Wwyd? End the friendship or not?

[Mrswhiskerson]

Last year we had a house party for dhs bday , two of our friends (more dhs than mine) got drunk and had a one night stand in our baby's bbedroom (he was out) dh is still fuming about it and he feels it has tainted ds bedroom.
I am furious about it too but feel apart from not speaking to them again it has happened and what can we do? Dh is stewing on it and with his depression things really getto him and it puts him in a foul mood which we get the brunt of,
what would you do? I just wish he would forget about it since there is nothing we can really do about it .

apologies how fucking dare you!

The OP had implied the man had form for watching whilst others get pissed and then taking advantage. I had asked to check that the female friend was ok just in case. I did NOT mention rape not once, I mentioned something that I thought would be sensible going off what the OP had said about the male in question.

I am NOT one of those people who go around thinking all men are rapists, in fact on many other threads I've been accused of exactly the opposite so it seems rather ironic that I'm now being told I've accused a man of raping someone.

How utterly ridiculous and how disgusting offensive. Thanks a bunch.

OP. I completely understand where you and your dh are coming from. However I do think that you need to take some responsibility - your dh for inviting someone he knew might be trouble and both of you for going to bed and leaving a couple of very pissed people downstairs, trusting that they would take themselves off home in that state. If you didn't trust the man then he shouldn't have been invited and I'm sorry but you do need to take some responsibility as you have discovered, not everyone has the same standards.

Re-decorating the room is a good idea and as this friend clearly takes advantage of peoples good nature and is stressing out your dh, it's probably best to end the friendship. I don't think getting them to re-decorate is a good idea for heaven's sake - that's pushing it too far. What they did was not a crime nor illegal, just disrespectful and you've no right to enforce any kind of punishment.

You said the female is going through a hard time so I still think she was taken advantage of in some way (NOT saying rape) but she was vulnerable and pissed and perhaps she now feels terrible, so do get in touch with her to make sure that she is ok.

Good grief!

FWIW, I agree with the OP and Rhubarb. If you are teenagers throwing a party while your parents are on holiday, you may expect to be clearing up vomit and finding used condoms in random places around the house. As an adult with a little more self control and consideration, there is no way I would be looking in rooms with shut doors in someone's house or sneaking in them to shag some bloke just because we had the horn. You may expect a couple of people to have too much to drink at an adults' party, but not that they revert to being teenagers. Not Victorian at all.

It does make me laugh how people on MN froth and splutter about wedding lists (for example) being tasteless and tacky and classless, but this is ok.

Redecorate a bedroom because someone had sex in it, once?

Prudish in the extreme!

A good cure would perhaps be a visit to the GP, redecorating is extreme to say the least.

When DH has bad episodes of dwelling on things, I encourage him to go to the GP. I don't think clinical depression is something you can really talk someone out of, at least not without years of training. So I've always figured it's best to let the professionals treat it. Dunno if that's the right thing to do or not.

If it's a less 'serious' episode, I tell him to go for a run, or send him to the park with DD (which I find an enormously stressful trip, but DH absolutely loves).

And ime when I dwelt on certain things the worst thing my dh could do would be to 'act upon it' iyswim. It is NOT sensible to redecorate a room after someone has had a shag in it so it shouldn't be 'encouraged' for want of a better word. I agree with emsy

I don't think it is ok. I think Ariel summed it up quite nicely, however the OP's DH is having a massive overreaction to it, and redecorating the room is simply ridiculous overkill.

Being annoyed that your friends snuck off and had sex in your house when upstairs was effectively out of bounds - reasonable.

Blaming you, banging on about it so long after the event, and wanting to redecorate - unreasonable.

Your DH needs to visit his GP, not be encouraged in irrational thinking.

A better 'cure' would be some therapy to address the obsessive and negative thought patterns that cause the OPs DH to focus upon small upsets to the point they affect his mood and relationships long past the point of it being rational.

Repainting the room just reinforces the idea that something terrible happened and thereby reinforces that patterns of thought that support that.

I think this OP is really about the Dhs depression and underlying causes and not guest sex in children's bedrooms.

TheRubarb, are you not exhausted with outrage and indignation???

if its because of your depression and/or anxiety, it is irrational, almost by definition. And if it helps the DH, then fine. But it could just as easily make it worse, and is hardly a substitute for actual help with his problems. It's a distraction, not a treatment.

Please don't presume I have a limited experience of depression/anxiety - far from it!

If he redecorates I would bet my bottom dollar he will find something else to dwell on - that's the nature of depressive thoughts.

