Do you allow your husband to meet his woman friends ?

[splendid]

Do you allow your husband to go to dinner or travel with his female friend just two of them?

Oh and 'allow'? As people have said, we're adults and I'm not his mother!

I don't allow my fiance to do anything. He does what he wants, he always runs things by me if he feels I may be uncomfortable or upset with the idea and he knows I trust him. I don't like the idea of female friends but I'm currently very insecure and hormonal so I push it aside considering I know my fiance loves me, I am very trusting of him as a person and I am secure in our relationship. My insecurity sadly lies within myself, not him or us.

I'd be very cautious if the female friend was a new friend or if I was aware of history between them but I'd speak my concerns and not stop him doing anything. I trust that if I felt very strongly about a person he would respect that and not do anything to make me more uncomfortable.

Lunch or drinks is fine. Dinner is pushing it a little but I definitely wouldn't be comfortable with them travelling alone. Like I said though, it's to do with me and not him so I wouldn't stop him going, just voice my concerns and tell him how uncomfortable I would be and hope he would make the decision to keep me happy.

Oh, I sound precious, don't I?

Exactly Dmitri - I am bisexual too hence asking the question. And have a few male friends who have always been platonic. I think it's ridiculous to assume that just because a friend happens to be the gender someone is attracted to that it's considered impossible for them to be friends.

My ex was very insecure and paranoid and didn't like me going out with other men even when faced with evidence which proved the platonic nature of our friendship. Sadly I lost a couple of friends that way. But then XP was a plank and his view was "Why would I talk to a woman in the first place, unless I fancied her?" (Made me feel GREAT about our relationship, truly.)

"What if you were married to someone bisexual - would he not be allowed any friends?"

Everyone knows that bisexuals are sex-mad and fancy everyone

Dh used to have a very close female friend that he found attractive. We broke up for a couple of months many, many years ago and I know (because he told me) that he considered asking her out. He decided not to because he didn't want to mess up their friendship. She was his/our friend for many years, and he often saw her alone. I didn't care, she was nice and I knew DH loved me. Finding someone attractive doesn't mean you automatically have to jump their bones, or even that's it's reciprocated!

how does one allow or not allow and adult to do anything?

andyway, if i had a partner, i wouldn't be upset or suspicious or paranoid if they had lunch/travelled with a female friend or colleague. i only see people i trust. if i don't trust them i end the relationship. life is too short. I don't get how some people can trust their partners to have lunch with a female but not travel alone together. either you trust them or you dont.

Of course I 'allow' my husband to do pretty much whatever he pleases, as he self-censors himself just as I do if I meet an attractive man. However, it is a bit naive to think that friendships can't turn into anything more, it very much depends on the context of the friendship (like someone has said, are they dazzled by a new, pretty and exciting friend) or the state of the marriage at that time. I have plenty of friends who have had relationships with or are now married to men (including married ones) where they started off as 'just friends' and my father also had a roving eye with close family friends.

So, if you believe, as I do, that my husband is pretty much the faithful type, then it's not a big deal if he goes for lunch with his female colleagues or even calls them when in town, he also sometimes meets my friends who are now his friends who are from the same culture. Nothing about that alarms me, but that's because I feel pretty sure (as much as anyone can) that he's not looking round for an affair. If I doubted that, then friends, especially new friends, would be the place to start looking.

Reading this has made me realise how VERY old fashioned i am lol.
I would have found it really weird if my Dad was going away for a weekend with a woman other than my Mum or meeting a woman for dinner in the evening without my mum being invited.
My husband has female friends but none he seems to feel the need to go away with or have lunches etc with. When we first met he'd occsionally have dinner with one or two of them but not these days. TBH if i was meeting a male friend for a nice meal then i'd ask my husband if he'd like to join us and i'd expect my male friend to invite his OH or anyone else he wanted to, i wouldn't feel the need for it to be just the 2 of us, me and my friend. I'd probably just invite them to our house for a catch up and treat them like part of the family rather than a special friend who was just mine and not my OH's. It's fine to have your own sets of friends if that works for you both i guess but i don't see why people can't mix, i count my friends as my husbands friends these days too. Like i said i'm obv very old fashioned ! But also very happy set in my old fashoined ways, so we may have it all very wrong and be very unmodern but we know what works for us and thats all that matters i guess , its working out what you're both comfortable with that counts i think, not other peoples opinions of how your relationship should be/work.

