My close male friends wife accused us of wanting to be together

[nancyfromthefarm]

I am absolutely reeling tonight having not long got back from dinner with a couple my husband and I are friends with. It is actually me who is close friends with the husband of the other couple although I always normally get on well with his wife. We met in our early 20's (we are all late 30's now) and quickly became very close. When we met we were both with our current partners the people we would go on to marry so were never single in all the time we knew each other. Once or twice while very drunk we talked about it, not getting together but that we probably would have if we had both been single when we met. We also laughed and said it was a good thing we weren't single as we would make a terrible couple and at least this way we would always stay friends and we just agreed not to go there. We could have got together if we really wanted to neither of us was even engaged at that time but we both loved our partners and felt we would be better as friends. I has been a fantastic and treasured friendship, we have a lot in common intellectually more than anything else that we are unable to share with our spouses and it is lovely to have an outlet for those things.

For the most part both our partners have accepted our friendship without issue and we all hang out together on occasion like tonight. My friends wife had her 1st baby in February and this was the 1st time we have all got together like this since the birth.

The Baby was with a relative overnight and so my friends wife let her hair down with a few drinks. Towards the end of the evening she was very drunk and agitated. My friend and I are both very interested in politics and so had been discussing the new labour leader as well as other things when she started in on us. She was speaking to my husband saying that they should just leave and let us get on with it, that she didn't want to be a gooseberry. She then said that the only reason my friend and I married who we did was because we hadn't met each other first and that we should just put everyone out of their misery by getting together.

I tried to reassure her and so did he but she was very worked up at this point. My husband said that we should just leave, my friend agreed and we did. My husband was a bit quiet on the way home, not angry but he has gone to bed. I have texted my friend and his wife is apparently sleeping now. I don't know what to think, it may be that she is just stressed with the baby but I am scared for what this could mean. I want to say to her that that isn't how we feel about each other, if we had wanted to go down that road we could have years ago and we didn't because we loved our respective partners.

I just need some advice or reassurance about this, will she be ok, is it likely to blow over?

I read to page six as I'm going to bed, but I agree with shovetheholly's post (p6). I have always had good male friends, and DH has good female ones. Luckily that seems to have worked out well most of the time, but I did lose a friend, ironically after I introduced him to a friend of mine I thought he would like, trying to matchmake. They dated and then got married, but from the time they became serious I never again got to see him alone. And then she became less friendly with me , bit by bit, even though I'd known her for years. DH and I would see them as a couple, but now I don't have any contact with them.
I have another close male friend, and as the OP says, it is possible we might have got together had we both been single, as we have lots in common, but nothing ever did happen, I married my dH (very happily) and he met someone and got married too. We all get on well as a foursome, and I make an enormous effort with his wife, as does DH. We don't have much in common with her (DH is also close to my male friend) but it wouldn't work if we didn't make the effort to get on with her. I think shovetheholly's advice is spot on. You need to work on your relationship with her. It is of course fine to sometimes see him alone, but you really need to focus on getting on with her. You are behaving, understandably, as you would with a female best friend. (I want my female friends to myself when I see them, it annoys me if DH comes too) But this is a different dynamic, and unless you can resolve things with his wife, and be truly kind and friendly, then I think the friendship will fail.

The Mumsnet mafia have ripped the OP to shreds over this issue, and to see TheDowagerCuntess gloating over this just rubs salt into the wound, and is not pleasant to witness.
Despite the 250 plus posts to the contrary, I do believe that it possible to maintain a platonic friendship with a member of the opposite sex.

I think that alcohol was to blame over the whole issue and in the cold light of sober day friendships might, heaven forbid, be rekindled.

OP you have my sympathy and support. It would be interesting to hear your perspective.

Despite the 250 plus posts to the contrary, I do believe that it possible to maintain a platonic friendship with a member of the opposite sex.

You've clearly been reading a different thread from me, because I've seen post after post from people, including myself repeatedly, saying platonic M/F friendships are entirely possible. The OP just hasn't managed what most other people seem to be able to quite easily and without all this drama.

