Issues with a friends husband

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Anglewannabe

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I recently met a lady at my church. She is friendly and we have gotten together a few times for coffee. This is nice since I don’t have many friends and we can actually discuss religion. The problem: her husband

As everyone knows I have had a lot of work place stress. When I am out socially, I try not to talk about it since I don’t want to be a complainer and I just want to have some time away from my problems. Whenever her husband is around, all he does is complain about all his stress at work. I say nothing since I don’t want to encourage the conversation. Part of me feels for him since I have workplace stress as well. However, I am trying to get over my issues and don’t want to feed into conversations about complaining about everyone else at the office.

Well, recently, I learnt he earns a LOT more money than me. It now makes it that much harder to politely let him vent about his problems. So, the other night, I tried to politely tell him that as much as I understand his pain, since I am going through similar pain, I would prefer not to get have to listen to it.

He asked me what was so wrong with my job. When I told him, he flipped out ‘They can’t do that ! go to human resources’ I tried to politely tell him I did not want to get into a conversation on how to handle my work place stress (especially since going to HR would not be a wise move on my part). No matter how much I told him I would prefer not to talk about it, he keep giving unwanted advice ‘If HR doesn’t help you contact a lawyer’.

The issue is futher complicated by the fact the wife has confided in me how she has had to learn to live with the fact that her husband can be unreasonable. As a catholic, I admire a woman who has decided to remain true to her marriage vows and work things out with her husband. However, I just really do not want to have anything to do with her husband anymore.

I fear this will mean the end of the friendship since I am a firm believer, it doesn’t matter who is right and who is wrong, a wife should always stands by her husband.

Also, from what I know about this guy, he probably couldn’t care less that he hurt my feelings.

Not sure what I will do when I bump into her next Sunday

Angie
 
My grandmother suggested to me many years ago, that if I wanted to ‘get together’ with girlfriends, to meet them out and about. (She had some pretty good reasons, one of which has nothing to do with your situation.) My bff and I tend to only talk on the phone when our husbands aren’t around. We like each other’s spouses fine even! But, we encourage each other to spend our time available with our husband, with our husband.

See if you can get together with this lady at a coffee shop or library or even the Church grounds for take-out coffee if timing is not allowing you to see her without her husband.

Yes it’s nice to visit at home, but if the lady’s dh is making you uncomfortable, and I’m certain you like her enough to be around him in little polite doses but not this intensely. It is possible that your friendship will be put on hold.

Good encouraging Christian friends are Gifts from God. Prayers for you and your friend Angelwannabe.
 
Don’t you love it (not) when people who are not equipped to solve thier own issues at work and life but then offer advice on how you yourself should solve a similar probem? Ugh.

When this husband said “go to human resources”…I would have told him…“you first…and tell me how it works out”…or something similar…Of course with humor…but still. A few well placed comments done in a light spirit will eventually make him stop.

We all have things that we dislike about others…we have to decide if tolerating and deflecting is worth it…for some yes, for others no.

All friendships take work and I agree to try to get together with your friend without him for a bit, and don’t let this guy steal your peace if he’s there. His opinions and rants don’t matter.
 
Maybe you could look at this from another angle: he genuinely cared about your situation and wanted to somehow help you and give you ideas to make things better. Obviously he’s oblivious to your desire not to continue to discuss this (he just doesn’t get it), but he wasn’t belittling your problems.

It also sounds like you COULD politely tolerate him UNTIL your own jealousy set in. Maybe that’s something you can work on. A challenge.

Do you really want to lose a friendship over this? I do understand wanting to distance yourself from negativity, but it sounds like the wife is a friend you’d like to keep.
 
How did he get invited in the first place?
Did he just show up?
Sometimes if my friends and I talk about things of primary interest to women, the men kind of wander off. I know my husband tends to say: Oh, you’re having dinner with so-and-so? I don’t have to come, do I? 🙂

If the conversation doesn’t really apply to him, maybe he’ll bow out of your get togethers.
But I agree with the person above…he thought he was offering good advice.
🤷

Maybe you two could meet when you know he’s otherwise occupied, so you can still enjoy each other’s company.
 
mommy_k said:
When this husband said “go to human resources”…I would have told him…“you first…and tell me how it works out”…or something similar…Of course with humor…but still. A few well placed comments done in a light spirit will eventually make him stop.
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Reading this from my computer screen it sounds like good advice. However, knowing myself, it would come out in a bad way and start a fight as to who is right and who is wrong. Wish I had the skills to pull that one off 🙂
 
