Married men and women as friends

[EasterJoy]

IHGC,

Pay attention to what EasterJoy says here. There is much wisdom in her posts.

BTW, you should jealously guard your marriage.

Regarding EJ’s analogy of the two ditches on the side of the road (one I assume is the ditch of infidelity, the other is the ditch of marital discord brought on by overbearing spouses pushing too far to prevent infidelity)…

I do not see these ditches as equally dangerous. The road I envision is more like a curvy mountain highway with steep drop-offs on one side and a true drainage ditch on the other. WHile the goal, of course, is to stay in hte marked lane of traffic, better to err on hte side of caution and end up in the ditch (the ‘overbearing’ one) than to plunge to an almost certain death.

I think the ditch of being overly controlling has a more gentle slope leading into it, yes…easier to get into and easier to get out of. Still, one must be very careful about it, because it is a ditch in which resentments and emotional coldness are gathered up as you travel along. The fact that there is not a glaring line of demarcation between “on the road” and “off the road” and “over the cliff”, the dangers in it can be downplayed too much.

If it can lead a valid marriage to divorce or an emotional divorce, it is a real ditch, that is the long and short of it. Nobody wants that. In the OP’s case, though, his wife is not that far from him in being concerned about interlopers. She’s not fine with other women hanging all over him or with him making wolfish comments about other women. She does not think it unnecessary for her to defend him from each thief passing by. That is why I think they can communicate and mutually give and take to a livable solution. It may not be everything the OP wants or everything his wife wants, but I think it will be something they can both live with.

 

[Xantippe]

hurting said:

“Jealously guarding is not the same as being jealous, for what it’s worth. A husband can most certainly protect his marriage (his wife if you will) by taking reasonable precautions so as not to let potentially adulterous relationships take root much less flower.”

What can he do, beyond just asking his wife not to accept large gifts or spend time alone with this guy? There’s no “jealously guarding” to be done. I think that one’s own conduct is (as always) a much more fruitful area for reflection.

“I have no idea what the last paragraph is referring to.”

What I mean is that if you go too far in voicing jealousy to a spouse, you may actually be leading them into sin by pointing out to them their options for sin. That’s dumb.

 

[EasterJoy]

hurting said:

“Jealously guarding is not the same as being jealous, for what it’s worth. A husband can most certainly protect his marriage (his wife if you will) by taking reasonable precautions so as not to let potentially adulterous relationships take root much less flower.”

What can he do, beyond just asking his wife not to accept large gifts or spend time alone with this guy? There’s no “jealously guarding” to be done. I think that one’s own conduct is (as always) a much more fruitful area for reflection.

“I have no idea what the last paragraph is referring to.”

What I mean is that if you go too far in voicing jealousy to a spouse, you may actually be leading them into sin by pointing out to them their options for sin. That’s dumb.

Yes, I think if you accuse someone of flirting when she’s not, she might actually start flirting just because she’s going to be criticized for it whether she flirts or not–may as well have the fun, if she’s going to get the punishment, may as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb if she’s to be hung, “I’ll show him whether he can tell me what to do”, and so on. We don’t grow out of the capacity to embrace foolishness that someone else tries to forbid, just to show we’re “our own boss” or because “if that’s what he thinks of me when I really am good, why try to be good?”

That’s not really the main peril* I *meant, though. I meant that it is common for people to deal with the overbearing by holding a grudge, by resentment, and by passive aggression. IOW, the wife doesn’t become a flirt, but she becomes cold towards her husband and resentful of how he’s abused his position of trust in her life. She notices every woman who notices him and blames him both for the attention and for being a hypocrite. Her natural affection for him can cool. If you save the goose from the fox by suffocating the goose, that defeats the purpose of being protective. You have to go for protections that preserve the life being protected: I mean the life of the relationship and affection between the spouses.

 

[Xantippe]

EasterJoy said:

“If you save the goose from the fox by suffocating the goose, that defeats the purpose of being protective. You have to go for protections that preserve the life being protected: I mean the life of the relationship and affection between the spouses.”

Yes!

