I don't think married people should have opposite sex friends

[mark clemson]

To me, "no opposite sex friends" seems overly controlling. That said, one can attempt to set whatever boundaries one likes in a relationship. Whether your partner will find them reasonable (and/or adhere to them if they claim to be ok with them) is another matter.

IMO it's not the friendships, it's the intent in having them and/or the level of self-control of those involved that matters most. It IS true that friendships sometimes lead to affairs. Despite that, I think that there are many people who's response to a boundary like this (ZERO opposite sex friendships) will essentially be "no" and perhaps questioning why you are in a relationship with them if you feel you can't trust them.

Edited February 4, 2022 by mark clemson

[BaileyB]

Quote

I don't think married people should have opposite sex friends

Certainly not if they are not able to show respect to their partner and maintain appropriate boundaries. 

 

[Uruktopi]

35 minutes ago, BaileyB said:

Certainly not if they are not able to show respect to their partner and maintain appropriate boundaries. 

 

True.

Let´s look it from another perspective.

How does it sound?

"I don't think that people not able to show respect to their partner and maintain appropriate boundaries with opposite sex friends should be married"

I´m also thinking on other things that those ones "should not" for the best interest of their friends, specially the married ones.

 

[lana-banana]

This is ridiculous. Are gay people not supposed to have friends of the same sex? Should bisexual people not have any friends at all? It's about boundaries and communication, not sexual orientation. 

[Els]

You do realise that an ex is very different from a platonic friend whom you were never involved with romantically, right?

Stop generalising to what other people should do. Rather, you should be focusing on what YOU should be doing - and not contacting exes can definitely reduce the drama in your life.

[czanclus]

Vent acknowledged and appreciated, however my angle is that there are people that have massive insecurities and possessive tendencies that prevent otherwise perfectly legitimate and valuable opposite sex relationships. I've lost two such entirely platonic friendships that I deeply cared about due to insecure wives/girlfriends. The woman in your story is pathetic. Just picture yourself policing your boyfriend's phone, replying with a rude message, and then cyber-stalking women that wish him a happy birthday on social media. It's like: 'lady, if this is what you got to do to keep you man on a leash, you ain't got a man. You got much bigger problems than p****-blocking sporadic contacts on his birthday, and you'd be wise to spend your time accordingly.' Sheesh, indeed.

[vla1120]

20 minutes ago, czanclus said:

I've lost two such entirely platonic friendships that I deeply cared about due to insecure wives/girlfriends.

But this wasn't a purely platonic friendship. It was an ex.

[Alpacalia]

15 hours ago, Uruktopi said:

I´m also thinking on other things that those ones "should not" for the best interest of their friends, specially the married ones.

 

Agree.

When you have a partner with high self-esteem, there are some caveats to consider; for instance, he or she is unlikely to tolerate disrespect caused by poorly maintained opposite-sex friendships.

Relationships need trust, but life happens, so being careful not to put yourself in a vulnerable position is essential.

It could be a "slippery slope" if both friends tend to turn to each other for advice about their respective partners or seek comfort in one another when things are going wrong in their current relationship. 

"Should not" be friends with the opposite sex though seems rather stringent.

Edited February 4, 2022 by Alpaca

[Allupinnit]

1 hour ago, czanclus said:

Vent acknowledged and appreciated, however my angle is that there are people that have massive insecurities and possessive tendencies that prevent otherwise perfectly legitimate and valuable opposite sex relationships. I've lost two such entirely platonic friendships that I deeply cared about due to insecure wives/girlfriends. The woman in your story is pathetic. Just picture yourself policing your boyfriend's phone, replying with a rude message, and then cyber-stalking women that wish him a happy birthday on social media. It's like: 'lady, if this is what you got to do to keep you man on a leash, you ain't got a man. You got much bigger problems than p****-blocking sporadic contacts on his birthday, and you'd be wise to spend your time accordingly.' Sheesh, indeed.

How do you know he hasn't given her reason to be suspicious already, though?  

I've been on the receiving end of the jealous girlfriend, and guess what?  I left him alone!  That's his business and if he's choosing to date a jealous woman than I have to respect that.  I don't want to cause drama in anyone's home life.  I have plenty of girlfriends I can spend my time with.  

