Husband thinks my friends are his

That is just odd of your friend.

No you are absolutely fine! Just ignore these posters. Its obvious your dh is controlling and gaslighting you and you were perfectly entitled to reach out to a friend to explore your feelings.

I could see an argument against a third party if you had asked your friend to call dh and abuse/criticize him but you didn’t. That’s what HE was proposing. He threatened to try to convert your friend into a flying monkey to correct your bad behavior. That is a real problem.

Sit down with yourself snd list the pros and cons of being married to this absolute waste of space lazy asshole. His “business “ is nothing. He doesn’t respect your time, money, labour, or privacy. What does he have that makes him better than his absence.

To quote Diana, it sounds like there are three of you in this marriage and that ain't ever going to work. I should call it a day if I was you OP.

OK OP I know this one. ExH was totally unreasonable but I was so in it, I couldn't see it. So I would say, "I'm so sure I'm right I could go out of the flat and ask the first person I see and they would agree". I KNEW I was right but years of his nonsense had ground me down.

He doesn't want you to do this because he wants his voice to be the only one. And he wants your friends on his 'side' so you can't escape his voice.

Didn't work for exH though. I still see 2 of his friends and he sees none of mine!

I think you are wilfully misunderstanding what people are saying.

You can of course lean on friends for support, but phoning them in the middle of an argument for confirmation that your husband is an arsehole is quite odd behaviour. I think any one of us would want to talk with a friend if we were concerned about our partner's behaviour, but not literally there and then right in the middle of the argument. The way you're going about it all sounds very reactive and dramatic. I can understand that you're probably at the end of your tether but if one of my friends phoned me up there and then, mid-argument, and said 'Settle an argument for me - should H give me an hour for work admin? He says no, but I say he's a dickhead' I would think 'Sorry, what? Why are you asking me?'

Looking at your follow-up posts, it's very obvious that you hate your husband because he's a controlling prick - and I certainly can't blame you for that. He sounds like a total cunt. But the solution is to end your marriage, not to engage in his toxic bullshit. He's an awful man but don't let his behaviour bring out the worst in you - you're better than that.

One of my friend's husbands tried to do the same with me, attempting to appeal to me to reason with her to get her to do what HE wanted because he knows we're close.

I told him to listen to his wife and that I had nothing else to add because she'd already told him what to do.

He hasn't spoken to me since 😁

Your friend did the right thing, and of course you have the right to get perspective by speaking to your friend. So odd people are saying otherwise.

I am glad you have such a supportive friend OP!

People aren’t reading the OP’s updates which show she is being gaslit and controlled.

No, I don't think this is the situation at all, if you read the OP's responses.

This whole thing sounds farcical

Why can’t you both act like grown ups?

How old are you both?

This.

Having said that, there is a certain type of man who adopts his girlfriend’s social circle wholesale while he’s with her. Once the relationship ends, he goes into neutral mode and is friendless until he enters a new relationships, when the same cycle begins again.

It’s not even clear to me that it’s always a conscious thing. I became got to know a colleague in a new job and quickly realised that his stories about his friends were all 30 years old, from his student days, and he had neither kept in touch with them since nor made new ones, something he didn’t seem at all aware of. The only people he’d seen socially in years were his wife’s friends and family. When they’d got married, his fiancée had gone on social media to try to track down contacts for his old student friends so he could invite them. I think he hadn’t seen the student friend he asked to be his best man in 15 years!

If you asked him, he would list friendships from half a lifetime earlier, as ‘current’, with no apparent idea that you would usually have some idea what country a current friend lived in, or his wife’s hobby friends.

He is a nice man, but terribly passive and set in his ways. When his marriage ended, he played PlayStation games until he met a new girlfriend, and promptly adopted her friends.

He doesn't genuinely want your friend's opinion and he threatened/attempted to phone purely to freak you out. He's just a bit pissed off that you're openly phoning your mates mid-argument to slag him off and get their 'feedback', and pointing out that you wouldn't like it if someone did the same to you, and that you are giving them a one-sided picture.

If I had a private argument with a partner and they immediately scuttled off to moan about me on the phone and then told me that's what they'd been doing, I would be really fucking annoyed. I'm sure we all talk about this stuff with our friends, but most of us are a lot more discreet about it. I wouldn't react the way your partner reacted, which was OTT and silly, but I would also think my own partner was being a fucking arsehole for running off during an argument to phone a friend for backup like you're on Who Wants To Be Millionaire.

Your relationship with your husband sounds quite unhealthy. Scoring points, talking about whose side friends are on, bringing your friends into your private arguments... you honestly sound like you actively dislike each other and it sounds really immature.

He sounds like a controlling arsehole and also that he’s gaslighting you - that’s why you wanted to phone a friend, because what he was saying was at odds with reality.

Very unreasonable of him to object to you having time to work, whilst he has plenty of time on his hobby business
.
But this bit is key background, otherwise it sounds odd that you went to phone a friend - with all the info, it isn’t.

I don't think anyone has said you shouldn't have called your friend. It just seems a bit "sinking to his level". He's pissed you off (rightfully, he's being a dick about the childcare issue) so you're making a point of going to complain about him so he's aware of it.

The relationship sounds like it's on its last legs anyway.

Oh dear...this sounds like me and exDH when our marriage was about to end. We had a whole shouting match, like over an hour of him shouting at me, because I wanted to go have breakfast with a friend and he wanted to come and I said no. He was FURIOUS! Kept banging on how he's friends with her too, I can't keep him from socialising etc. How dare not spend Sunday morning with my own husband etc.

The truth was he knew our relationship was ending and I was probably leaning on her for support and he didn't want me to have any alone time with her.

Your H is a twat and you know it. Once you see it, you can't unsee it and it's a slow road to divorce. Good luck, stay strong.

Exactly this. The problem isn’t that he thinks your friends are his, but that you’re mired in a petty tit-for-tat situation, fuelled by a mutual dislike of each other.

Well, there you are.

It's not about the phone call to your friend.

It's about your relationship with your partner.

Well yes the fact that you phoned your friend and he was annoyed and wanted to phone her too is not actually the point.

You are unhappy that he wouldn't allow you to take time to follow up on admin?

Why wouldn't he allow you to do this?