 

[maryjk]

If you save the goose from the fox by suffocating the goose, that defeats the purpose of being protective.

 

[Evania]

Originally Posted by EasterJoy
If you save the goose from the fox by suffocating the goose, that defeats the purpose of being protective.

Agreed.

 

[on_the_hill]

PLEASE STOP WITH THE MUTI-COLORED FONTS!!!

I can’t make heads or tails out of what’s a post, a reply, who wrote what…

If you’re going to quote multiple users, PLEASE use the multi-quote button.

 

[EasterJoy]

Originally Posted by EasterJoy
If you save the goose from the fox by suffocating the goose, that defeats the purpose of being protective.

Agreed.

I have this suspicion that his wife has enough pepper in her that this is unlikely, though. He’d better be careful in that case, too, though–it is only a fool that is willing to get a goose riled up at him. (Those are not “passively” agressive birds. )

 

[on_the_hill]

This is interesting. I’m not sure what advice to give or comment to make.

1. On the one hand, I think OP is blowing it out of proportion.
2. On the other hand, I think OP is to blame for letting himself be marginalized from his wife & family.
3. On the third hand, I think maybe OP is making this up for his own amusement.
4. On the fourth hand, if this is all legit, there’s the possibility that OP’s wife really does prefer the friendship of the Contractor to that of her husband. Based on what I’ve read, the OP is angry, frustrated, jealous, controlling, self-pitying, and probably not the most pleasant person to be around.

I think it’s a mix of 3 & 4.

 

[maryjk]

I think it’s a mix of 3 & 4.

Yep.

 

[Evania]

This is interesting. I’m not sure what advice to give or comment to make.

1. On the one hand, I think OP is blowing it out of proportion.
2. On the other hand, I think OP is to blame for letting himself be marginalized from his wife & family.
3. On the third hand, I think maybe OP is making this up for his own amusement.
4. On the fourth hand, if this is all legit, there’s the possibility that OP’s wife really does prefer the friendship of the Contractor to that of her husband. Based on what I’ve read, the OP is angry, frustrated, jealous, controlling, self-pitying, and probably not the most pleasant person to be around.

I think it’s a mix of 3 & 4.

Which is why the situation is out of hand(s).

Sorry couldn’t resist…

 

[MJJean]

This is interesting. I’m not sure what advice to give or comment to make.

1. On the one hand, I think OP is blowing it out of proportion.
2. On the other hand, I think OP is to blame for letting himself be marginalized from his wife & family.
3. On the third hand, I think maybe OP is making this up for his own amusement.
4. On the fourth hand, if this is all legit, there’s the possibility that OP’s wife really does prefer the friendship of the Contractor to that of her husband. Based on what I’ve read, the OP is angry, frustrated, jealous, controlling, self-pitying, and probably not the most pleasant person to be around.

I think it’s a mix of 3 & 4.

1. I agree.
2. Maybe he isn’t being marginalized at all. Having friendships doesn’t mean you’re marginalizing anyone. It just means you spend some time doing your own thing with your friends. Which is healthy.

Realistically, having friendships outside a marriage can make the married couple closer and help them to appreciate each other more. Take my marriage, for example. We’ve been together nearly 14 years now and married nearly 11. We’ve heard each others stories and know each other like the back of our hands. When we go out separately with our friends we come home cheerful, energetic, enthusiastic and with a whole lot to talk about. Things we saw, ate, heard, chatted about, etc. Absence, even for a couple hours, makes the heart grow fonder.

1. Huh, maybe he is. Could be he’s bored and doesn’t have anything going on in his own social life so he’s obsessing over his wife’s social life.
2. Could be true. If my husband was jealous, controlling, restrictive, self-pitying, and unpleasant to be around I would prefer the casual and easy going company of friends.

 

[chevalier]

Hi, Grumpy.

Look, I’m male, no fan of flirting going on between married or otherwise unavailable people and others, I’m no fan of needing to compete too much for the attention of someone who’s supposed to be that special lady in my life, I have witnessed that an affair may well start from simply inappropriate affection, I’ve been insecure and accused of being controlling, and I still think you may be reading too much into things, even in a combination. The problems you’re experiencing make you turn your specific attention to just about anything, which means you have a heightened perception compared to what would normally be the case, which may account for some of the troubling coincidences and accumulation of issues.