I have plenty of experience.

I can look back on plenty of things that I thought/did that I can now see were completely irrational. But at the time, I considered them to be rational and reasonable. They weren't, that was the depression making me think those things. And if I had been encouraged to act them out,it would have reinforced to me that they were rational.

Quite sarah

MordechaiVanunu - sorry but it got my goat very much that someone said I was suggesting rape when I did nothing of the sort. It pisses me off but I guess that's just Mumsnet. There was a thread posted from a woman who had sex with a man whilst very very drunk and immediately regretted it and loads of posters suggested she had been taken advantage of - whilst rape was not mentioned it was certainly implied. Yet here a woman who, by the OPs admission is going through a tough time, got drunk and shagged a man who has a history of inappropriate behaviour and no-one even suggests that the OP check up on her. When I do someone says I am implying she was raped. It's just one of those ridiculous statements that annoys the hell out of you when you see it.

Actually I am going to backtrack a bit and say that valium and others are probably right about the re-decoration. I suppose it is a bit over the top and does reinforce his feelings about it. I was thinking along the terms of giving him a bit of closure so that he can put it behind him and move on, but if this really is getting him down then yes, a visit to the GP would be a good idea.

I also question as to what is really getting him down? Is he perhaps angry with himself because he feels he is to blame? Or for not predicting the situation that enfolded? Often when people are angry with themselves they take it out on others and he's taking it out on the OP. Get a rug to cover the now bleached stain on the carpet but I do think that if you rope the pair in to re-decorate the room you are massively over-reacting and in danger of losing any friends that you have left.

Replace the carpet if you must, you seem to feel awkward about it as well but maybe this is because your DH won't let it go.
CBT would probably help your DH move on as it doesn't look at the past like councilling, rather helps focus on the here and now (at least ime).
also - how on earth did you make it clear that upstairs was out of bounds?! Only at our teenage parties were people told that.

I do wish dh would let it go and I think when he has a go at me it makes me more angry at them,
re redecorating I know my dh well enough to know that freshening up the room would actually help it may seem extreme to others but I really do think it would help. He is undertaking counselling and is waiting for c b t. He is also talking things through and identifying what triggers a low mood and is actively trying to pull himself around when he feels a low mood coming on.

Just to clear this up the girl was not that the drunk the man involved was very drunk , they were both willing.

Fair nuff.
You know your man much better than we do so you know what would help him best. I think that this would help me too as it would allow me to close the door on the incident and move on, although I appreciate others have said it's an extreme reaction that you are encouraging. Different people have different ways of coping however.
Hope he manages to get some help over this and that you get some peace!

We had put everything of value upstairs so people could relax and play just dance without fear of breaking anything , we just said no one is to go upstairs .
We love our friends to bits but some of the lads can get a bit like mad teenagers when they are together chasing each other round the house upstairs etc

"We love our friends to bits but some of the lads can get a bit like mad teenagers chasing each other around the house"

This sounds like a description of my 7 year old and his classmates. Do grown adults really behave like this?

This is the funniest thread in a long time. I'm particularly loing the comment about (I'm paraphrasing) being 'brought up not to have sex in a house where you are a guest'.

At what age are parents supposed to start instilling this wisdom?

It's just sex. It's entirely natural. It's the process by which (presumably) the child who usually sleeps in the bedroom was conceived.

If the act of sex somehow taints a room, what does the Ops DH do if/when they move into a previously owned house? Where it is quite likely there has been sex in most rooms. And possibly even the garden. Nowhere is safe!

Ooops, lesson to self. read entire thread before commenting on how funny it is. I do not find the subject of rape amusing in any way whatsoever.

We are in the process of clearing out our house and daffying it up at the moment anyway as with dh depression and all the negativity we feel it needs to cleared of all clutter and negativity and I think doing the little mans room will definately help. Like you say rhubarb it is a way albeit extreme of closing the door on the incident.
He is going to talk to his friend when he is in a better frame of mind too , he can be very blunt and go about things in the wrong way when in the grip of depression.

Yes they really do , it drives me mad sometimes and I have had to have stern words regarding boundaries ( we are very relaxed and want guests to feel comfortable in our home) but they took the piss a bit and words were had .

There was no rape involved at all it was entirely consenting with both of them.

I am not a Victorian prude , I just think when invited to a persons home you do not take a person upstairs to the hosts baby's bedroom and go at it on the floor only to then call a cab and go home . I really really can't see how this makes me prudish? I thought it was common courtesy not to treat your hosts home like a seedy hotel.