on the table.
 
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