You mentioned the guy is willing to work for a pittance. That sounds like someone who doesn’t appreciate monetary value or doesn’t have a good sense of it. Some people just are like that. Photographers are more likely to belong there than accountants.

Plus, he wasn’t going to use it, anyway, and may have felt an aversion to selling it at all, selling it for less than it was worth, or parting with it in favour of a stranger. I’m familiar with all of the foregoing motivations myself. (Apart from the fact it’d probably take a gun to make me go through the hassle of arranging any sort of sale.)

The so called one-upping… well, I’d probably feel insecure and offended and hurt and all, but it may very well have been an accidental situation.

Pictures of your daughter? Well, they’re pictures of the daughter of his friend. And they are his pictures. Artists have a sort of relationship with their works. And they’re just a little odd anyway.

Speaking of which. Framing things, printing labels etc. may just be something natural to a person who has some sort of aptitude and facility with such technical things. Sort of like tightening the screws for your friends in whatever corresponds to your line of business that they’re amateurs in.

The water stuff’s just too difficult to read. I’m good at reading such things, perhaps too good (as in, imaginative and perhaps a little on the paranoid side) but I can’t get a read.

Keep in mind that the OP’s wife had a lens of lesser value that was a gift from the OP. To give the lens to the wife instead of to the couple was bound to hurt the husband’s feelings. Had the friend to do it all over again, I’d hope he’d give the husband a great deal on the lens, so that he could do the couple a favor and let the gift be from the husband or at least to the couple and not just to the wife.

As much as I agree with pretty much everything else you’ve said here, that’s just clearly off the mark unless there is some cultural difference I’m not aware of and such type of behaviour would be typical in your circles. Myself, I’d definitely be scrupulous enough to consider my lady friends’ husbands in pretty much any interaction (to the point of explaining myself, I guess), but I’d never come up with the idea of actually addressing gifts to the couple, forget passing gifts through the husband so that it may look like they came from him rather.

 

[Demetra2]

This may or may not be a problem for your wife but since it is a problem for you, you need to calmly discuss it. I have been happily married for 37 years and I would not be taking gifts from a male friend especially if it bothered my husband. And it would bother him!

 

[EasterJoy]

As much as I agree with pretty much everything else you’ve said here, that’s just clearly off the mark unless there is some cultural difference I’m not aware of and such type of behaviour would be typical in your circles. Myself, I’d definitely be scrupulous enough to consider my lady friends’ husbands in pretty much any interaction (to the point of explaining myself, I guess), but I’d never come up with the idea of actually addressing gifts to the couple, forget passing gifts through the husband so that it may look like they came from him rather.

Look at it this way: Would it make you the least bit uncomfortable if a female colleague in whom you had no romantic interest started giving you expensive gifts? That’s usually taken as a bid for closeness. If you did not want to have a close relationship with her, you would probably see that it is wiser not to accept such a generous gift, lest you give her the wrong idea. If you were married, I’d think you would not be surprised to find your wife cool to this colleague and her expensive gifts to you. The only way the colleague could allay that fear might be to give the gift to you as a couple, to socialize with you as a couple and not try to get alone time with you personally, all in order to assure your wife that it is her intention to be social friends with you as a couple.

Now, let’s say instead that you were to have done some legal work for someone like Oprah Winfrey. This is somebody who has a lot of money and who has a history of giving very generous gifts to just about everybody just because she can. If Oprah were to give you something worth many times more than what your colleague had, your wife would probably not think a thing of it, because while the gift would be extravagant coming from your wife or your female colleague, in the absence of other signs of bidding for undue affection it is obviously nothing more than a small token of simple friendship when it comes from Oprah, something she does for dozens of others in the course of a month.