Violet, reading what you have written, I've realised that although I'm pretty relaxed about me or my husband meeting up with old friends for lunch or perhaps the odd drink one evening, we wouldn't go out to dinner on our own with a new (opposite sex) friend, or indeed travel with them abroad or anywhere except for work. My mum 'allowed' my dad to to exactly this type of thing, in the spirit of being free and not restricting each other, and of course he went abroad with someone else and had an affair. So, I don't think setting boundaries (or even having unwritten rules of behaviour) is a bad thing, and they do differ from couple to couple.

Totally agree onetoomanycornettos (you've made me want one now btw , a cornetto that is) nothing at all wrong with boundaries in a relationship as long as they're ones your both happy with and they will differ from couple to couple.

Men don't spend time with women they don't fancy. Women on the other hand might spend time with men they don't fancy.

"Men don't spend time with women they don't fancy."

What a horrible and sexist and untrue thing to say.

Yes I would, I trust my DH completly

IME it's true, mostly, there are always exceptions.

christmaseve, what a load of tosh. I'm a man and over the years I've had a number of women friends that I didn't fancy but I did like and so spent time with them. I still do.

I think that's a ridiculously sweeping statement christmaseve. It may be true of some men, the same as it would be true the other way around in some* situations. But you certainly can't say all men think the same way, they don't.

agree trillian. totally untrue and sexist.

christmas, you are surrounding yourself with sleazy men.

Of course it's not OK to tell your partner who he can and can't be friends with. Essentially, if you don't trust him, it's about your relationship not being strong enough, or you already suspect him of wanting to stray. Most men are totally capable of having even attractive female friends without shagging them. I have been a jealous gf in the past, but I trust the man I married not to screw things up. It's one of the nicest things about being married.

If he's going to shag around, you won't stop him by being possessive, and if he's not, he'll be mighty pussed off that you don't trust him - it's one of the key aspects of a lifelong relationship.

So this is the "anti-men sentiment on MN" that was being talked about before.

If a man wants to be with you and be aithful to you then there is no need to keep other women away from him.

If he doesn't want to, then trying to keep other women away from him will do no good.

That's bollocks ChristmasEve. It might apply to some men, but not all.

If that was true it would mean that ALL men see women as a possibility of sex, not as a person in their own right who may well turn out to be a friend, business contact, have skills or knowledge they (the man) are in need of, etc etc. That they are worthless, unless you fancy them, then it's worth spending time with them.

That would be UNBELIEVABLY depressing. I find it sad enough that so many men DO think this. Thankfully not all of them do, so please don't insult them by implying that.

I'm just going by the many men I've met who purport to wanting a friendship with myself and my many single friends. Perhaps they are all sleazy types.

It's different with colleagues, you have to work and get along with each other.

If I was married, I wouldn't be happy about my H wanting to go on holiday with a female friend, one to one.

Depends. Although the word "allow" has, rightly, made lots of us go

A few months back, my antennae started buzzing about one particular woman DH works with. I couldn't justify why, but I wasn't comfortable about them going out for drinks after work. He was sweet about it and jacked it in, as he appreciated that I don't object often and he didn't want me feeling upset. Round about the same time however, on a day off for him when I was at work, he spent the whole day with another female friend (of many years' standing), going for a long walk, lunch out, back to our house lazing in garden reading.... and I had absolutely no problem with it at all. There might have been a few kids in and out at various points, but even so. Not an issue.

We need more info from the OP as to what's going on here for her.

"If a man wants to be with you and be faithful to you then there is no need to keep other women away from him.

If he doesn't want to, then trying to keep other women away from him will do no good."

I think Trillian has said it all there.

I take the somewhat fatalistic view that if someone is going to have an affair, they will. It's not really dependent on who they meet. If they don't have it with Person X, who you kept away from them, they will have it with Person Y over whose interaction you have no control.

It's not like "Oh my god, I must keep him away from Jessica - they've been having drinks together and it can only Lead To No Good." He may well have only platonic feelings for Jessica, or find her a nice friend but a potential nightmare of a shag-piece. It may well be Natasha In Accounts who you have to worry about, who he's never mentioned but is a total husband-stealing witch after she has necked a few Bacardi Breezers at the two-day Sales Consolidation Weekend at the Coventry Ramada Jarvis.

But don't you find it frustrating/depressing that they don't see you as a person in your own right, but that you're only worth spending time with if they might get a shag at some point?