Single Women and Married Men Friendships - What are the rules??

[SurreyAstronaut]

Hello - first post here so please be gentle, I need some advice on a friendship...

I am the single woman (27), until recently I worked with a guy who I get on well with. It was innocent enough and was just chats over coffee, friendly emails and occasional lunches. He is in his mid forties and married. I have always considered us to be mates and nothing more, I am not attracted to him and he has never said or done anything that implies he is attracted to me.

He has recently left our company and we have stayed in touch, although less frequently than when we worked in the same office - we email maybe once or twice a week, very standard/friendly catch up emails on what the others are up to. I had never questioned it or felt that we were doing anything wrong until recently when I mentioned to a friend that we had discussed meeting up for lunch and she told me that it was a bit weird "going out with other peoples husbands" and now I am worried that I am inadvertently breaking some unwritten rule.

Is it a big no no to meet a married friend for lunch if it's just the two of you? Am I being naive in thinking that we can carry on being friends now that we don't work together?

Is your other woman single or married Talleyrand? Did she start off as just a friend?

Larry Okay first, why would I look for red flags?

Because I would be hopelessly naive if I didn't realise that within heterosexual opposite-sex friendships, there is always the potential for one or both of us to feel a level of attraction. That what starts out as an innocent friendship with no real attraction on either side, or a one-sided attraction, can evolve into something else, mainly because of blurred boundaries and the individuals being spectacularly obtuse about the changed nature of the relationship.

I don't disbelieve the OP at all, but whether Surrey is attracted to this man or not is besides the point in terms of my own boundaries. If he is attracted to her and is keeping this relationship secret from his wife, then in Surrey's shoes, I wouldn't want to collude in a secret that could hurt another woman, in order to get my ego stroked.

I'm sure Surrey isn't like that at all, since she's had the foresight to post this dilemma. Hopefully this advice will sharpen her antennae to listen out for complaints about his wife or to ask some questions about secrecy.

And I agree with Loves that very often in these situations, the attraction is not instant, but depending on your own self-esteem and ego needs at the time, having someone even grossly unsuitable telling you that you are adorable and gorgeous can be pretty intoxicating stuff. Surrey wouldn't be the first person to suddenly develop an attraction to a stale, pale man in his 40s, imbuing him with qualities that don't really exist...

This is bonkers. I think all my friends are attractive, of either sex. The more I like tham, the more attractive I find them. I do believe this is perfectly normal & healthy. I've never felt compelled to rip off my clothes & insert someone's penis in my vagina just because we're friends.

I NEVER have lunch or social drinks naowadays [sobs loudly] but, when I worked in central London, I did frequently. Given that everyone lives an hour's commute away from work, it's the only way to see people.

I think you can take this friend of The Marriage business too far. If I see a friend, it is in the context of our friendship. I don't see him as a walking entity known as A Marriage, with a visible gap by his side where the absent wife resides. Obviously I'd knock him back if he got a bit cheesy - that's being a friend, not assuming guardianship of someone else's emotional life.

But Grace, that's the point! If you knocked him back for being "a bit cheesy" then you would be a friend, both to him and his marriage. Whereas if you encouraged him in his cheesiness, added a fair dose of your own and worse still, sympathised with any complaints about his wife, you wouldn't be a friend to his marriage, even if you didn't know his wife from Adam.

You wouldn't be a great friend to him either, because the test of a friendship is often having the ability to say to a moaning friend;

"Actually, I think it's you being an arse, not your wife."

THis is all tediously heteronormative, of course. All you paranoid hysterics might like to bear in mind the fact that sometimes people's longstanding friendships with members of their own sex lead to them TURNING GAY! So it;s not safe to let your partner go anwywhere or speak to anyone without you there to make sure that the person has passed enough tests to be a Friend Of The Marriage.
Actually, if you're that obsessed with policing The Marriage, why not just have a ring through your partner's nose and a ring through your own with a chain linking them together?

Hang on: I quite like people to sympathise with my complaints about my partner. That's why they're my friends. Call me shallow (people frequently do) but when I'm saying AND ANOTHER THING and I DO EVERYTHING ROUND HERE, YOU KNOW, EVERYTHING and AND DID I TELL AS WELL I want sympathy and perhaps the offer of a drink.

I like Grace's post.

I really don't want to spend my evening with someone who will tell me bracingly I'm being an arse. They're my friends, not My Marriage's friends.

Relationship advice from SGB is like asking a vegetarian advice on the best cuts of meat.

You just don't get it.

Why are you even concerning yourself with the mundane marrieds? Don't you have a gang bang to organise or something?

This part of the discussion, I find interesting. Whilst I'm all too painfully aware of how affairs develop, I do feel that being able to discuss personal problems is part of a good friendship. If a male pal moans about his wife/kids, I'm inclined to sympathise and then point out his DW's likely perspective. Men need 'listening-to' just as much as women do; normally it helps to defuse anxieties.

There are various ways of doing this - I think we'd all recognise the "wrong" way, but I can't imagine a set of rules to define it! In the end, we trust our partners and our friends - betrayal hurts because of that. The crappy thing about affairs that grow out of friendships is the knowledge that, at some point, our partner KNEW the "wrong" thing was happening, but chose not to change direction at that point.

Do you agree, WWIF? Is it possible to define such a point, or describe safe (friendly) behaviour?

Lol @ your shouty post, motherinferior! Have a gin. Here, I'll make it a large one

< spits out tea >

Grace I'm going to ignore SGB's rudeness, and answer your point.

Yes, you know me well enough now to know that of course I feel sympathetic to my male friends' plights and I heartily agree, men need sympathy and caring as much as women. But my approach has been like yours - sympathy, followed by the other person's perspective.

It's hard to convey the "you're being an arse" retort on a forum, but fortunately my friendships are strong enough to take a bit of honesty with no hard feelings and in the case I'm thinking of, was delivered with a smile to a friend of over 30 years standing. And he had the good grace to agree next time I saw him that he was being a bit of an arse..

SolidGoldBrass, that idea about the rings is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. More, please!

Malificence: Because married monogamists are not the only people in the world and they are not more important than the rights of other people to friendship.

I'm more important than my husband's friends , I wouldn't be his wife if I thought otherwise.
Anyone with any sense would feel the same.

Last time I checked, he's happy with the ring through his nose.

How tediously heteronormative of you minipie!

I do, in fact, think my friendships are as important as my relationship with my children's father. Mind you, I'm not his wife.

I know, I know WWIFN

I feel I should get a token platonic male friend in order to prove that it's possible. (I used to have one, but turns out he didn't feel quite so platonic. Even after he got married to someone else... )

Just out of interest, echoing SGB's post, do you dislike your partners seeing their gay male friends, in case One Thing Leads To Another, not least because of that rampant bloke lust that just escapes at every tumescent opportunity? And what about your own lesbian friends?

minipie. I'm just imaging Surrey coming in from work sometime soon and seeing all these responses to her thread.

At which point we'll probably find out that she knows the wife and kids well, babysits the youngest and the man concerned had to leave the company because of flatulence and body odour issues.

Who are your posts addressed to Mother? I think my position is quite clear.

I think I'm kind of addressing all of you who think that THis Kind Of Thing Is A Bit Suspect, You Know. The whole thing is so...outside my comprehension.

I'm still stuck on the idea of the Marriage being something that needs its own Friends. In the same way that it needs Work. As if it were a feral beast prowling in the corner or suchlike.