Spinoff: Friendships and Marriage

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BlueEyedLady

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The thread about married people and opposite sex friendships inspired me to post this thread.

How do you and your spouse navigate friendships? Is it different than before you married? Are most of your friends mutual or separate? How often will one of you go out with friends without the other? Have you been integrated into each other’s social circles?

If you’re single feel free to talk about what your ideal situation would be. And of course you can mention the differences between friends of the same sex and friends of the opposite.
 
We have mutual couple friends that we see, he has guy friends, and I have girlfriends.

My husband has no girlfriends. I have just 2 guy friends that I will hang out with 1-on-1, but my husband is completely comfortable with that. There is no sexual tension between me and those friends. If I had a guy friend and I sensed hanging out with that friend made my husband uncomfortable, I would create group situations or slowly distance myself. My husband and I trust each other, but we put each other first.
 
That has two phases:

How do we navigate *each other’s *friendships with members of the opposite sex? It helps that we both have friends of the opposite sex and, if anything, prefer our friends of the opposite sex. We have lots of friends who have friends of both sexes, and we both trained, work, and volunteer in areas where men and women work on similar terms. Neither of us, however, think that men and women are interchangeable or that “nice people” do not think about whether or not their friends are sexually attractive or never fall in love with someone they had no intention of falling in love with.

We tell each other who we are spending time with. We don’t keep secret friendships or carry on a social life with members of the opposite sex that our spouse is not invited into. We don’t know all of each other’s friends well, but it is presumed that a friend of one of us is a friend of both of us. If I had a friend that my husband really did not like me to spend time with, I would respect his wishes. That doesn’t mean I’d cut the friend off entirely, but that I’d not carve out time from my schedule to spend with that person nor go out of my way to make gestures that would imply a greater connection than I want to have.

The other phase is how I am friends with other married people. Whether male or female, I believe very strongly that you have to be a friend of the marriage. You do not talk down someone else’s spouse, even if they do. This is just prudence: Two days later, when your friend is done venting, they’ll remember every bad word you said about their spouse! No, you always talk about someone’s spouse as if the spouse could overhear you. That doesn’t mean you never speak any hard truths, but that you are always careful to word things as you would if they were right in front of you. (This is a good rule to keep, generally.)

I have had the situation where I felt a male friend was taking an unhealthy interest in me. I made it a point to be friendly with his wife, to tell him how lucky he was to have her, and to otherwise emphasize that I was a friend of his marriage. I also made it a point to avoid one-on-one kinds of interactions with him. I wanted him to be sure he remembered who he was and that I was not going to forget who he was, either.

I had another situation where a friend told me his wife was jealous of me. This was an email correspondence with someone from my past. I told him that I thought his marriage ought to come first, and I didn’t have any more private correspondence with him. His wife needs to feel she can trust me to be her friend and will respect her feelings. The wife of my friend is my friend. That is what my friend made her when he chose to marry her: that is, the most important person in his life, including his social life bar none. I have plenty of other friends I can correspond with where the situation is comfortable for everyone. As for my friend, our friendship has to revolve around the central place of his marriage, not the other way around.
 
For the first 16 years of my marriage, I had no issue at all with XH having female friends. I entirely trusted him to know the physical and emotional boundaries, and that it was strictly platonic friendship. My feelings on the matter changed greatly when I found out he had many female friends he was keeping very secret from me.

Unfortunately, as a result, I now struggle with men who seem very friendly. Because of my online business, I network with many people, and have become friends with some men, who seem to enjoy talking to me via e-mail and private message. It’s all strictly platonic, but as a result of my experiences, I now feel uncomfortable with it, question their real intentions, and worry how it looks to their wives–yet I feel it would put an uncomfortable spin on it to SAY to them, “Your wife knows about these e-mails, right?”

😦

Before my experiences with XH, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it, I don’t think.
 
In my situation and others I know where the marriage is platonic and held together out of Catholic obedience and duty, it is just too risky to have any close friendship with someone of the opposite sex. I know myself that even visiting male practicioners is unwise. When someone longs for loving intimacy in life but is prevented from it, you simply have to make practicle, common sense, realistic adjustments to prevent a fall. Those who have their needs as a woman/man strongly met by marriage are far less in danger of these types of falls with people of the opposite sex as friends.
 