Not to mention, OP already got herself into a world of trouble from "innocently" messaging a man on FB, privately.  I am not sure why she thinks this is so harmless, it's NOT.  If I had known an ex of my H's who recently ended an affair with another married man texted him an "innocent" happy birthday, there would be heads rolling.  

And that doesn't make me insecure, I just know how hard marriage already is without these little distractions that inevitably end up taking on a life of their own.  What if this guy was going through a rough patch with his wife (and let's be honest even GREAT marriages have them), and might have been vulnerable?  

 

[czanclus]

59 minutes ago, Allupinnit said:

How do you know he hasn't given her reason to be suspicious already, though?  

I've been on the receiving end of the jealous girlfriend, and guess what?  I left him alone!  That's his business and if he's choosing to date a jealous woman than I have to respect that.  I don't want to cause drama in anyone's home life.  I have plenty of girlfriends I can spend my time with. 

I don't, and in fact, if I had to make an educated guess, I'd say that the very reason this women is now policing his phone is because she found legitimate cheating behavior in prior situations. And yes, guilty of judging aggrieved wives everywhere for being pathetic in their handling the problem, but really - this is 1) NOT the problem and 2) NOT how you handle your husband's tendencies to stray. And yes further, spoken by a woman who's never had a relationship longer than 5 years and never has been married, but I truly cannot even imagine I would problem solve infidelity by phone policing. If it comes to that, then I don't trust him, I can't trust him, and we should with dignity end the marriage.

As for being on the receiving end of SO's jealousy, guess what? I did exactly that as well. And so did Mya, even if she came to the site to express her annoyance about it. In the two instances from my personal life, I just let it be. No 'happy birthday', no 'how's life/wife/kids'... none of that. Just internal sadness and missing the interaction, unique and platonic. In the third instance, where it was an ex from college who had a hard time getting over me, yet we still ended up exchanging some emails through the years when he got married and had two kids, it was I who in fact saw to it that boundaries are in place when on one occasion he emailed me and told me he'd be on a business trip, and would like to talk to me on the phone to catch up. I did not even dignify that message with a response, let alone take him up on it. But that was a man that had deep feelings for me, and whom I hurt because I couldn't reciprocate. I live with that decision (to break up with him) to this day, and think about him if not every, than certainly every other day of my life. Anyway, I still stand by the perception that 'outside women', whether ex's or old friends, get way too bad a rep for sometimes merely existing. As if I should somehow now apologize to his wife that he never felt for her what he felt for me. Or, worse even, let her know about his occasional written rumination about what could have been and how much he misses the times in college we had, in which I did not engage. But not to digress...

I myself also have, maybe not plenty of girlfriends, but a sufficient count to say I can find outlets for musings on my middle age identity crisis and other daily reveries. These two male relationships/friendships, one with an ex, and the other with just a friend, were never about that anyway, and thus were as unique as them and I were as humans. Context of the past matters, and people are not plug-n-play items that you can conveniently replace with someone else who happens not to be leveraged by a romantic relationship. But, while this text is intended for humans to read, my problems and sentiments remain my own.

1 hour ago, Allupinnit said:

Not to mention, OP already got herself into a world of trouble from "innocently" messaging a man on FB, privately.  I am not sure why she thinks this is so harmless, it's NOT.  If I had known an ex of my H's who recently ended an affair with another married man texted him an "innocent" happy birthday, there would be heads rolling.  

I am quite familiar with the story, but the messaging was about catching up, and she was in a vulnerable place of her own marital dissolution. I am not excusing her behavior, and if you read her posts, neither is she. On numerous occasions, she's owned up to her part of the affair. She in fact made this post to say that private messages on social media to married members of opposite sex (that being the sex of romantic interest of a hetero-person) are NOT harmless. I expressed my angle of acknowledging the vent and saying I wish that wasn't the case. It truly would be a better, more richly connected world.

On the 'heads rolling' reaction on your end, if you don't mind elaborating, whose head would be rolling, and how do you believe that would solve the problem of your husband's hypothetical cheating tendencies?

[czanclus]

3 hours ago, vla1120 said:

But this wasn't a purely platonic friendship. It was an ex.

