Friend has gotten really funny due to my weekend away with man

Or....if one is not performatively woke and eager to point the finger at others in order to virtue-signal, one could also read it in terms of chief executive, a common usage, and very apt the way that some women place a man as the chief the minute he shows up, booting her friends down the list and keeping space free for him when he hasn't asked her out. 🤮

Don't call me racist.

So, a controversial theory. But yes, I'll grant you, evolution is messy, the sex drive is in tension with monogamy, the human brain is plastic and highly programmable, and different societies have made very different social experiments with very different consequences. Our society is doing so now, apparently inspired by the south sea islanders and other outliers beloved of anthropologists, and IMHO it has caused things to go to shit at a rapid rate. YMMV.

I suppose I should rather have said that the basis for our Western social structure is monogamous. Pair bonding, the sacred institution of marriage and the family to ensure the children grow up stable and well-adjusted, all that. I have the impression that this has been the basis for the most successful civilisations. The West, China and Japan spring to mind. Ours is still running on the vestiges of that system, but maybe I was presumptuous and completely old-fashioned to assume that OP would probably be interested in a partner for life and a traditional family.

Showing my bias as an old man approaching 40 years in a stable marriage, I'm very grateful to have a soulmate for affection, companionship and mutual support. It seems very natural to me, and for that matter to almost everyone I know. But I know and respect that it's not for everyone. If OP just wants to stay a single parent shagging around with a succession of men, and "friend" knows that, that puts a completely different complexion on things. In that scenario, good luck to her and I'm out.

Also, all the Great Male Chief talk is faintly racist, relying on stereotypes of natives, savages, etc as being submissive and ignorantly following tyrants.

ETA women referring to themselves as 'girls' in middle age gives me the horrors. I would rather hang out with avowed crones.

My goodness. How does this relate to the OP, whose friend positively refused OP's suggestions.

And no, nights do not get portioned out as if for a work rota! Going with the flow matters.

I think she has blurred the lines of friendship. Especially if you already see her every week anyway. I wouldn't be comfortable with such a demanding and controlling friend. Friends need to give each other space. She should be happy you've met someone.

I know - the OP has literally described her friend as a smelly, fat woman who snores. She has also criticised her diet while proclaiming to eat much better, and linked it to her being smelly. Pretty judgey. The friend might have IBS, which is nothing to do with a bad diet. She honestly sounds like she hates her "friend."

A PP said that they don't think of weekends away with friends as being what you do in your 50s but in your 20s. I wanted to tag her but I can't find the post.

Well, my friends and I are in our fifties, a the stage of life where we've realised that men are not the be all and end all, and that friends start dying off. Life is precious and so are all the people in it, not just our partners. We no longer put any man on a pedestal and we relish girls' weekends.

Saying that girls' weekends are for the young makes it sound as if your real life begun when the Great Male showed up and whisked you off to a higher, better life.

Well, pride comes before a fall, is all I can say.

It does, but I think you can still maintain your friends' importance in your life. There's just a certain type of woman who makes it very obvious that you've slid ten rungs down the ladder the minute a new man shows up. It shows in the way you get relegated to Sunday lunchtimes for the life of the relationship; in refusing to make plans just in case he asks her; in the way that anything except quick drinks on a Monday night is off the table. Or the way you don't hear from her all weekend and then suddenly she wants to talk Sunday night, when you have to get ready for the work week. There are two weekend evenings every week; a new man doesn't need to have both of them, every week. He also needs time with his friends.

In summary, I think it's perfectly possible to do committed dating while not letting your friends feel like Bargain Basement leftovers.

I think more women should remember who'll be there for them when the Great Male Chief falls off his pedestal.

Yes - where’s the value in the friendship? Seems to be severely lacking from the OP’s side. Get away with all the people pushing the friend as controlling/jealous and/or bitter narratives! The OP is the selfish ‘friend’.

And if your man dumps you or cheats on you or dies, you might be very glad to to go away with girlfriends, so maybe you should value them a bit more.

Also the equivalent of chicks before dicks.

Quite. And to effectively ‘dump’ your lifelong friends in favour of a new relationship with someone you barely know? That’s just horrible!

Exactly. She might be jealous, but equally, she might be genuinely hurt.

@BlokeyMcBlokersonVonMannSplainHeim

Sorry, couldn't paste this in my previous reply.

