DP’s university friend

[Sparrowhawk111]

I’ve been dating my DP for over a year, we are in our late 50s and it’s going very well. He left a marriage that was unhappy for a long time about eighteen months ago. He was very cautious about telling family and friends until he felt that the relationship was going to be long term as it started quite soon after he left. I feel like I’m gradually being accepted which is progress. He has an old university friend who he visits for a weekend a couple of times a year as she lives about three hours away, he said she has been incredibly supportive during the latter years of marriage and divorce. She has been divorced for several years and does not currently have a partner. He decided to tell her about us during his last visit. When he got back he chatted about lots of things, her grown up children, where they had all been for a meal, the place she lives, her retirement plans. I asked what he had said about us and he said told her he is in a serious new relationship and she was happy that he is now happy, all good. Then I asked if he’d shown her any photos or told her how we’d met and he replied no as she’d just changed the subject and not asked anything about me at all. If a friend of mine had a new partner I’d want to know everything about them! Does anyone else think this is strange or am I being over sensitive?

I don’t think her reaction is unusual. He told her about you, and some details but nothing more. Maybe she’s not interested in where you met, pictures etc, or maybe already seen pictures in social media etc. maybe the conversation drifted off on a tangent.

I think at this stage you’re being a tad over sensitive, but as the relationship progresses, it would be weird not to be introduced.

@burnoutbabe

But why should she show all the interest in the new girlfriend and demand pictures rather than him just give her the details needed? If he is not particularly chatty about it, who should she have to lead that chat. Dating is probably not something they discuss. (As opposed to say discussing a thing you did together like a holiday).

True enough but I asked him a bit more about her dating history post divorce last night. He knew every detail about her ex DP including some quite intimate things that he wouldn’t even discuss with my closest friends. I left the conversation feeling quite relieved that they hadn’t discussed me because I would not want a complete stranger to know such personal details about me.

• Things I wouldn’t discuss with my closest friends.

I’m really not sure I want to deal with the whole situation now, I think I need to talk to DP and possibly end things.

I’m not sure why you feel she’s ‘disrespecting you’ — she doesn’t know you, is unlikely to meet you, and probably doesn’t give you any headspace at all. If she’s known him in a miserable marriage, and supported him while he was ending it, she’s probably glad to see him happy, either single or in a relationship, but that’s about it. She was happy to confide in your DH about the detail of her past relationship woes, but isn’t going to force him to reciprocate, which you’re happy about. She’s done nothing wrong.

@Sparrowhawk111

* Things I wouldn’t discuss with my closest friends.

Some people have different preferences when sharing detailed information

This is all a bit crazy. You're going to end things with him because one of his friend didn't ask enough questions about you?

I have lots of male friends from uni. There is nothing sexual there. It's just been too long. The friendship is based on in my case nostalgia and keeping links to the past, friends that have kept up with me but we aren't all very invested in each others lives. More interested in each other for who we all are as people, not what we do with our lives. We say we are going to meet, it can take a few months or longer to sort something, precisely because it's not a priority. There's always someone, usually a female doing the running and the organisation because the men deliberately stay clear of that kind of shit.

The friend a) probably doesn't want a piece of your partner b) probably isn't interested in you because she's 50 and she's got other friends. Perhaps try and stop with the massive insecurity. It says more about you then her or him. Also 18 months isn't very long out of a LTR so I'd downplay the crazy for now as its going to be off-putting.

I think you’re being overly sensitive. I met up with a very old friend I’ve known almost two decades recently but haven’t seen since before first lockdown. He’s been dating a woman for about six months now, so I asked if it was going well and how they met and what she does for a living - and then the conversation moved on to other things of mutual interest. I’m not especially interested in what she looks like and friend isn’t really the sort to get out his phone and show me lots of selfies of them together or whatever. Until he decides he wants to introduce us, she’s not even peripheral to my life to get excited over. I certainly don’t fancy him or have any desire to bang him, and I’d be a bit baffled if he told me that she’d broken up with him because I didn’t show enough interest her and that implies I’m jealous of her

Put it this way. If your dp was female and told an old female friend about meeting someone, most of us would ask out of interest and to show support. Certainly not be against meeting the new squeeze. So yeah, something is up with that

I’m not sure that would sit right with me either.
The fact she doesn’t want to meet you part would feel disrespectful. Surely if an old friend visited and told about a wonderful new partner they had and suggested all meeting the answer should be yes of course.
Even if she genuinely wasn’t fussed about meeting new partner, this person is a huge part of their friends life. So I find that odd.

I’d also not be happy about my dp spending weekends with another woman, long term friends or not.

When single fine, but when you’re in a relationship you have to take your partner into account and if friend is purposely excluding them that’s surely not right.

@Bookworm20

I’m not sure that would sit right with me either. The fact she doesn’t want to meet you part would feel disrespectful. Surely if an old friend visited and told about a wonderful new partner they had and suggested all meeting the answer should be yes of course. Even if she genuinely wasn’t fussed about meeting new partner, this person is a huge part of their friends life. So I find that odd.

