...to be sick of women being made to feel uncool for feeling insecure about their husbands female friends?

[Alphabetsoup4]

Is it just me?

There are often threads here from women, girlfriends, wives who have husbands who have a ‘close female friend’ and are exclusive of the wife/gf. Often they get told on MN that they are jealous, insecure and controlling for feeling uncomfortable.

Isn’t this a case of other women being a bit misogynistic towards a poster feeling insecure?

Why on earth is it ‘cool’ to be oh so fine with your man having as many close female relationships as he likes?

And why is it assumed that cheating only ever happens because the man is going to cheat anyway, it’s hard wired? That it doesn’t matter whether they have female friendships are not.

I don’t understand and I think we are in danger of putting ourselves down as women telling others not to trust their instincts.

Why aren’t healthy boundaries cool? I think that they are.

That’s not to say that opposite sex friendships are banned, but there is a healthy balance.

Unless a woman is being very jealous, not letting her partner look at another woman etc, then I’d say 90% of these posts are from women who really are being disrespected and demeaned by their partners.

Just feel a bit depressed to see so many women be put down for this!

Misillusioned see I find that bizarre and incredibly creepy. Imagine a bloke saying that about women! My closest male friend is actually, to be blunt, really quite ugly. The fact I want to hang out with him, share personal things with him and have been on holiday with him doesn’t make me fancy him

I've been with my boyfriend for 18 months. He has a long standing friendship with a woman he used to work with 20+ years ago. They used to holiday together, know each others families, he is god father to her eldest daughter, and they meet up regularly on their own for catch ups.

She is married with 2 kids, we live together with my son and we have one on the way, and I have become good friends with them both her and her husband.

It has never occurred to me to ask him to stop that, and I've never had any inclination of anything other than friendship between them.

I love him, I trust him, and I'm secure with 'us' and our relationship.

Hmm I'm not sure why people on both sides of this argument are so defensive. If you're happy in your relationship either way then what does it matter?

I wouldn't like my husband having good female friends and I know he wouldn't like me having male friends.

Does this mean he doesn't trust me? I couldn't care less as I feel the same as him so we are a good match.

I don't think either side of this 'debate' are wrong. If it works in your relationship then good. It becomes a problem only when one half of the couple agrees with the good opposite sex friends and the other doesn't.

Because my point was, many woman seem to be shot down in flames and labelled ‘uncool’ if they come onto MN upset about their DHs female friend.

Does no one here think that emotional affairs happen? Or that too close friendships can drive a wedge if they become competitive with the marriage?

Does this jus never ever happen to all of you whose husbands have close female friends?

And I know of a few marriages who have collapsed because the man or woman became so involved with their ‘bestie’.

I do agree with you Alphabet. I wasn't disagreeing. As some others have pointed out on this thread I don't find MN consensus correlates with what I have experienced in real life.

Point taken @saturn

This thread has made me feel that women, including me, who was very hurt by my DHs FF relationship, can concede that not all FFs are bad.

However I don’t see many women who are very adamant all FFs are fine, admitting or saying that there is ever a problem? Or merely saying oh well, the man couldn’t be trusted anyway or friendship is totally different from attraction.

Really not so. Many emotional affairs are just that, friendships. They still devastate marriages and if the wife had been listened to, and not called controlling by FF or her partner, or society, then families could have been saved the awful consequences of breaking up.

Worth being a bit careful about automatically labelling women controlling for not being comfortable, don’t you think?

@snoutandab0ut you may find your male friend ugly. Are you sure he thinks the same of you?
I guess if I like a man a lot for his personality, his looks become less important. Not enough to stop me fancying him anyway, even if for an occasional shag

I do have a fairly close male friend as it happens. We certainly aren't in a relationship, but when we meet up we do friends type things and then have sex, because why not? But I'm single, so I can do that. I wouldn't do it with a female friend though.

My thoughts exactly @snout I know this is generalising but I bet many women have no problem with Male add on friends and not seeing them as ego boosting, but I’d pay money to bet most of the men are getting an ego boost / attraction / knight in armour boost from it on some level.

Yes I agree Alphabet. I despise these women being called 'controlling' or 'insecure'

I myself think I'm the opposite of insecure as if I had a partner who didn't like me saying no to female friends then he's more than welcome to piss off! And I will be perfectly happy to be single again.

It doesn't hurt for all women to have their wits about them about female friends.

Oh and I don't think most men see female friends as non sexual, no matter what women say about the friendship. They may refrain from acting on sexual feelings due to themselves or the woman being in a relationship, or for other reasons making it too risky or unacceptable to make a move.

But they don't see the woman in a totally non sexual way unless they are gay

Pa1oma, some of your most recent post explains something of why you seem to see men as quite ‘other’, and male-female friendships as anomalous.

Although I grew up in a repressively religious environment, and attended all-female schools, only meeting men socially once I went to university, I don’t live in a sex-segregated world. None of my friends are SAHMs, we almost all, male and female, work in demanding professional/non-traditional jobs. I can imagine that if you are a SAHM in a world in which FT careers are almost exclusively a male domain, it would simply be harder to encounter male potential friends.

forestafantastica
BloodyDisgrace - you know if you're checking out the knickers of your same sex friend as you nuzzle on the sofa of an evening I feel like maybe you should ask yourself some searching questions. grin

sad to disappoint, but I don't. Good night everyone, it's been the most enlightening day :)

I don't think the world divides neatly in to trustworthy people who would never stray and cheaters who always will. Many people are in the middle. They are generally trustworthy but may develop an emotional and even physical affair if they spend a lot of time in the company of someone of the opposite sex whose company they enjoy and who they start confiding in

How utterly grim and depressing that you don’t think men and women can see each other as non-sexual. How on earth do you cope in a mixed sex work environment? Do you have to fight the urge to shag your colleagues if you have to go into a meeting room together to discuss work? You really are the walking definition of internalised misogyny. If I thought my male friend only saw me as some kind of potential fuck-hole he wouldn’t be my friend. I don’t want people with such backward and repressive attitudes in my life.