LongingSoul said:
In my situation and others I know where the marriage is platonic and held together out of Catholic obedience and duty, it is just too risky to have any close friendship with someone of the opposite sex. I know myself that even visiting male practicioners is unwise. When someone longs for loving intimacy in life but is prevented from it, you simply have to make practicle, common sense, realistic adjustments to prevent a fall. Those who have their needs as a woman/man strongly met by marriage are far less in danger of these types of falls with people of the opposite sex as friends.
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Good post. The situation can definitely change over the course of a marriage. Lonely spouses usually ought to seek out same-sex friends. If you need contact with people of the opposite sex, it needs to be either relatives or else maybe a very public group situation, you’re right. It is wise to be careful.
 
From a single guy’s perspective:

Down the years I’ve had a lot of female friends. Some of them got married, unfortunately our friendships curtailed off, despite my best efforts of befriending the husbands as well, who don’t seem to be interested in becoming friends. Hopefully not due to jealousy!

Currently, I’m good friends with several married coworkers. One of them is essentially my ‘work wife’. We take the same bus home, I give her rides to and from work, drop her off her place, pass thru burger joints after work, and give each other advice, among other things. So much that even the boss knows we’re friends!

She’s recently married, for 2 months. Unfortunately I haven’t met the husband personally yet, although he really liked the speech I gave at the reception, so at least, according to the wife, he likes me (phew!)

My relationship with my married co-workers is very very beneficial to my state of mind at work, and even when I get married, I wouldn’t want to deny my wife that. What’s important is to remember approrpiate boundaries.
 
altms said:
From a single guy’s perspective:

Down the years I’ve had a lot of female friends. Some of them got married, unfortunately our friendships curtailed off, despite my best efforts of befriending the husbands as well, who don’t seem to be interested in becoming friends. Hopefully not due to jealousy!

Currently, I’m good friends with several married coworkers. One of them is essentially my ‘work wife’. We take the same bus home, I give her rides to and from work, drop her off her place, pass thru burger joints after work, and give each other advice, among other things. So much that even the boss knows we’re friends!

She’s recently married, for 2 months. Unfortunately I haven’t met the husband personally yet, although he really liked the speech I gave at the reception, so at least, according to the wife, he likes me (phew!)

My relationship with my married co-workers is very very beneficial to my state of mind at work, and even when I get married, I wouldn’t want to deny my wife that. What’s important is to remember approrpiate boundaries.
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If you want to do that, make it a point to avoid referring to opposite-sex friends as “wife”–not work wife or gym wife or sports bar wife or any other kind of wife except the one true kind of wife, that’s your wife, and that’s it.
 
Well when it comes to.friendship with the opposite sex and marriage we need to look at the circumstances and look at people in the marriage individually. I think that is one of those areas where what it works for me it may not work for others and every couple needs to find their happy medium. In my personal opinion friends from the opposite sex are ok as long as there is some boundaries, and those boundaries should be set by the level of comfort of each spouse. I also think is important for each party to take into consideration the feelings of the other spouse if something is causing discomfort.

In my case, I have several guy friends and.my fiancee.doesn’t have any problem with that. Now my guy friends like to engage my fiancee too and given that most of my guy friends are married usually we all go out in couples. I have a guy friend who is single but he engaged my fiancee from the beginning and has become quite friendly with him too so my fiancee has no problem with that. My fiancee also has several female.friends but it has worked pretty much the same as with my guy friends, I have ended up befriending his female friends and they always engage me. The only time I had an issue was in the very beginning when we started dating, he has a good friend from College who tends to be flirty (this girl flirts with every single man.around her…now I think is more of her personality) and this girl made me feel very uncomfortable, so I just told my fiancee that she was making me uncomfortable. He took it very well and we decided he wouldn’t meet her if I wasn’t present. That was almost three years ago and by now sincerely I have no problem with her, I think I feel bad for her because at this point I have seen that is just her personality and she feels bad about it because she has lost several friends over that, so now I don’t have any issue with her. Maybe too is that we handled.it properly in the beginning or that after three years I know that fiancee would not become.friends with a girl that wouldn’t engage me equally, but I have zero problems.with his female friends.
 
