AIBU to insist my boyfriend sets boundaries with unwanted flirting?

[TheArch]

So theres two older women (50-ish) in a large group of local musicians (mostly women) we know who flirt with my boyfriend.

They do it in front of me and try to exclude me from conversations and freeze me out etc but everyone else likes me so it has no impact, I just ignore them. I am not the only person they have done this to, and they bother other men too.
As a couple we just kind of laugh about how unpleasant they are and feel a bit sorry for them.
One of them has gotten the hint and toned it down and been friendlier to me and I’ve considered that an olive branch and reciprocated the friendliness, but the other one is now being even worse and basically rubs up against him whenever she can.

The real issue is how uncomfortable it makes my boyfriend, he doesn’t like to be touched or kissed on the cheek etc at all, unless its by me or his close family and oldest friends, he clearly feels very uncomfortable when she does it and has never reciprocated any affection but she keeps kissing him (not on the lips) and grabbing him to whisper in his ear and hug him etc and he clearly hates it and he never responds well. He usually blanks her and ignores it is happening or suggests it was awkward. He really struggles to set boundaries and not people please, so he has never told her to stop and hoped she would get the hint if he ignored her etc - like her friend did. But she clearly doesn't care and seems to be getting worse (esp if drunk). It’s horrible.

She has even said disrespectful things about me TO HIM and asked about our time in bed… To which he just walked away in a rage and came straight to me to tell me what she had said. But then begged me not to go and confront her (politely) about it, I feel like not confronting her is a bad idea as she clearly isn't going to stop.

He is too embarrassed to tell them to stop, and at this point I am struggling to watch it. I asked him if he wanted me to have a polite word with them and he said no, but I am having to watch him be harassed and it makes me so angry. He just deals with it with frozen silence it it happens and avoids them as much as he can, he's fine with that but I’m not. If the genders were reversed no one would be tolerating a woman being touched, harassed and bothered by older men in a friend group.

I have to admit, I feel he is also being a bit disloyal by not setting boundaries with other women. I wouldn’t let random blokes grab and kiss me, and if they were doing it in front of him - I would expect him to step in and help me! I don't understand why he wont let me help. It’s harassment to him, it’s disrespectful to me and someone needs to tell them to stop - it’s gross.

No one at a gig should be worried about being touched when they don't want to be.

Is it unreasonable for me to tell him he needs to speak to them or I will?

She is being unreasonable but i can also see how your boyfriend is finding it difficult to say any thing to her.
I think in your position if i could see this woman in action i would move in and get physically close to him as subtle as i could , i would really be wanting to give her a piece of my mind but would respect his wishes .
If you move in on her a few times she may get the message.

Why doesn't he want you to say anything? I mean she's being disrespectful about you to him, he really needs to stand up for you & tell her to get stuffed.

YANBU to want to step in, but ultimately you have to take the lead from the person who's the actual victim in how they want to deal with the situation (or not deal with it). You can certainly talk about it with him afterwards - discuss tactics, strategies, encourage him to be more forthright. But it's his right to be non-confrontational if he wants and his reasons for that may override the positives of causing a scene.

YABU to make his behaviour all about you with the stuff about being disloyal. That would be victim-blaming. Imagine if a man told his girlfriend that she was being disloyal to him because she was non-confrontational with older men harassing her.

I think if it was a woman who was being treated that way by a man the responses here would be very different. Posters would say she needed to speak up and if she really was too afraid or timid to do so then she should ask someone to advocate for her. No one would say she should suffer in silence.

He doesn’t have to be hostile towards her. He could move away and say please stop doing that, I don’t like it. He could make a joke of it and say “easy tiger, I’m spoken for”. He could embarrass her, which would definitely put a stop to it, by asking her why the fuck she thought it was ok to do that.

or if he really can’t cope with dealing with it himself he should ask a friend to tell her she has been making him feel really uncomfortable. Not you because the daft bat will just think you are jealous and threatened by her.

