DH and the Queen Bee

[justilou1]

Apologies.... it’s a long one.
My DH and I have been married for 16 yrs and have 3 teenagers. He has known one group of friends since high school and they’re mostly lovely guys, but there is one girl who has been single for most of the time we have been together and has made it clear to all the wives and partners of the guys in the group that she is the “Queen Bee” and via various passive aggressive comments at the beginnings of our relationships, she has implied that she chose not to get involved romantically with whichever of the guys we happen to be with, but they were all secretly in love with her. None of us believe her, and we ignore that, see it for what it is and over the years have forged a friendship for what it is.
I thought..... I don’t for one minute think that my DH is actually secretly in love with her at all, so this is not coming from this kind of insecurity. DH and I are in counselling stemming from me feeling betrayed when I tried to discuss my ptsd after repressed rape memories began to return and he refused to have the conversation because he was going through his own shit and was already feeling resentful towards me. Obviously physical intimacy is a massive issue for me because of these two situations. The Queen Bee has recently admitted that she broke up with her boyfriend in FEBRUARY (her longest relationship in the time I have known her) and hasn’t spoken to anyone about this. They went out together for a couple of drinks in a group.... all good. Then last weekend we all went out for dinner at a pub where there were two different football games showing. She was VERY friendly towards me. All good. After the games were over and she’d had several more drinks, she brought up in conversation that she knew that DH and I weren’t having sex and hadn’t for a long time. It was abundantly clear that he hadn’t taken responsibility for his side of things at all despite repeatedly saying so to my face. (Not the rape, that was years before we met, but the arsehole behaviour.) When I confronted him later about having this conversation, he said that he has the right to talk to his friends about how this affects him, but he couldn’t talk about my rape as that was invading my privacy. I think that was a cop out to avoid looking like an arsehole. I’m hurt and feel like I’ve been betrayed again. What do you think? (*btw - he has more insight than most, he has been raped himself, and I have helped him through some very dark times and some awful behaviour of his own.)

I can understand you being angry and upset.

I am confused as to who you are most angry with - your DH, the Queen Bee? What is most upsetting? What do you need to/want to deal with as a priority?

Your previous trauma? (I am sorry you went through that.) Are you in therapy over this?
The situation in your marriage? What is the main problem here? Your DH's lack of empathy (though maybe you need to cut him some slack if he has had a similar experience -maybe his ability to support you is understandably stymied due to this.)
Your DH needing to talk (he is allowed). You cannot change his duff decision to talk to QB - what do you want to happen? An apology? Who from? An agreement not to talk to her again? Not to see her again? Is this feasible if she is a key player in your entire social circle.

You now need to take a breath and work out what you want going forward. And what you can control/change.

The anger is not going to help. It will not change the past.

That is a very good point. I am going to make that clear to him as well. I am going to point out that his loyalty is very screwed up. I have said before that I don’t have better expectations of her. She’s not really on my radar. I’m devastated by his behaviour. I thought we were getting somewhere with the counselling. Now I’m not sure.

Yes, I am having therapy separately for my trauma. I certainly don’t think he’s equipped to deal with that. I would expect some empathy, and frankly I think I am owed some after all this.

*after all this time...

I loathe the whole queen bee hatred which goes on on MN. It’s about the only time you’ll see grown women being vile about perceived QB children and teenagers. Nice to see it carries on even when they are now adults.

There’s always one comment about how someone bumped into the QB from years ago and she’s now either fat/old/a cleaner/has a million kids and 10 dads.

Lots of people are still close with school friends. Why is she “clinging on to her glory days in sixth form”

So much projection about people’s own years at school. That being said she shouldn’t have discussed with you what your DH told her. I’ve no doubt he told her and not the male friends as men don’t tend to discuss their lack of a sex life with other men other than in a jokey way.

She shouldn’t have approached you about it and if I was your DH I’d be pissed off with her massively

I tend to agree with you @Rapid -- my point is that while the OP seems to have decided this woman is the 'Queen Bee', another way of interpreting her is that she's unhappily single and has developed this way of dealing with the rest of her mostly male friendship group's longterm relationships and marriages. (Evidence for this her not telling anyone in the group that she broke up with her most recent boyfriend in February.) Or of course she could be a contented person who is simply very loyal to a group of old school friends, whatever their or her relationship status. Maybe the OP feels threatened by her purely because it's clear that her loyalties are with the other people (all male?) in the original school friendship group, and their wives and partners are incidental to her.

My point is also that no one can declare themselves Queen Bee any more than they can crown themselves Miss Universe -- other people have to give them that status.

Sigh.... I said that I call HER the Queen Bee. This is because she sees herself this way. I have no connection to the other Queen Bee stuff. She has issues. Not my problem. I described her to fill in the picture. I think she is an angry, female misogynist. I don’t have to hang out with her, and I won’t.
My issues are with my husband’s talking about our sex life with her - knowing that I would never do the same with any of my friends - (tbh I am now wondering if his other friends are all laughing at me behind my back too. They were there as well, but nobody else has brought this up in conversation.) I am angry and I am humiliated. I feel like an object and I feel like he has proved the points I have made about me simply being a body to him and not a person. Again.

I hear you. I can completely see why you feel that way, I would find it so painful as well. Thank god you're booked in for Thursday (I think you said), I think it's so important you get that point over to him during it.

Your DH has bad taste in people he confides in.
I find it really odd when a group of nice people have an awful friend. It jars. Surely if you are actually nice people, you just wouldn't want to be associated with someone who's nasty? Especially when they have been nasty to your partners.

OP hasn’t actually said what makes QB so awful?

The whole OP is about this woman, I suspect if the DH had told a male friend and it had played out the same then OP would be on here talking about her husband, not the QBs relationship history which has no bearing on anything!