EasterJoy said:
If you want to do that, make it a point to avoid referring to opposite-sex friends as “wife”–not work wife or gym wife or sports bar wife or any other kind of wife except the one true kind of wife, that’s your wife, and that’s it.
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I agree 100% with Easter joy. I don’t think that the terms work wife or.work husband are proper and even my fiancee who doesn’t mind one bit me having guy friends would be upset if I would refer to one of.my guy friends at work as work husband.
 
marymary1975 said:
I agree 100% with Easter joy. I don’t think that the terms work wife or.work husband are proper and even my fiancee who doesn’t mind one bit me having guy friends would be upset if I would refer to one of.my guy friends at work as work husband.
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I agree completely. Not only should the term not be used, I think that if you’re close enough to someone for the joke to even be applicable you need to distance yourself. And this is from someone with almost exclusively male friends.

There’s one exception I can think of. My husband and I went camping with another couple shortly after our wedding. (The other couple has been dating for 2 years and live together, so they’re serious.) The male in this couple is one of my best friends and even stood up with me as a bridesmaid in my wedding. He and I loved the trip, however, my husband and his girlfriend did not. So when we would build the fire or go for hikes they hung back and talked, and tried to get out of whatever camping activity we were doing. The joke was made by my male friend, in front of both my husband and his girlfriend, that we each had our real spouse and our camping spouse. But, the four of us hang out regularly, the joke was made publicly, and we all knew that it was just a joke. If I came home and told my husband that I had a “work husband”, or if he told me he had a “work wife”, there would be very serious marital problems. That’s a very close relationship that occurs for 8 hours a day away from your spouse. That’s not a group of friends having fun, that’s a serious issue.
 
BlueEyedLady said:
I agree completely. Not only should the term not be used, I think that if you’re close enough to someone for the joke to even be applicable you need to distance yourself. And this is from someone with almost exclusively male friends.

There’s one exception I can think of. My husband and I went camping with another couple shortly after our wedding. (The other couple has been dating for 2 years and live together, so they’re serious.) The male in this couple is one of my best friends and even stood up with me as a bridesmaid in my wedding. He and I loved the trip, however, my husband and his girlfriend did not. So when we would build the fire or go for hikes they hung back and talked, and tried to get out of whatever camping activity we were doing. The joke was made by my male friend, in front of both my husband and his girlfriend, that we each had our real spouse and our camping spouse. But, the four of us hang out regularly, the joke was made publicly, and we all knew that it was just a joke. If I came home and told my husband that I had a “work husband”, or if he told me he had a “work wife”, there would be very serious marital problems. That’s a very close relationship that occurs for 8 hours a day away from your spouse. That’s not a group of friends having fun, that’s a serious issue.
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If your spouse makes the joke and you roll your eyes and say “no offense to Bob here, but that sounds like incest to me!” then it is joke. IOW: let other people make that joke, but people whose job practically makes them “work spouses” ought to let other people make the joke.
 
EasterJoy said:
If your spouse makes the joke and you roll your eyes and say “no offense to Bob here, but that sounds like incest to me!” then it is joke. IOW: let other people make that joke, but people whose job practically makes them “work spouses” ought to let other people make the joke.
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I disagree there. If someone made the joke about another man being my “work spouse” I would politely but firmly correct them. I would never want anyone to misunderstand the nature of our relationship or think that I’m even ok with it being seen that way.
 
BlueEyedLady said:
The thread about married people and opposite sex friendships inspired me to post this thread.

How do you and your spouse navigate friendships? Is it different than before you married? Are most of your friends mutual or separate? How often will one of you go out with friends without the other? Have you been integrated into each other’s social circles?

If you’re single feel free to talk about what your ideal situation would be. And of course you can mention the differences between friends of the same sex and friends of the opposite.
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Before we were married, my wife had her friends and we both had my friends. Leading up to and shortly after our marriage, we had a series of ridiculously cartoonish fallings out, to the point where when we told people about them they expected us to say at least one of the people put on a top hat and monocle while twirling their mustache and laughing maniacally. We also outgrew several of my friends, all of whom felt that drinking/smoking their lives away made a lot more sense than finishing college, getting a job, moving out of their parents’ house and getting on with their lives. The rest of our old friends moved away, although we’re still close with a couple of them. Luckily, the ones we still see on occasion are close friends with both of us so there’s never any friction. We’re just as comfortable going out as a group, or one pair of us going out while the other stays home with the kids.