Catherinabird said:
Maybe you could look at this from another angle: he genuinely cared about your situation and wanted to somehow help you and give you ideas to make things better. Obviously he’s oblivious to your desire not to continue to discuss this (he just doesn’t get it), but he wasn’t belittling your problems.
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That is a good point. However, I have told his wife (not sure if I told him) that what I really need right now is to get my mind off of my problems and do fun things. They actually had me over one evening to play a board game and it was very enjoyable. I just don’t understand why after telling people what I need, they don’t repsect my wishes if they truly want to help me. Also, a pet peeve of mine is unsolicited advise from someone who doesn’t know what they are talking about. We work in different places with different unwritten rules. He just couldn’t comprehend what I am going through
Catherinabird said:
It also sounds like you COULD politely tolerate him UNTIL your own jealousy set in. Maybe that’s something you can work on. A challenge.
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Agreed. Please pray God gives me the strenght for this
Catherinabird said:
Do you really want to lose a friendship over this? I do understand wanting to distance yourself from negativity, but it sounds like the wife is a friend you’d like to keep.
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I don’t want to loose a friend. But I want to respect that he is her husband and her loyalties are to him. Not sure how this will work out
 
Anglewannabe said:
Kind of. I suspect he gets bored easily and just likes to follow his wife whereve she goes.
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One thing that always gets my husband to leave is when we talk about “women’s stuff.” See what gets him to leave: clothes, make-up, even gynecology.
 
Does he always have to come when you meet up? I love my husband but wouldn’t want him tagging along every single time I meet up with a friend. I really don’t think it’s healthy for a married couple to never be able to have a conversation without the other being present.
 
ConfusedLucy said:
Does he always have to come when you meet up? I love my husband but wouldn’t want him tagging along every single time I meet up with a friend. I really don’t think it’s healthy for a married couple to never be able to have a conversation without the other being present.
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Well… I agree with you the wife should be able to have time with her girlfriends but… I don’t think it is my place to tell her. If she has been letting her husband follow her around for years, I doubt anything I say will change that

Angie
 
Anglewannabe said:
I recently met a lady at my church. She is friendly and we have gotten together a few times for coffee. This is nice since I don’t have many friends and we can actually discuss religion. The problem: her husband

As everyone knows I have had a lot of work place stress. When I am out socially, I try not to talk about it since I don’t want to be a complainer and I just want to have some time away from my problems. Whenever her husband is around, all he does is complain about all his stress at work. I say nothing since I don’t want to encourage the conversation. Part of me feels for him since I have workplace stress as well. However, I am trying to get over my issues and don’t want to feed into conversations about complaining about everyone else at the office.

Well, recently, I learnt he earns a LOT more money than me. It now makes it that much harder to politely let him vent about his problems. So, the other night, I tried to politely tell him that as much as I understand his pain, since I am going through similar pain, I would prefer not to get have to listen to it.

He asked me what was so wrong with my job. When I told him, he flipped out ‘They can’t do that ! go to human resources’ I tried to politely tell him I did not want to get into a conversation on how to handle my work place stress (especially since going to HR would not be a wise move on my part). No matter how much I told him I would prefer not to talk about it, he keep giving unwanted advice ‘If HR doesn’t help you contact a lawyer’.

The issue is futher complicated by the fact the wife has confided in me how she has had to learn to live with the fact that her husband can be unreasonable. As a catholic, I admire a woman who has decided to remain true to her marriage vows and work things out with her husband. However, I just really do not want to have anything to do with her husband anymore.

I fear this will mean the end of the friendship since I am a firm believer, it doesn’t matter who is right and who is wrong, a wife should always stands by her husband.

Also, from what I know about this guy, he probably couldn’t care less that he hurt my feelings.

Not sure what I will do when I bump into her next Sunday

Angie
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Perhaps he, like me, has an acute sense of justice and feels strongly about people being mistreated in their work situation. Is it really that insufferable to have someone tell you that maybe you should contact a lawyer. Perhaps it’s his way of sympathizing?
 
You fold too easily.

You told him you didn’t want to talk about it, and then you talked about it!!! These are mixed signals, the kind that indicate you really do want to talk about it.

I’m not sure why the fact he makes more than you has shifted your opinion of him and his problems at work, because often the higher up or more you make the bigger your stresses at work.

You will have to learn to be firm and polite when you say you don’t want to talk about something.

You may need to be direct with the wife that you would prefer your visits to be “girl time”.
 
AdamPeter said:
Perhaps he, like me, has an acute sense of justice and feels strongly about people being mistreated in their work situation.
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Perhaps, but it is often much more helpful to simply say ‘I am sorry you are going through that’ than to start telling someone what they should do when you are not the person in their shoes
AdamPeter said:
Is it really that insufferable to have someone tell you that maybe you should contact a lawyer. Perhaps it’s his way of sympathizing?
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Yes it really is that insufferable because contacting a lawyer would be a massive struggle that I am not prepared to undertake. It is also implying a criticism that I am not handling the situation well (when I am doing the best I can). It is forgetting that I am low income and could NEVER afford as good of a lawyer. Also, contacting a lawyer is a ‘cry baby’ solution since things going on are stressfull, not illegal.