I felt assaulted by her comments to me about MY sex life, which up until this point I had no idea that she had no idea she had any insight into. And she used these insights as a weapon. No question.
He chose to ignore all of these facts in favour of defending his right to discuss his lack of access to my body for sexual gratification.

“Lack of access to your body for his sexual gratification”. You’re talking about your sex life like it’s an assault on you.

You absolutely get to refuse sex. You can refuse sex for the rest of your life and it is nobody else’s business. That choice is yours. But equally you’re deciding what happens to his sex life, he is allowed to be upset at someone unilaterally making the decision that he won’t be having sex anymore.

The boundaries around discussing that with outside people should be completely clear between you though.

I’m talking about how he has described the situation to his friend/s.... he hasn’t described his aggressive rejection of me when I needed him to hear me, after years of supporting him through his moods and being dragged around the world, uprooting the kids, carrying the entire family load, etc by myself, while he got to progress his career, feed his ego, etc.... I supported him emotionally, financially, sexually, etc... then when it was my turn, I was betrayed.

Woman up. Read your posts. Would you advise a friend to continue with this man?

Justilou
You’ve been around a fair while on mumsnet. I imagine you’ve heard of the sunken costs fallacy. The argument you’re using now falls into this, imo at least. I really think you need to look at what you want in life. I’m not one to advocate divorce. I’ve been through some very difficult times in my relationship. However, you sound so sad. This man isn’t giving it to you anything of what you need right now and it sounds as if he either isn’t able or isn’t prepared to give it to you. And perhaps he never will. Is this what you want for the next 5,10, 20 years?

I’m looking into it.

I agree she's shit stirring and it's working....

OP I would feel utterly awful if my DH discussed our sex life with a person who took pleasure in rubbing my face in it. She is an absolute cunt and nothing less.

Your DH is a whole 'nother issue.
There's so many issues there I wouldn't even know where's to start. He sounds like terrible husband, no kind of friend or partner and generally an arsehole.

Sounds like you really need to consider leaving the bastards.

To be honest I think what he did was really awful, knowing what the woman is like it's not nice and especially not to apologise for doing it either.

If it was me I would of said to her and called her out on it for being a dick. Hopefully her doing this to you now has made him think twice about talking to her again.

But here on the other side of the coin, Do you know exactly word for word what he told her? Was it a jokey group "oh we don't have sex anymore" comment (I have a best friend who always does this) or has he had a private conversation with her?

Have you asked him what he's said? Think I'd demand to know what he's said if it's personal and about me.

And it won't be popular advice, but if it's as serious as this (thinking of leaving him) and you are really hurt look at his bloody phone. Maybe it isn't as bad as you think.

I know a woman like that. She has a FB group. The men in the group have partners who are also in the group. She phones these men every morning, coos over them in the group.. She's 50 years old and acts like she's the hot young single everyone wants to be with. It's all bullshit as she just likes competing with women, and for all men's eyes to be on her. I think there's a weakness in couples being drawn to idiotic women like that. Why would you be? I just can't see the necessity or attraction of that dynamic around your relationship. As you see - It's problematic. But your husband knowingly blabbed to Miss Attention Seeker so you should find it interesting how he justifies that in your counselling session.

She was trying to cause trouble in your marriage, but he gave her the ammunition to do so by discussing such a personal issue.

There was no good reason for her to raise the issue with you, why did she do this? What was she hoping to achieve? You confiding in her too? She's not a pleasant woman at all...but you already know that.

Long term, you need to work through whether you want to continue in a marriage, with someone who thinks it's acceptable to discuss his sex life with friends.... plus whether you see your forever future with him.

Some ppl are okay with discussing such intimate issues with friends it...I'm not one of them.

Hm I’m a bit on the fence about this.

I don’t think honk it’s unheard of or entirely unreasonable for people to discuss their sex lives with friends. Not saying I would did, but I’ve certainly heard people talking about them before. I don’t think he is necessarily wrong for wanting to talk.

However, he has obviously not confided in the right person. Are they close?

I think that upon finding out that this woman had used this information as she did he should have had your back and told her she wasn’t wrong wrong.

Posted too soon. I just wanted to add that when he found out you had been embarrassed like that he should have have been sorry for that. This man is supposed to love you isn’t he.

I think there’s a lot more than just this issue going on between you and it doesn’t seem healthy for you at the moment. You’re in an emotionally vulnerable position. You need to look after yourself.

Sorry for the typos

We had another big talk about this last night and he told me he’d spoken to her about this. There were a lot of inconsistencies in this conversation. I knocked them all out of the ballpark. She was in tears, which he put down to her being devastated for hurting me, and told me that there was nothing malicious meant by the conversation. I told him that the whole point of the conversation was maliciousness, otherwise why have it at all. She and I do not talk about sex. We are not close friends at all. I haven’t seen her for years. She was so drunk she didn’t remember the conversation. Yet she said we were talking about dildos. Again, that conversation didn’t happen. I wouldn’t have that conversation at all. Ever. Especially in public. I wasn’t drunk. She seems to be able to “quote” me, but not remember anything she said. Very convenient. I have told him that she was crying crocodile tears because she was caught out breaking his confidence - which he didn’t address with her, of course. She wants to call me and apologise, but he doesn’t think that’s a good idea at the moment. Probably because I will rip her ears off over the phone and tell her a few truths while she’s vulnerable.
I told him what happened to me and that I was sick of everyone else being more vulnerable and him being happy to put everyone else first. He needs to get his priorities straight and start to nurture, respect and protect my feelings or there is no point pursuing a relationship with me.
Time will tell if he’s heard this.