As for friends we’ve made since getting married, the bulk of mine are through work. Since I work remotely, that limits contact. My wife has several close friends through our parish/school. I get along with a couple of them, including one of their husbands. The other husbands won’t give me the time of day (I have no idea why since none of them have ever said more than two words to me at any given time), which limits any sort of social interaction we might have with them. When my wife gets together with them, usually once or twice a month during the school year, I’m very clearly not welcome so there’s no mutual interaction there. There are a handful of other couples we associate with at parish functions.

For many years the bulk of my extramarital social time was spent with family members. My wife was usually welcome but seldom able to go along due to the kids. I’m no longer welcome in most of those groups, either from fallings out or because I no longer drink (no joke, I’m not even welcome as a designated driver). Now, outside of my wife and the occasional family thing, most of my social time is at parish functions or classes.

My wife and I don’t have an issue with any of this since we’re each other’s best friend. We’re seldom able to get my parents to take our kids while we go out (they jump at the chance to do it for my siblings), but that’s not such a bad thing since we enjoy our kids’ company. Once the babies are older we figure we’ll be able to do a bit more socially again. Until then, we do what we can and enjoy things as they come.
 
My husband and I have evolved greatly during the course of our time together as a couple. We are still newly married but much has changed over the past few years.

Before we were married I had many, many male friends. It was the nature of my career. I was one of very few females who worked as a medic for a fire department.

My husband had no issues with me hanging out with them. When I got off shift it wasn’t uncommon for us to go to a restaurant, hang out at the bar and have a couple of drinks. I can honestly say it was platonic…at least from my stand point it was. They knew I was off the market and serious about my relationship. If their feelings for me went beyond platonic friendship I never heard about it…from them or anyone else for that matter.

My husband never had female friends he was close to. He was friendly with some of his closest buddies wives and girlfriends and friendly with some of my girlfriends but that was about it. He had no female friends he would hang out with alone.

A few things have changed substantially since we’ve married. The marriage itself hasn’t changed my viewpoint…it was the conversion to Catholicism that changed my viewpoint. Whether my husband has changed or not is a mute point…I just don’t feel it’s appropriate for me to hang out with men when my husband isn’t there.

Another thing is the fact that I’ve become a SAHM. We moved away and I haven’t kept in contact with my old work buddies.
The friends I’ve made are through Church and I’ve found myself hanging out with more and more women now…simply because we have more in common.
 
BlueEyedLady said:
If you’re single feel free to talk about what your ideal situation would be. And of course you can mention the differences between friends of the same sex and friends of the opposite.
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Thank you. It’s refreshing to be invited to chime in on discussions such as these.

My ideal situation would be that people would simply trust each other. Maybe I am naïve, but from my standpoint as a single woman who hasn’t found her mate and might not at this point in life, I am not looking to steal someone’s husband from them. I don’t appreciate being treated like that at my church. There is no denying that single people are treated differently than married folk. I can’t tell you how many times I have witnessed married men and women – who aren’t married to each other – give each other huge bear hugs and kisses on the cheek. If I were to attempt anything like that I’d be shunned (believe me it’s happened on at least one occasion from an innocent hug I had to audacity to give to a married man).

I am naturally shy and it’s hard for me to make friends. But once I am comfortable with people I come out of my shell and am myself with them. Unfortunately, as a single woman in the Catholic Church (at least the one I attend now) I am constantly on guard to make sure nothing I do or say could be misconstrued as flirting or stepping over some boundary set by a married couple. Constantly walking on eggshells can take a toll on a girl, and I’m not sure how much longer I can do it.

My closest friends are all married and I am very fortunate to also be friends with their husbands. In the rare moments I’ve been alone with the husbands I have never felt that I was doing something wrong, or that there was some scandal a brewing, or that I had to be on my guard. Why is it that this kind of thing only seems to happen at church, where you would think that people would be a little more trusting?

My belief is that we can’t help how we feel if (heaven forbid) we develop an attraction for a married person to whom we are not married. But that is where our faith comes in. I trust myself not to act on any feelings I may develop from being friends with someone of the opposite sex that would remotely lead to an affair with a person, married or not. It pains me and sickens me that there is so much talk on this forum about how important it is for married people to avoid being alone with single people of the other gender. Believe it or not, people still have morals in this world and many of them sit right next to you in the pew.