It might have been years ago, but you and your friend met each other when you both already in relationships, if you both had been honest to your dh and his DW about the few times you've told each that basically, if you weren't in relationships you'd be banging each other, do you think you still be with dh and he with his wife? You may not have shagged each other, but you decided to continue the friendship, knowing most likely that your partners would either finish your relationships or ask for the friendship to stop had they known about those conversations at the time. Best thing probably would have been to end the friendship and concentrate on your relationship when that line was crossed because it sounds like you've built up resentment of his wife, sounds like she's not as stupid as you think and resents you, and it's hard to know how your dh sounds, because you hardly mention him.
At some point you've both lied to your spouses and most likely yourselves too, because when you're discussing what it would be like to shag each other, or that you would be with them if you were single etc then it wasn't platonic at that point, and the chemistry that has lead you both to discuss this, probably didn't go unnoticed by his or your partner, and if he told her back then "it's platonic" he's lied.
I think it's perfectly possible for men and women to be friends. I have both female and male close friends, I've never talked about what it would be like to shag them or be in a relationship with them though.
I hope your friend manages to fix things with his wife, I think you're friendship might be at least on the back burner too, because you're friends wife and baby come first.

"I think it's perfectly possible for men and women to be friends. I have both female and male close friends, I've never talked about what it would be like to shag them or be in a relationship with them though"

I agree Mumwithanipad. Entering into this conversation when you already in a partnership with someone else (as the OP and her friend were) is, IMO allowing a degree of intimacy that the friend's wife is all too aware of.

I think that alcohol was to blame over the whole issue and in the cold light of sober day friendships might, heaven forbid, be rekindled.

There is so much backstory from the OP herself that I am amazed that anyone still thinks its about an isolated drunken conversation about politics. Flopper- The OP's perspective is that she doesn't want anyone to get in the way of her friendship with male friend.

Also- Neither Dowager nor anyone else has condemned opposite-sex friendship on here. The OP's handling of HER opposite-sex friendship however, has crossed lots of boundaries and (IMO) showed a lack of compassion for the other two spouses involved.

The OP won't come back because so few people agreed with her.

Op, if you do come back, which I doubt

If you've been friends for so long and have gone out in couples together over the years, then I find it strange that your friends wife would suddenly blow up at you and her H the very first time you all go out after the birth of their first baby.

Reading between the lines, I wonder if you are in fact jealous that 'your friend' and his wife now have a child together, and in turn, maybe you've flirted more than any other time with her husband, just because you don't like the fact that they share something far more precious than a so called intellectual meeting of minds.

Flopper the Mumsnet mafia?

Yes because we all got together at 1am and said 'let's go beat up Nancy?

The OP chose to post a thread, and while she remained active on it defended her position robustly.

There have been a number of posters eg Twinkle also supporting the OPs point of view.

The majority of posters disagreeing with an OP doesn't mean we're being nasty. It just means lots of people think she's wrong.

If you agree with the OP that's fine, but don't write off everyone else's view as meanness. I was genuinely trying to help the OP see a different point of view (her posts were a tad 'me,me,me')

I was on the thread as it developed and at time the OP's responses were fairly shocking. They may not of course read that way if you are just sitting down to read the thread as a whole.

I would have thought that if the husband of the OP disagreed with what the other lady had said after a few drinks, he would have said something to support the OP either in front of everyone or at least to his own wife privately. He doesn't appear to have done so perhaps he feels sidelined too. Maybe the OP hasn't returned because she's trying to put things right with her own husband instead of someone else's.

I agree RedRidingHoddie. The OP stayed up trying to text the male friend whilst her silent husband went to bed alone.

That says so much about the OP's priorities. She started the thread because she was worried the wife might jeopardize the special close friendship she had with the male friend. She was more worried about that that anything or anyone.

OP's if the Super Soaker variety. We are all wasting our time here.

Why, after this incident with your friend's DW, did you send a text to him, but not to her? Perhaps it is things like that which make her feel undermined.

Her husband needs to prioritise his dw's feelings over yours, do you think he does that? I don't think offering to babysit would be a good idea and doubt very much your friend's dw would find that helpful.