Acknowledged, and in my personal case, one was an ex, and the other just a friend. May I approach the council on the following proposition? Would love enlightenment, preferably beyond the generic 'biological imperative and ubiquitous male testosterone flaw' explanation, where I'm mistaken... Anyway, let's for the purpose of this argument, consider 'an ex' as someone whom the now married partner once upon a time rejected as desired partner. Been there for sure. Would it, at all, stand to reason that while this married partner harbors no ill feelings towards that ex and in fact may even respect them as a pretty decent human being (just not good enough wife material let's say), the said partner not only desires no illicit affairs with the ex, but would outright find them totally inferior to both what he has at home (no matter how arguably stale at this time) and what he can get on the side as fresh meat? If you ask me, especially where the ex isn't 'the one that got away', 'the one that the man still pines for', 'the one that no one else will ever live up to', but just one of the happily in the past chapters of life, the desirability of that ex is in fact LESS than practically any other proposition involving a new 'body'. This is prevalently more true for heterosexual males, but let's be inclusive nonetheless.

In Mya's case, I don't have enough information to jump to her defense, nor did she solicit anything alike from me, but again, if I had to bet a lunch's worth of money on it, I'd say it was someone who might have been meaningful in the past and vice versa, but has over the years established himself as a consistent low-key friend she checks in on by way of a birthday message once a year. It is, further in my view, unfair to label her as some 'unhinged wanton harlot' scouring the SMs of men from her past because she fell into a fantasy hole with one man while she was processing her own divorce. I'm not saying you did that, vla1120, but a few messages on the thread expressed a resembling sentiment.

Edited February 4, 2022 by czanclus

[Uruktopi]

5 hours ago, Alpaca said:

"Should not" be friends with the opposite sex though seems rather stringent.

Seems unhealthy.

Besides, I would have a problem telling so to women that had been my good friends for about 50 years.

[Myabee]

On 2/4/2022 at 1:04 AM, Elswyth said:

You do realise that an ex is very different from a platonic friend whom you were never involved with romantically, right?

Stop generalising to what other people should do. Rather, you should be focusing on what YOU should be doing - and not contacting exes can definitely reduce the drama in your life.

So then people who have ex wives and ex girlfriends from many years ago should not be friends with them on social media? Because being in touch on social media is having contact with an ex. Am I wrong to say that? 

[Myabee]

16 hours ago, czanclus said:

 In Mya's case, I don't have enough information to jump to her defense, nor did she solicit anything alike from me, but again, if I had to bet a lunch's worth of money on it, I'd say it was someone who might have been meaningful in the past and vice versa, but has over the years established himself as a consistent low-key friend she checks in on by way of a birthday message once a year. It is, further in my view, unfair to label her as some 'unhinged

Hey thank you for stepping up to the D line here as this person was only a person who I would send a birthday wish at once a year either via fb wall or text. This year to get a message back from clearly this persons spouse. This Old friend  very long ago ex means zero to me in any romantic way at all. This is what sparked my question as to if Married people should have friends of the opposite sex. Especially ones that a spouse does not know.  

[Myabee]

19 hours ago, Alpaca said:

Relationships need trust, but life happens, so being careful not to put yourself in a vulnerable position is essential.

They sure do need trust. Which also leads my mind to wonder why a XMM in my case the actual old friend not old flame I ended up in a world of trouble with and then he was  in big trouble for loss of trust. Still until this day has ex girlfriends and wives on his fb. Not fixated on that and making that abundantly clear here. That seems even extra odd IMOP when trying to repair a marriage. 

[Myabee]

20 hours ago, czanclus said:

The woman in your story is pathetic. Just picture yourself policing your boyfriend's phone, replying with a rude message, and then cyber-stalking women that wish him a happy birthday on social media. It's like: 'lady, if this is what you got to do to keep you man on a leash, you ain't got a man. You got much bigger problems than p****-blocking sporadic contacts on his birthday, and you'd be wise to spend your time accordingly.' Sheesh, indeed.

I agree!!!!! 

[Myabee]

On 2/3/2022 at 8:48 PM, lana-banana said:

This is ridiculous. Are gay people not supposed to have friends of the same sex? Should bisexual people not have any friends at all? It's about boundaries and communication, not sexual orientation. 

Yes I agree with all of this. However, If something is amiss in a married persons marital union then IMOP it's a very slippery slope to have opposite sex friends if one does not have solid boundaries and most especially if one of the married persons was just caught in a affair. Trust??? 

