How do you feel about...

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ChandlerFan

ChandlerFan

Senior Member
Jan 8, 2013
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the idea of your significant other or spouse having friends of the opposite gender?


Are your feelings on this subject different for a person you are dating vs. a person you are married to? In other words, does your relationship status with your S.O. make a difference?


Would it make a difference to you if they were in-person friends or online friends?


How would you approach opposite sex friendships upon entering into a relationship or getting married?


And....go!
 
Would depend how close they are and how much they spend time with one another as well as if they're willing to have the friendship known to their spouse. Some can be trusted but it would be a bit suspicious if they kept this said friendship a bit distant from their married life... Online friendship would be a different story, but then again I wouldn't really know other than hearing about facebook being the melting pot of having online affairs and resulting in divorces...

You can see where this would be going. xD
 
I think that we AS A COUPLE would have no issue with single friends of any gender, but I think it's more dodgy territory for someone of the opposite gender to be exclusively my or her friend.
 
I am sure my significant other and I will discuss the issue when I have one. I have learned though that for me I seem to automatically change those dynamics when I am in a relationship. I do not want my significant other to have any reason to have doubts so as Andy Stanley puts it, I set up "guardrails" fairly quick.

Weirdly enough, I would be more concerned with online friendships than I would face to face ones.
 
Friendship between my S.O. and another woman that wouldn't bother me at all:

- The woman is also a friend of mine
- They avoid spending time alone together
- Private communication is kept to a minimum (I understand there are some situations that call for it), and my S.O. isn't secretive about it

Friendships that would bother me:

- The woman is not my friend, and rejects my attempts at friendship (this has happened to me and it really irked me AND my fiance)
- They spend unnecessary amounts of time alone together.
- Excessive private communication occurs between the two of them
- My S.O. is secretive about any aspect of their friendship

There's a difference between being paranoid and respectfully forming protective boundaries around your relationship. I have never made a demand that my fiance be careful with his female friends, but he has been so respectful of me in how he engages with them, and I really appreciate it. Of course, I return the respect by maintaining boundaries with my male friends too.
 
I wouldn't have issues, assuming transparency existed, and there wasn't an excessive amount of time and energy expended.

I'd also be concerned about anyone who wouldn't even make an effort to "friend" us as a couple, insisting on maintain the friendship with only one of us.
 
Loveneverfails said:
Friendship between my S.O. and another woman that wouldn't bother me at all:

- The woman is also a friend of mine
- They avoid spending time alone together
- Private communication is kept to a minimum (I understand there are some situations that call for it), and my S.O. isn't secretive about it

Friendships that would bother me:

- The woman is not my friend, and rejects my attempts at friendship (this has happened to me and it really irked me AND my fiance)
- They spend unnecessary amounts of time alone together.
- Excessive private communication occurs between the two of them
- My S.O. is secretive about any aspect of their friendship

There's a difference between being paranoid and respectfully forming protective boundaries around your relationship. I have never made a demand that my fiance be careful with his female friends, but he has been so respectful of me in how he engages with them, and I really appreciate it. Of course, I return the respect by maintaining boundaries with my male friends too.
Click to expand...

This is exactly how I feel.
 
I've had way too many things go horribly wrong in relationships due to one or both of us having close friends of the opposite sex. In fact, every single guy I've ever been with had Mainly female friends, openly flirted with them, and was obsessed with talking about whether any of them had a crush on him. They all spent a lot of time adamantly refusing the idea that the woman/women were anything more than a friend (and I know that's awful grammar but I do what I want...).

However, on my side, I have twice learned the hard way that I shouldn't have close male friends while I'm in a relationship. Part of this has been due to being in a crappy relationship and confiding in my "friend", who then wanted to "help" me...part of it is because, honestly, all my relationships Have been total crap and the attention from the friends felt like a healing balm. But, no matter how I look at it, there is NO justification for me confiding in any man besides my (then) husband.