That is what I’m trying to get at: either this fellow needs to make his bid for friendship in a couple-to-couple manner or else it needs to be clear that this generous gift is a fairly small gesture when his overall habits are taken into consideration. To single out a married woman for unusual largess is asking for trouble, and is therefore a socially inept thing to do. It is not enough to not have bad intentions; a person needs to think of whether or not they could stir up hard feelings by giving others the wrong idea of his or her intentions. Actions speak louder than words, so actions do matter, and mere words alone have a limited capacity to change that.

 

[Xantippe]

EasterJoy,

There was only one expensive gift, and that item was second hand and for a shared hobby.

I asked my husband (who has several hobbies, including optics) about this situation, and he thinks that among hobbyists, this sort of generosity is not unusual. He also points out that the lens in question is not at all expensive, as lenses go.

 

[maryjk]

EasterJoy,

There was only one expensive gift, and that item was second hand and for a shared hobby.

I asked my husband (who has several hobbies, including optics) about this situation, and he thinks that among hobbyists, this sort of generosity is not unusual. He also points out that the lens in question is not at all expensive, as lenses go.

I once had a family friend lend me a car. Yes, a car.

This friend is a single man. My car broke down and my husband couldn’t get to it for two weeks.

So the friend handed me the keys to his car.

Some people simply value friendship over property.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

Look at it this way: Would it make you the least bit uncomfortable if a female colleague in whom you had no romantic interest started giving you expensive gifts? That’s usually taken as a bid for closeness. If you did not want to have a close relationship with her, you would probably see that it is wiser not to accept such a generous gift, lest you give her the wrong idea. If you were married, I’d think you would not be surprised to find your wife cool to this colleague and her expensive gifts to you. The only way the colleague could allay that fear might be to give the gift to you as a couple, to socialize with you as a couple and not try to get alone time with you personally, all in order to assure your wife that it is her intention to be social friends with you as a couple.

Now, let’s say instead that you were to have done some legal work for someone like Oprah Winfrey. This is somebody who has a lot of money and who has a history of giving very generous gifts to just about everybody just because she can. If Oprah were to give you something worth many times more than what your colleague had, your wife would probably not think a thing of it, because while the gift would be extravagant coming from your wife or your female colleague, in the absence of other signs of bidding for undue affection it is obviously nothing more than a small token of simple friendship when it comes from Oprah, something she does for dozens of others in the course of a month.

That is what I’m trying to get at: either this fellow needs to make his bid for friendship in a couple-to-couple manner or else it needs to be clear that this generous gift is a fairly small gesture when his overall habits are taken into consideration. To single out a married woman for unusual largess is asking for trouble, and is therefore a socially inept thing to do. It is not enough to not have bad intentions; a person needs to think of whether or not they could stir up hard feelings by giving others the wrong idea of his or her intentions. Actions speak louder than words, so actions do matter, and mere words alone have a limited capacity to change that.

If the friend bought the lens for her that would be a completely different issue. But he gave her his old one that he didn’t need. I gave my best friend (a man) my old car when I got a new one. I probably could have sold it for about 2K , but I didn’t need the money and he really needed, but couldn’t afford a car. Should I seriously have called his wife and offered her a good deal? No, I just handed over the keys and title. She found out when he surprised her at her work with lunch.

 

[EasterJoy]

If the friend bought the lens for her that would be a completely different issue. But he gave her his old one that he didn’t need. I gave my best friend (a man) my old car when I got a new one. I probably could have sold it for about 2K , but I didn’t need the money and he really needed, but couldn’t afford a car. Should I seriously have called his wife and offered her a good deal? No, I just handed over the keys and title. She found out when he surprised her at her work with lunch.

First off, the lens appeared to the OP to be new. Now, I realize that photographers are an extremely careful group of people, and that their equipment sometimes looks barely used after a great deal of use. It is possible that a photographer who upgrades often might have “used” lens with little or no actual signs of use on them. Still, it is also not unknown for someone to claim an inappropriate gift is more innocent than it is.

That your friend’s wife found out when he surprised *her *at work implies that the gift was in fact for both of them. She also did not find her husband “surprising her” by driving up in a better version of a car she had already given him as a gift, did she? If he had, do you not think that she might have been far less thrilled with your “surprise” than she was?