[lana-banana]

9 hours ago, Myabee said:

Yes I agree with all of this. However, If something is amiss in a married persons marital union then IMOP it's a very slippery slope to have opposite sex friends if one does not have solid boundaries and most especially if one of the married persons was just caught in a affair. Trust??? 

No, not really. There is no way you can avoid interacting with people of the sex you're attracted to: coworkers, cashiers, friends, whatever. If there are trust and boundary issues, then the couple needs to decide for themselves what to do. If my husband had an affair I wouldn't ban him from talking to all other women.

[BaileyB]

1 hour ago, lana-banana said:

If my husband had an affair I wouldn't ban him from talking to all other women.

Agree. absolutely.

But, as they say, with “freedom” comes responsibility. I’m never going to tell my husband who he can and can not be friends with but if he does not respect an appropriate boundary with other women - I will have a decision to make about whether he is the man I chose to be my life partner. 

Maya, if I may offer one word of advice to you it would be - at the end of the day, the only person you control is yourself. People will do what they are going to do, but if you are making good decisions for yourself and not involving yourself with others who would behave inappropriately and create drama in your life - you will be doing ok. 

[FMW]

I would think most legitimately platonic friendships are known to married partners.  If you aren't good enough friends for the spouse to know who you are then I don't think you need to have private contact.  

Most likely he HAS given his wife reason to be suspicious of contacts.  Whether you think it's fair, right, healthy, or whatever, not everyone sees things the same way.  I think it's forseeable that personal contact with a married person (other than for business reasons) when their partner has no idea who you are might cause a little ripple.  As has been noted, if you feel you must have contact with them then do it in a public way - Facebook posts, conversations with others around, whether or not others are participating in the conversation.  

Even if he hasn't given her any reason and she's just unreasonably jealous, she's his wife, she gets to decide how she reacts and he gets to decide whether or not he is ok with that. Friends should have a certain amount of sensitivity and awareness and respect relationships.  

[Alpacalia]

On 2/5/2022 at 3:56 AM, Myabee said:

They sure do need trust. Which also leads my mind to wonder why a XMM in my case the actual old friend not old flame I ended up in a world of trouble with and then he was  in big trouble for loss of trust. Still until this day has ex girlfriends and wives on his fb. Not fixated on that and making that abundantly clear here. That seems even extra odd IMOP when trying to repair a marriage. 

In any case, it would be advisable to distance yourself rather than become entangled in the ins and outs of their marriage. It is a relationship between the two of them, and they can set their own parameters however they see fit. Friendships that make a spouse feel threatened or uncomfortable require that friend to be respectful of what they feel, especially if the friend is an old flame.

[NuevoYorko]

Life is too short to cut off dear or potential friends and collaborators because of their sex / gender.  I can't even imagine.  Fortunately neither can my friends or women I would choose to have relationships with.  

[Els]

On 2/5/2022 at 9:45 PM, Myabee said:

So then people who have ex wives and ex girlfriends from many years ago should not be friends with them on social media? Because being in touch on social media is having contact with an ex. Am I wrong to say that? 

I'm not sure if you are willfully being obtuse...

1. You TEXTED HIM happy birthday. Like it or not, that's waaaayyyy more intimate than just having an ex on FB, for most people. But yes, if you have trouble separating the two and maintaining reasonable boundaries, you can certainly choose not to add them on social media. It will simplify the decision for you, and there isn't much to lose by not having them. If you can maintain reasonable boundaries, then it's usually okay to have them on social media.

2. Your post title is misleading - you are telling people that they shouldn't have opposite sex friends when they're married, when in reality the issue lies with you texting a married ex-boyfriend.

[stillafool]

27 minutes ago, S2B said:

But the way you reacted makes you look like you’re guilty of doing something inappropriate. Why wouldn’t you just say who you are and why you’re wishing a happy birthday to a friend?

Absolutely!  That would have made sense to his wife and she wouldn't have been suspicious if you had just explained.  He probably got in trouble for something that wasn't his fault but looked fishy to his wife.

[DKT3]

Affairs don't happen because one is friends with the opposite sex, they happen because some married people have poor boundaries,  a lack of respect and are selfish.  People who want to have affairs, will. It doesn't matter if they text 190 opposite sex people a day or none. 

Affairs don't just happen,  and they don't just happen because you have friends from the opposite sex. The happen because you wanted and made it happen.