In the future, should I ever do the relationship deal again, while I will never demand that a guy not have female friends, I will definitely heed the red flag of a guy being extremely close with any of them or constantly denying (without me even asking!) that he has "feelings" for anyone else.

And again on my side of it, should I ever commit to anyone again, I will put up walls between myself and guy friends- as in, zero private interaction.
 
ChandlerFan said:
the idea of your significant other or spouse having friends of the opposite gender?


Are your feelings on this subject different for a person you are dating vs. a person you are married to? In other words, does your relationship status with your S.O. make a difference?


Would it make a difference to you if they were in-person friends or online friends?


How would you approach opposite sex friendships upon entering into a relationship or getting married?


And....go!
Click to expand...

I believe that it is a bad idea and will be a constant source of anxiety and friction.
 
tourist said:
I believe that it is a bad idea and will be a constant source of anxiety and friction.
Click to expand...

I don´t know about you but, when I loved someone, only someone, I needed to share my life with her that there was a bare notion i had more friends.

Those i called, in fact, were my clients or those who called me whenever they needed me and, I was sure she (perhaps) felt the same, needing no one else than me. Of curse! Time and needs changed but, essentially, our communications (hers and mine) were as if we were teenagers, a second time.

I also remember, certain moment, I was with her in a park, over the grass and a couple of teens laughed at me saying: Look at those there! They think they are "carajitos" (something like teenagers).

So I said to that group: "Wait! Wait a couple of years and see who you are going to be in 10 or 30 years. I was a teenager like you, but I´m not an OLD man like you are".

They laughed and looked at us, enjoying that morning as if we were alone and happy. :)
 
Friends are a must in any relationship, trying to tie yourself socially exclusively to one other person is a recipe for resentment in the relationship.

However, that being said, there are certain boundries that MUST be respected by everyone involved. I'm fairly biased in this, especially because of recent events in my life, but it pretty much boils down to respecting the relationship you're in, not just on your part and your S.O's part, but also on the part of the friends on both sides.

To me, it's is absolutely unacceptable for my S.O. and a male friend of theirs to spend any time alone together. Same goes for me and any of my female friends. Private communication that's purposefully hidden is also a huge deal breaker. If either your partner or their friend (or you and your friends) can't respect your relationship, then there's no hope for the relationship.

Again, I'm biased in this, but that's just my two cents.
 
My older brother had a female best friend after he was married... he was friends with both my brother and my sister in law... Then one day she started having marriage trouble and decided to text my brother all about it. This started a 2 year long secret texting relationship that when my sister in law and the other womans husband found out made them very uncomfortable and they asked for it to stop. It didn't ... it kept on going on behind people back she even had her sister as a go between so no one knew about it. They eventually cheated on their spouses...all the while she was still pretending to be my sister in laws friend... She has since repented and her and her husband and 6 little boys are doing great.... my brother decided he liked having his own freedom and has since moved out of the house his wife and 4 children live in. They will be getting a divorce in the upcoming months. She played damsel in distress and he wanted to be her hero.... so if you do keep friends ..make it very public friendship and don't give the devil the opportunity to sneak in and mess up a good relationship.
 
Sad to read that, Pipp, but you're totally right about keeping opposite-gender friendships public for this very reason.

I believe Billy Graham and his friends Cliff Barrows and George Beverly Shea all agreed to 3 rules in their ministries. The first one was to never be alone with a woman other than his wife. The second and third rules were identical to the first.
 
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I always seem to have trouble with this issue in relationships. And since I'm Christian now but have not had a relationship since, I do wonder...In my church the gals seem very decent compared to what I was putting up with before. And when in my prior relationship, I was pretty much made to feel that I shouldn't mind what happens if it's foul, that it made me paranoid or anti-social, her and her friends had a blast playing head games with me.

Surely that junk is over in my life now. I just want a good, honest to goodness loving woman who won't cheat on me or treat me like that. I have never cheated on anyone I've been with. It has taken me a while in therapy and the church combined, to realize that I really do deserve better than that.
Much better...I'm still not ready to date yet. My female friends say I'm way too good to put up with what I have.
 
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