The gift-giver does not have the world’s most sensitive social radar. If he did, his female friend, the wife, would not be defending him by saying “he’s just showing off.” It is socially inept for a man to show off specifically for the benefit of another man’s wife. He really ought to be discouraged, even if he means no harm, and I cannot even say with certainty that he doesn’t mean to gain himself admiration that *could *do harm, but that he doesn’t care about what harm he does as long as he gets his own ego indulged.

Here’s the thing: If he was making a play for the OP’s wife, what he’s been doing wouldn’t be an unheard of way to groom the wife for a later invitation into the inappropriate. I don’t know why some posters thinks he cannot possibly have inappropriate designs just because he’s being indiscrete about it if he is, as if cheaters are never stupidly brazen about their preparatory advances or would never employ ingratiating gifts to make their targets feel bad about telling them to cut it out and go away.

your gift was innocent does not mean it is irrational to see an extravagant gift as a red flag, when the entire body of behavior is considered.]

 

[Evania]

First off, the lens appeared to the OP to be new. Now, I realize that photographers are an extremely careful group of people, and that their equipment sometimes looks barely used after a great deal of use. It is possible that a photographer who upgrades often might have “used” lens with little or no actual signs of use on them. Still, it is also not unknown for someone to claim an inappropriate gift is more innocent than it is.

That your friend’s wife found out when he surprised *her *at work implies that the gift was in fact for both of them. She also did not find her husband “surprising her” by driving up in a better version of a car she had already given him as a gift, did she? If he had, do you not think that she might have been far less thrilled with your “surprise” than she was?

The gift-giver does not have the world’s most sensitive social radar. If he did, his female friend, the wife, would not be defending him by saying “he’s just showing off.” It is socially inept for a man to show off specifically for the benefit of another man’s wife. He really ought to be discouraged, even if he means no harm, and I cannot even say with certainty that he doesn’t mean to gain himself admiration that *could *do harm, but that he doesn’t care about what harm he does as long as he gets his own ego indulged.

Here’s the thing: If he was making a play for the OP’s wife, what he’s been doing wouldn’t be an unheard of way to groom the wife for a later invitation into the inappropriate. I don’t know why some posters thinks he cannot possibly have inappropriate designs just because he’s being indiscrete about it if he is, as if cheaters are never stupidly brazen about their preparatory advances or would never employ ingratiating gifts to make their targets feel bad about telling them to cut it out and go away.

your gift was innocent does not mean it is irrational to see an extravagant gift as a red flag, when the entire body of behavior is considered.]

The lens may have the appearance of being new, but it easily could still be used.
It only happened once… The guy is married, and could just be a kind soul. You can’t stop a person from being kind, nor should you want to. I suggest to let it go. Certainly, a person should be on the lookout and defend their marriage, but that’s different than scrutinizing every solitary interaction your spouse has with a member of the opposite sex, and putting them under a microscope. The wife has been questioned repeatedly, and she says it’s innocent. If it’s simply a matter of not trusting her, it’s probably a good idea to seek marriage counseling with a trusted therapist. It sounds as if the men in the OP’s family have had issues with fidelity. Naturally, if the men closest to the OP cheat on their spouses, that would cause him to question all men…as he has. Unfortunately, you can’t block half of the human population from having interactions with your spouse. Although the OP undoubtedly is greatly attracted to his wife, that doesn’t mean that every single man is attracted to her. True, he should protect her, but also be realistic in what that protection entails. If there are red flags, address them in a rational manner. To be honest, I see more red flags with the husband and his thoughts toward women, than I do with a guy gifting a person with a shared hobby a used lens.

I have to confess that I feel bad for this man that his wife works with. He sounds like a happily married husband and father, going about his business, and could be clueless that his kind gesture has strangers on the Internet questioning and debating his character at great length, and doubting his fidelity to his wife and family, etc. If this man was our husband or father, we would be rightfully outraged. if this was us, we would be undoubtly insulted. Good advice was offered to the OP, and I hope he discusses this matter with his wife further.