If you’re like that when your wife starts interrogating you and challenging you, she’s luckier than she may know. )What about the fact that you watch pornography?
You should keep your eyes under control.
Your wife is wise, she understands the weakness of our natures.
What kind of games are you playing with your wife? You should have shielded her from that knowledge. She is angry at you because you should not have put yourself in a situation where that could occur in the first place. AS a Catholic you are meant to avoid situations that could be occasions of sin, just because you did not reciprocate you have still caused sin in the other person and so are responsible for that.
Why would you prefer to spend time socialising with this other woman rather than your wife?
I would imagine she is happy for you to have as many male friends as you want. What she does not like is you preferring other women over her, which seems perfectly reasonable to me.
But not socially it seems. How about you return the favour and satisfy her desire for you not to pursue friendships with other women?
That we don’t need? You mean you not we, it is your constant socialising with other women against your wife’s wishes that is causing her stress, your ending of such friendships will do wonders for her stress levels.
Your wife is like this because she loves you and fears losing you, stop having other other women in your life for her sake, be selfless instead of selfish. Friendships can easily develop into love affairs plus time you spend with these other women is time you are robbing from your wife.
I’m not sure where the guy said that he watches pornography.
Doesn’t work, just leads to her saying, “yeah, right.”
Long story short is that she had just given birth to our son a few weeks before I met her. She was in a horrible situation at home and when we got married she wanted some time to be something other than the detached disciplinarian her parents insisted on her being before we were married. After so many years of handling 100% of the serious parental issues and discipline, once our daughters were born I’d kind of been shoe-horned into that role. It’s slightly better now, but I still fill that role the vast majority of the time.
I’d much rather be honest with my wife than hide something from her. As far as not putting myself into a situation, none of these happened in a situation that raised a red flag for me. I can’t avoid going to work, the grocery store, family parties, friends’ weddings, etc. The one that was really avoidable was the incident at a friend’s house, but I’d been there numerous times over the years without any issue and had no reason to suspect that anything would be different on that occasion. If someone has no respect for the sanctity of marriage, I’m not the cause of that person’s sin. I’ve had women approach me in the grocery store while I was shopping with my kids. How on earth could I be seen as enticing someone to sin in that situation?
I don’t, and never said I did. Part of my job is to foster teamwork which requires me to interact with the people who report to me. That tends to lead to friendships in some situations and this was one of those cases. If I talk to someone at work or respond to an email, I’m not choosing to socialize with that person over my wife. And if a friend is going through a crisis and I choose to send a note of encouragement, I’m not violating a trust or acting in an untoward or suspicious manner. I don’t prefer anyone over her, male or female, but I do value my friendships. I know that she values hers as well and wouldn’t want me telling her to turn her back on any of her friends. I don’t see any difference between a purely platonic friendship with a man and one with a woman. If I were someone who’d violated her trust, I could see her being suspicious of me, but I’ve never done that. I would much rather have these friendships be mutual friendships specifically for the benefit of my wife. Although she claims not to need a large number of friends or a greater amount of socializing, I can see how much she benefits from spending the time that she does with her friends, which makes things better for the whole family. It puts her in a better mood, gets her out more and gives us more to talk about, all of which are very positive aspects.
Actually, I do mean we. If she’s upset and argumentative it stresses me out and upsets the kids. If she’s getting upset and refusing to talk to me because she thinks I looked at another woman (and if there’s a woman anywhere nearby, she’s likely going to think I looked at her even on days when my bad eye’s acting up and I can’t see much of anything), it causes completely unneeded stress for all of us. If she tells me she thinks an actor’s attractive I don’t feel betrayed or think she would leave me for him. If I say that I like an actress’s hair because it reminds me of one of our daughters, she’ll leave the room and quit talking to me because I clearly stated that I’m turned on by that actress and would jump at the chance to abandon my family for her. We don’t need situations like that in our lives, and avoiding them puts unreasonable restrictions on me.
Predominantly, these are online friendships, mostly with people I was friends with in grade school, high school & college. We see some of them in person occasionally, but for the most part the bulk of the contact I have with them is occasional emails or Facebook messages (usually not more than once a week unless something big/special comes up). Outside of my core group of guy friends, most of the friends I had in college were girls. It’s not as though I only sought out women to rekindle friendships with (or that I’ve kept in touch with); I’ve tried to stay in touch with or reconnect with most of my old friends, but based on the percentages there just happen to be a high percentage of women. The ones I see in person or talk to on the phone are largely family, and it’s been years since she’s gotten jealous over that. Several of the friends, though, are people I grew up with like family and I still view them in that way to this day. I’m only friends with a handful of their spouses (my wife’s questioned why I’m not friends with the husbands instead or in addition to), but that’s largely because I’ve never met them. Only a handful of them are single, and most of the single ones are either lesbians or much older than me. Oddly enough, the one single one who’s younger and extremely attractive is one of the ones I communicate with the most, and is one of the few my wife doesn’t mind me talking to (I can’t begin to even try to explain why).
For the most part, it’s been extremely flirtatious behavior that ended in them asking me for my number, address, a date or a “quickie” when I told them I was married and not interested. In the past, the only thing I could see that may have encouraged them is the fact that I had a wedding ring on. As disconcerting as that may be, there was a notable increase in how often I was approached by women immediately after we got married. I had to take my wedding ring off for a couple weeks at one point due to a finger injury and not once during that time was I hit on. The day I started wearing it again, I had a cashier ask me out. I can’t think of a single behavior on my part that encouraged them, especially the ones I knew beforehand who were fully aware of the fact that I was married. If someone approaches me I’ll be friendly and talk back to them, but it usually takes no more than two sentences before I mention my wife and kids. If I tell someone I’m happily married, I’d hope that’d be taken as a sign of disinterest and not a challenge.
Amen to that.
My biggest concern, though, is that the anger over the friendships is a symptom and not the actual problem. In other words, if I quit talking to each and every person she feels uncomfortable about, we’ll still be left with the mistrust and jealousy. Who will I have to turn my back on then?