I have never had a male friend who I've had any sort of sexual thing with, (although inevitably I have had friends who possibly would have if I'd been interested). but if you have a very intimate friendship with a man, or a gay women maybe, then I can imagine there might be a conversation about why you've never taken it further. it seems to me that was all the conversation was. e.g. "we are male and female and heterosexual, we really get on, how come we never tried being a couple?" I haven't had this conversation with any men I'm close to, but it doesn't seem wildly unreasonable to me, and I don't see how it changes the friendship. They could have been lovers, but the key thing is that they weren't, and there are obviously good reasons for that. They each love other people, but want to be friends. No-one would bat an eyelid if they were two women. My friends DH has a female best friend, and it has always been a completely harmonious situation, it doesn't have to be treated with suspicion.

Sir Vix, I don't think the issue is the fact there is a male/female friendships. I think the OP's responses showed a lot of disregard for the man's wife, for her own husband and an alarming set of priorities.

It's my opinion that she far too invested in this friendship and the two of them appear to have a cosiness that is at best rude to their spouses and at worse, overly intimate and exclusive. The OP speaks about the wife as if she is in the way of the "special closeness" she has with the male friend.

I just wonder if anyone would think her friendship overly intimate if it wasn't with a man. Obviously, if that is true that she feels the wife is an intrusion on their special friendship then she needs to think long and hard about how to accept his wife properly. (I felt that about my best friend's boyfriend for a while, but was a teenager at the time!) . However, I didn't really get that from the OP's posts myself. I am closer to my DH than anyone else, but I do still want close friendships, and they do exclude him to a degree. (He is friendly to my friends, and some he is also a good friend of, but I like to see them one on one and not always with him).

This thread is SO depressing, the gist I'm getting from most of the posts here, is that most women see spouses as possessions.

There are a few voices of reason scattered amongst those that seem to project something I am also not seeing onto the OP, but such a small percentage of reasonable voices makes me realise that too many women are just insecure bitches & no matter how much they protest that m/F friendships are acceptable, even in marriage, reality is something else :(

I much prefer my world, I would hate to spend my life feeling so worried by every female DH is friends with & I am proud that I married a man who was more than happy that an ex of mine is DDs godfather

I honestly don't think I see DH as a possession. But I would not want him to discuss the details of our marriage with any friend - male or female - to the extent that the friend could confidently proclaim that they would "know" if we were having difficulties because he would definitely have "told them".

I would feel like that was a violation of my privacy and disloyal. Does that make me an insecure bitch?

Rockhippy piffle quite frankly.

Rockin

We get it - you are groovy

Now go back and read what others have written; not what you think they have written. This is nothing to do with the possibility of men and women being platonic friends, but what the OP has written about her relationship with this particular man

RockinHippy, you're a cool wife. Such a cool wife.

My DH has quite a few female friends, including one in particular he will meet and have dinner with, just the two of them. I'm not suspicious in the least.

There are tons of red flags in the OP's posts that you've chosen to overlook in a bid to prove what a cool wife you are. So very cool.

I probably would talk to my closest and oldest friend if I was having problems in my marriage, I think DH would probably talk to his. I don't think that is disloyal, but I understand that some people might not want to do that. DH did the rather stupid thing of talking to his Mum when we were having a tricky time, on first living together. A friend would have been a far better choice .
I wonder if family dynamics play a part in how we feel about mixed sex friendships? I have one brother who I'm close to. DH has a sister. For both of us it has been normal to knock about with the other sex. He had lots of female friends as a teenager, who he is close to still, and I had male ones. I really would be completely happy if he wanted to go out for lunch with a female friend, and he would feel the same about me and a male one.

And to the above pps, I'm not a "cool wife" type. but I really don't see the red flags in the OPs posts, other than that she isn't being as considerate as perhaps she might be of his wife. Some of DHs friends rant on to him about things in which I have no interest at all, and don't pay me any attention really (boffins) . That is fine, even funny. They are blokes. So there is a double standard here where we expect different behaviour from women.

Yeah, no.

I have much more of an issue with a woman calling other women "just insecure bitches" than I do with women, or anyone for that matter, having friendships with the opposite sex.

I'm sure Op isn't coming back so the whole thing is quite pointless, but really, comments like that shouldn't go unchallenged, particularly on a women dominated space like MN. It's a vile comment which ensures any further smugness points you are trying to make, won't be taken seriously.

Yup

"You lot are insecure bitches" kinda invalidates anything you said before and after