Just curious, but if you asked someone for an example of their work stress, and they gave you an honest answer, and then proceeded to say ‘I really don’t want to talk further’, would you respect the boundary? Or would you still give advice?

Angie
 
Well, I hope this isn’t unsolicited advice 😉 but here is my take on it. Based on what you described, he sounds like he can be annoying, and he’s not a good listener, but he’s not a bad person. If I really valued this friendship, I would rethink my stance of not wanting to have anything to do with him anymore.

As I read your posts, my thoughts about the specific situation were:
–making a lot of money doesn’t decrease stresses at work. And what is defined as a lot of money is relative. He makes more money than you, but you make more money than someone else, and that person makes more money than someone without a job, and that person still has a better life on unemployment than a homeless person in your city, and THAT person has a better life than the starving person in the third world country. And yet, everyone in that last sentence has legitimate stressors in their lives. I do understand that sometimes it is hard to listen to someone complain about their problems when you feel like they have it better than you - I’m sure you wouldn’t complain about your job to the homeless person - but I think that it is really helpful to try not to compare. It is almost impossible to only restrict your relationships to people who are on exact equal footing as you, so most friendships will require you to overlook some sort of inequality in order to sympathize/be an understanding friend. From a rich person’s perspective, imagine what it must be like for them if they have no one they can talk to about life’s troubles, because they have more money?

–He may be giving you bad advice, and it may be none of his business, but you are under no obligation to take his advice, and you have no obligation to defend your opinion about his advice. Certainly, you would have been better off had it not come up (and perhaps my point above is worth considering on that issue), but once it did, there are ways to deal with that conversation that might make you feel less stressed. There is the thoughtful nod and “hmmm…you make an interesting point…” while you know you think his idea is crazy, or just the “uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh” method of letting someone bloviate for a while because you know he just wants to hear himself talk. There is the topic change method, where you come up with something to say or ask, and just blurt it out, changing the topic. There is the topic change that comes after the “…interesting point…” or “uh-huh” comments. Some people respond to the casual and direct method: “Dude! You’re killing me! I know you mean well, but I seriously can not deal with stressing about my job right now.”

–Just because the wife confided that she has some problems with her husband, doesn’t mean she also doesn’t see a lot of wonderful qualities in him that outweigh the unreasonableness. Most of us have something annoying about us - and yet the people who love us still want to be around us. Plenty of couples have a spouse that can be overbearing or annoying or embarrassing in certain situations - but that is only one aspect of the person they love. It’s just not that black and white.

So my suggestion would be to consider if you really need to never be around him, or if you would just prefer to avoid him in general, but can deal with him now and then for the sake of seeing your friend. And I would suggest trying to arrange “just the two of you” type activities with her. You might have to reduce the frequency of them, but most couples are happy to occasionally socialize without their spouse. And if he occasionally ends up with you, just keep it shallow, nod and smile, and don’t engage beyond the easy stuff like weather or sports or whatever is easy for you.
 
ThyKingdomCome said:
As I read your posts, my thoughts about the specific situation were:
–making a lot of money doesn’t decrease stresses at work.
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Agreed, however, if I knew I made a LOT more money than someone else, I wouldn’t constantly tell them about my work stress. The way I see it, if someone wants more pay, they are agreeing to more stress and shouldn’t complain all the time to someone who has less pay
ThyKingdomCome said:
. Some people respond to the casual and direct method: “Dude! You’re killing me! I know you mean well, but I seriously can not deal with stressing about my job right now.”
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I did try to direct ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ and it got me no where. As for all the other subtle messages you describe, perhaps they would work in other scenarios, but this is just to much of a painful topic for me to pretend like it does not hurt me. I wanted him to know clearly my boundary to not talk about it
ThyKingdomCome said:
Just because the wife confided that she has some problems with her husband, doesn’t mean she also doesn’t see a lot of wonderful qualities in him that outweigh the unreasonableness.
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Agreed. The reason I mentioned his wife saying he was unreasonable was to make the point that trying to reason with him would be a waste of time.
 
Is there any way you could arrange some kind of meet up that is just her or female only?
 
I wouldn’t give up a friendship over something like this. I would try to see the friend without the guy around and then keep on saying, “Let’s not talk about work.” and change the subject. I agree with the other poster that you folded and that sends a mixed message that your really do want to talk about it. If he asks about the situation you told him about, just tell him that you’re taking care of it and it’s all good. Then leave it at that and change the subject.
 
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