/end rant.
 
My husband and I have separate groups of friends, and while we hang out as a couple occasionally with his, I don’t think we are necessarily “integrated” into each other’s groups. We’ll both go out every now and then with our own friends, and I’ve taken several weekend trips with mine.

I’ve found that I’m in this weird place where all of my friends are either single, or married with children. We don’t have children yet, so it’s like we’re not in the same place as our friends. I’ve drifted a little bit from my single friends, and can’t quite relate with our friends with kids either. We still hang out, but it’s different. We don’t know any couples in the same place we are.
 
EasterJoy said:
If your spouse makes the joke and you roll your eyes and say “no offense to Bob here, but that sounds like incest to me!” then it is joke. IOW: let other people make that joke, but people whose job practically makes them “work spouses” ought to let other people make the joke.
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Better yet, provided the response doesn’t go to the point of “Methinks he doth protest too much.” 😦
 
OKalready said:
Thank you. It’s refreshing to be invited to chime in on discussions such as these.

My ideal situation would be that people would simply trust each other. Maybe I am naïve, but from my standpoint as a single woman who hasn’t found her mate and might not at this point in life, I am not looking to steal someone’s husband from them. I don’t appreciate being treated like that at my church. There is no denying that single people are treated differently than married folk. I can’t tell you how many times I have witnessed married men and women – who aren’t married to each other – give each other huge bear hugs and kisses on the cheek. If I were to attempt anything like that I’d be shunned (believe me it’s happened on at least one occasion from an innocent hug I had to audacity to give to a married man).

I am naturally shy and it’s hard for me to make friends. But once I am comfortable with people I come out of my shell and am myself with them. Unfortunately, as a single woman in the Catholic Church (at least the one I attend now) I am constantly on guard to make sure nothing I do or say could be misconstrued as flirting or stepping over some boundary set by a married couple. Constantly walking on eggshells can take a toll on a girl, and I’m not sure how much longer I can do it.

My closest friends are all married and I am very fortunate to also be friends with their husbands. In the rare moments I’ve been alone with the husbands I have never felt that I was doing something wrong, or that there was some scandal a brewing, or that I had to be on my guard. Why is it that this kind of thing only seems to happen at church, where you would think that people would be a little more trusting?

My belief is that we can’t help how we feel if (heaven forbid) we develop an attraction for a married person to whom we are not married. But that is where our faith comes in. I trust myself not to act on any feelings I may develop from being friends with someone of the opposite sex that would remotely lead to an affair with a person, married or not. It pains me and sickens me that there is so much talk on this forum about how important it is for married people to avoid being alone with single people of the other gender. Believe it or not, people still have morals in this world and many of them sit right next to you in the pew.

/end rant.
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Well, yes and no. There *does *have to be a certain amount of trust. If you don’t believe that your spouse intends to be faithful to you, you’ll go crazy with worry and jealousy. That is no way to live, not for you and not for your spouse. You cannot force fidelity with locks and barbed wire.

Certainly a fellow married person does not pose less of a threat to a marriage than a single person, either, not in terms of who married people fall into adulterous or inappropriately close relationships with. People do think that other married people are “safe”, but the reality does not bear that out. Anybody can be tempted, married or not. It is also not the “most attractive” people who fall into adultery, either. Passion does not always work the way we imagine. Like hydrolytic pressure, the force that allows a foot of moving water to move a car, the power of passion is easy to underestimate.

The thing to realize is the vast majority of people who fall into adultery had no plan to fall into it. The devil prowls around trying to steal souls, but most people don’t prowl around trying to break up other people’s marriages. That is what makes me cautious: that is, the number of people who had no bad motives who fall into infidelity. It can happen so fast.
 
We are both fine with each other having friends, even friends of the opposite gender. The main thing is that if one of us starts to become friends with someone of the opposite gender, we make sure to introduce them to our spouse so that they can become a mutual friend. We take each relationship on its own basis. If a relationship caused friction in our marriage we would end or change it. If there was any indication of romantic intentions we would end the relationship. But beyond that neither of us would have a problem with the other hanging out with friends of either gender. It all depends on the particular circumstances.
 
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