Bollocks.

Whatever happened to common courtesy and considering the feelings of others? So many scenarios in life now boil down to: I’ll do what I want and if anyone dares question me they’re controlling, insecure, jealous?

Friendship is a relationship that needs to be worked at too. You can’t just have one person doing whatever and expect the other to suck it up.

I despair at the atomisation and entitlement of people nowadays. I really do. But hey, I’m probably just bitter, controlling and jealous.

@BlokeyMcBlokersonVonMannSplainHeim

But at the end of the day, we're a monogamous species

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Did you really just write that? LMFAO! Of course we're not! If we were, we'd all be happily mated for life and infidelity would not be a thing! Human beings famously chafe at monogamy.

ETA: In fact, all human beings are such a bunch of slags that the male penis has a spade to dig out the sperm of the man just before him who came inside the woman he's now porking! Note that the bottom part of this AI summary wonders how often two men would be doing her in quick succession, but this ignores how early societies would just shag each other willy-nilly, if you'll excuse the expression. I read an account of one explorer - might have been Cook - who arrived on an island somewhere to find the locals all going at it on the beach, with some older women showing a younger one what to do "Although she hardly seemed to need the instruction" as the diary went. And God knows what cave people in cold climates got up to in the dark caves, huddled under fur skins, all sleeping in communities. Truth is we all shagged with gay abandon before Society as we know it came along.

Yep. I'll never forget being relegated to bloody Sunday lunchtime when my bestie got together with a man (who turned out to be utterly useless). I wouldn't mind at all if she had already made plans with him when I asked if she wanted to do something. Wouldn't mind at all! The thing that really, really annoyed me is that she refused to make plans with me in case he asked her out!!! That is, there were no plans in place when I asked her, but she kept it free just in case. I'm the opposite, whoever asks me first gets me, and if the man didn't ask me in time, he'll learn to ask earlier next time. This was about twenty years ago. I didn't understand keeping an evening free for a man who hasn't asked me out then, and I don't understand it now.

And @MarmaladeSandwich7 Nope! "Gotten" is British! You see it in Shakespeare, and it survives today in "ill-gotten gains." For some reason it dropped out of fashion here, but it was taken to America by our forbears who emigrated there around 250 years ago, and they clearly like it.

Every day's a school day!

Exactly!

The eggs-in-one-basket approach displays a lack of foresight and common sense, imo!

I could have written this myself! It's insulting to friends to say that partners take priority. And yes, depressing. Frankly, with the high break-up rate, I'm amazed that anyone puts them first. By high break-up rate, I mean that marriages have a failure rate of about 43 percent, and the rate for couples who aren't yet at the marital point must be even higher. The point is that most new relationships fail at some point. Statistically, this new relationship of OP's has a really, really, really high chance that it will fail. So it's a pity she's hurt her friend.

For the people whose partners are the first priority, I hope they are OK with being left on their own if they get divorced or widowed. After all, most people are in relationships and partners take priority. Right? So they should be OK with staying home alone Friday and Saturday nights and being relegated to Sunday lunchtimes, because priorities.

Here's a thought, though: not everyone automatically ranks relationships as top priority. DH and I didn't, and we still managed to find each other. For some of us our friendships are equally important.

I find it interesting that many people on this thread are implying good friends understand relationships come first, but no one has thought to explore the concept that maybe, just maybe, not everyone agrees they do come first. As far as I am concerned, good partners are the ones who understand that their partner's friends matter just as much as they do. Except that for a lot of people they clearly don't. Personally I find that rather depressing.

Newsflash: sometimes men leave. Or turn out to be abusive arseholes. Or love simply dies. People are perfectly entitled to sideline their friends in the pursuit of love, but they shouldn't then be surprised if they find they then have no one to turn to if things go wrong. It isn't healthy to make relationships the be-all and end-all.

YANBU

You earn your money and nobody gets to dictate how you spend it nor do they get to own you for a weekend.

You could have offered her a meal out or coffee or a day together or anything. If the friendship is dependent on you agreeing to do whatever she wants to do, when she says so, then I'd bin the friendship anyway.

A relationship or potential relationship dynamic with a member of the opposite sex is a different situation to a platonic friendship dynamic with a member of the same sex, so I don't know why you're comparing your scenario with the OP's.

Bad enough but not nearly as jarring as writing, I would of.......
😂