Sorry but your boyfriend is being a bit of a wimp. Of course he should tell her to stop.

Erm avoid going to places with them? If he can’t set boundaries, you need to say something even if he doesn’t want you to. It’s weird!

I have to admit, I feel he is also being a bit disloyal by not setting boundaries with other women.

There it is - finally after 5 paragraphs of you making excuses for him.

Yes, he is being very disloyal.

And unless he's wetter than a weekend in Skeggy, he doesn't want the attention to stop.

He's an adult. He needs to deal with this himself.

It seems it's easier for you to see him as a damsel in distress than accept he's happy with the attention.

I think your bf is being abused by this woman and if we acknowledged that men can be abused by women or that some women can be predators then OP might know how to handle it. OP your bf is shy/vulnerable and needs help blocking this woman. On his behalf , if I were you, I would step up and tell her to stop.
I would catch her touching him snd just bark “HANDS! Alicia! Keep them to yourself” or if she moves in for a kiss just say jovially “can’t get your own bf? Need some of mine? Bit pathetic, really.”

I don’t understand why he hasn’t anything to do with these women?

He's an adult and could make these inappropriate behaviours stop if he really wanted to.

Your BF has shitty boundaries with other women. It's disrespectful but you've put up with that disrespect rather than dump him because he allows other women to rub all over him in public and say nasty things about you.

If he really can't say no to women physically touching him and verbally demeaning his gf, he needs serious therapy.

If she is subjecting him to unwanted kissing and touching she is sexually assaulting him.

I don't understand why he continues to socialise with these women. If he doesn't want to make a sexual assault complaint or tell her in no uncertain terms her behaviour is unacceptable then why doesn't he just find better people to mix with?

I was with you IP except for the remarks about disloyalty.
if he clearly does not want or like any of this behaviour and can’t or won’t speak up, he needs to develop other strategies to avoid contact of any kind. Sitting away from them, moving if they do, hands in a back off position etc.
I know what it’s like to have people touch without consent - it’s horrible and violating and should not be mocked.
But… there is no way I’d continue a relationship or want to be anywhere near someone who called unwanted physical contact being disloyal. That’s really cruel.

I never said him being touched without consent was him being disloyal.
He is clearly more comfortable with this situation as a whole than I am, he does not feel like a victim, he has made that clear to me. He is not physically intimidated by them he just doesn’t like it. I think for him it’s more annoying than anything else.

I said I felt him not setting boundaries with other women felt a bit disloyal I am not victim blaming because he doesn’t feel like a victim, and I am sat there telling him this is abuse and we need to take it more seriously and he says its not a big deal.

So either he is a victim and needs my support, which he aggressively denies. Or he needs to set boundaries himself with other women, which he also refuses to do.

To people asking why he/we hang out with them, we don’t.

We are all musicians and we can’t control who comes to our gigs or not. When we are supporting mutual friends they may be there. We do our best to avoid them as much as possible. We only see them like once every three months at most usually. The reason I’m bringing it up now is because it’s kind of a busy season, and we may be playing the same festival in the summer and we have a few parties and events coming up that they might be at, so we’re looking at a bit of a once or twice a month kind of situation until it gets more quiet after October.

The mutual friends we have are not the kind of people that would tolerate this if they were aware of it. But as I said my boyfriend has asked me not to say anything, so no one else is aware of this situation.

Is he 13, 23, 33 or 43?

If 13 then his mum can handle it.

If older he can use his words. Either he can feel uncomfortable every time, or he can tell her to stop touching him and make her uncomfortable. Nobody else cares apart from you, but it is not your place to do this. It is up to him.

So either he is a victim and needs my support, which he aggressively denies. Or he needs to set boundaries himself with other women, which he also refuses to do.

He's choosing not to set boundaries with other women. This is your problem, not his. If he was really that uncomfortable, he'd say something. It's his body, not yours.