But that’s the entire point alphabet, a friendship by definition is platonic! There is no sexual or romantic element! I said earlier that I don’t disagree that spending time with someone who has expressed a sexual or romantic attraction to you, or you have such feelings for them, when you’ve got a partner is not on. But friendship doesn’t include any of those feelings! If you follow that to its logical conclusion, then any woman who spends a lot of time with her female friends would turn into a lesbian. Which is patently ridiculous, as is the notion that mixed sex friendships will always turn romantic.

So yes, in conclusion, if the wife has a problem with a FRIENDSHIP, which is not remotely the same thing as a flirtation/attraction/romantic connection, then she absolutely is being controlling and ridiculous. I’d also assume she has some deep self-loathing and insecurity to get over.

Surely this is just basic stuff in any marriage?

Just in yours and maybe couples you know. Not in my circles.

To the person saying men never see women in a non-sexual way - HAH! I've been friendzoned by so many blokes throughout uni, none of whom were gay!

I always act cool irl about my partners female friends, but I know how women act with him and I hate it! I know his work colleagues and friends have tried it on with him (and he shot them down) because my friend checks her husbands messages and tells me all the gossip (yeah, I’d never do this but I’ll gladly lap up the gossip from elsewhere.)

I trust him, and I’d never mention it, but I know that men are easy creatures at times and it doesn’t make me feel less miffed that he’s had women kiss him square on the mouth and feel his bits when drunk, despite him pulling away 😶 ugh

Yes, that too Holy. I’ve been rejected by men I fancy, and I’ve rejected guys who fancied me. Guess the theory that men fancy anything with a fanny and vice versa is bollocks then!

What some people seem to be failing to take on board on this thread is that because some of us have an issue with “some” male/female friendships, that we don’t think men and women can be just friends. That is utter rubbish. Of course they can. Does that mean that we need to be fine with our partners being friends with any and all females? No. You can be ok with your partner having female friends but have a particularly bad vibe about one friendship. I don’t call that controlling, I call it instinct and it’s there for a reason. The same way that if my partner became friends with a male that I had a bad vibe about. I am generally a trusting person. So if I say to someone “this particular friendship makes me uncomfortable” then I’d expect my concerns to be acknowledged and discussed. I wouldn’t expect to be labelled controlling. In fact if I were then that to me would be a huge red flag about the “friendship” because why be so defensive?

This is really, really depressing. If you think your partner might cheat then you have a problem with your partner, not other women.

I have to say in my experience most of the women I’ve known who have been territorial about their partners make right fools out of themselves because nobody is remotely interested in their very average partner.

The overwhelming majority of women aren’t predatory monsters eyeing up other people’s husbands.

These attitudes are part of the general mindset that holds women back professionally and personally.

My new mantra is “If you don’t trust him, dump him” . Once trust is gone, it’s gone, so far better to get out now than spend the rest of your life looking for opportunities to check his phone.

This is really, really depressing. If you think your partner might cheat then you have a problem with your partner, not other women.

In some cases I suspect if you think your partner might cheat then you have a problem with yourself rather than your partner. Iyswim

I agree with BertrandRussell and that has always been my mantra. Life is too short to waste it in anxiety about whether your partner is faithful to you or not.

I believe in intuition and lots of things add up to give you those feelings of anxiousness so if they're there then the writing is probably on the wall for the relationship anyway and to carry on clinging onto it puts you onto the back foot. I've been there and done that. Never, ever again.

My husband (we've only each been married once) never gives me a second of concern or anxiety about this. I hope that's mutual, he's never said anything to the contrary. If I would be in the situation where I thought snooping on his phone or laptop was appropriate, I'd walk away from the marriage because it would be worthless.

That's me, I'm not speaking for anybody else either.

I'd walk away from the marriage because it would be worthless

That’s very easy to say and you, individually, may do that. But so many people post on here where they have a couple of kids, joint finances, mum could be a sahm. It’s not always as easy as walking away. Especially if you aren’t sure whether the person is cheating or whether you are just having a bout of insecurity, which could happen for all sorts of reasons. I’ve seen a few posts where the woman has recently had a baby so her feelings could be hormonal or PND, or her partner could be cheating. But without knowing for sure, it’s a big thing to throw a marriage away when there may be nothing untoward going on.

In some cases I suspect if you think your partner might cheat then you have a problem with yourself rather than your partner. Iyswim

I think that’s very true. I’ve seen a lot of women on here being accused because of something innocent and I’m sure it happens the other way too. Actually a lot of the time when I see people on here say they have ‘vibes’ or ‘bad feelings’ I often think they sound like abusive men.

Calling a woman “abusive” or “controlling” when she expresses a concern about a particular friendship her DP has with a specific woman is gaslighting.

Her instincts are there for a reason and they are telling her something is not right. The threads on MN are not women saying “I hate my DP talking to any woman ever or having any female friends”. They are always concern about how their DP is acting with a particular woman, and they know their DP well so they know when something is different and likely heading in a bad direction.

It’s bullshit that people are either cheaters or not. Lots of people wouldn’t want to cheat and would probably think that they never would but might end up being very tempted or doing so given the right circumstances and temptation. They don’t necessarily meet someone new and get with them straight away. It builds up over time as they get to know them better and build an emotional connection. They might never even physically cheat but if they are confiding in that other person rather than their spouse then that in itself can lead to marriage breakdown. And it’s awful (and even abusive/gaslighting) to suggest a wife is paranoid or abusive herself for worrying about a situation like that.