I’d also not be happy about my dp spending weekends with another woman, long term friends or not.

When single fine, but when you’re in a relationship you have to take your partner into account and if friend is purposely excluding them that’s surely not right.

That’s pretty juvenile. This woman is in her late 50s and focused on her own priorities. We have no idea what the OP’s boyfriend told his friend about the OP. Some of the flouncier responses on this thread seem to assume the boyfriend tried to gush about his wonderful new partner, and was actually showing a photograph when the evil friend said ‘Bored now!’ For all we know, he said, ‘I’m seeing someone and I’m happy’ and left it at that and she said ‘Great, I’m glad for you.’ Or, given that she’s been there throughout the end of his unhappy marriage, she’s just hoping he’s not gotten embroiled in a new relationship that isn’t going to cause more drama. Maybe she thinks he’s on full-on rebound mode. Maybe she’s just tired of hearing about his relationship unhappiness and quietly signalling she’s not up for listening to the details of this relationship. We don’t know. Any of these are considerably more likely than that she’s nursed a secret passion for him for 35 years.

It genuinely strikes me on some of these threads that some women (thankfully a minority) can’t get their heads around the concept that not all other women are tormented with desire for their boyfriends, or resent the fact that longterm men or women friends will know their boyfriends in some ways better than they do as newish girlfriends.

I

@ComtesseDeSpair

I think you’re being overly sensitive. I met up with a very old friend I’ve known almost two decades recently but haven’t seen since before first lockdown. He’s been dating a woman for about six months now, so I asked if it was going well and how they met and what she does for a living - and then the conversation moved on to other things of mutual interest. I’m not especially interested in what she looks like and friend isn’t really the sort to get out his phone and show me lots of selfies of them together or whatever. Until he decides he wants to introduce us, she’s not even peripheral to my life to get excited over. I certainly don’t fancy him or have any desire to bang him, and I’d be a bit baffled if he told me that she’d broken up with him because I didn’t show enough interest her and that implies I’m jealous of her

Nonsense. You have admitted you asked a few questions about how they met etc but most importantly you are not refusing to meet her at such point your friend would like to introduce you. OP has been told the friend is not willing to meet her.

So re-frame your scenario. Your mate's gf breaks up with him because you, his oldest female friend, who he spends weekends with alone, has no interest in meeting her. Or that's what she's been told.

And so she breaks up because she isn't going to blindly accept that the guy she's seeing is (a) indeed meeting a friend (b) she is definitely just a friend (c) the friendship isn't the type that's not really conducive to a relationship (drugs, gambling etc) because she'll never know will she? Because she's been told they'll never meet. I don't know of any friendship where one party just refuses to meet a partner but still expects the friend to spend weekends.

None of this would be an issue if OP knew she'd be introduced to this friend. She's been told she won't and it's bonkers to expect anyone to be share a life, finances and fidelity with someone who won't even introduce you to his apparently oldest friend.

Also wondering how this would play out on a date - "hey, just FYI, I'm very close to this woman, really old friend, will be spending weekends alone with her, I discuss everything with her, but you won't ever meet her as she doesn't want to meet my partners."

I can't imagine any woman who wouldn't think WTF.

@SnakeLinguine I think you’re missing the fact that this old friend is refusing to meet op.
I know of no one who would refuse to meet a good friends partner, especially so if they’d got out of a long marriage and now seemed happy. That’s the bit that’s odd.
It’s either this woman refusing to meet op, OR it’s her dp just saying she doesn’t want to meet because HE doesn’t want them to.

Either scenario is disrespecting op in my view.

[quote Bookworm20]@SnakeLinguine I think you’re missing the fact that this old friend is refusing to meet op.
I know of no one who would refuse to meet a good friends partner, especially so if they’d got out of a long marriage and now seemed happy. That’s the bit that’s odd.
It’s either this woman refusing to meet op, OR it’s her dp just saying she doesn’t want to meet because HE doesn’t want them to.

Either scenario is disrespecting op in my view.[/quote]
Where does it say the friend refused to meet, @Bookworm20? All I can see is that when the OP suggested she went along on a visit, her boyfriend said he didn’t think the friend would want to. No suggestion I can see that he asked and his friend refused.

I think what the outraged posters are overlooking is that the OP says her boyfriend was very cautious about telling anyone about the relationship until he felt it was serious and committed — maybe in part because he seems to have started seeing the OP within six months of the end of a very unhappy marriage. It’s perfectly possible he was embarrassed to tell an old friend who supported him through the end of his marriage that he’d been in a relationship for a year and hadn’t mentioned it, so downplayed it. We don’t know the way in which he spoke about the relationship to his friend. If he in fact did.

I did suggest that we at least meet at some point as well as his usual visits and he said he didn’t think she would want to do that as she sees herself as his friend.

Is this the part that PP's are describing as the friend 'refusing to meet' the OP? Because it sounds like that was just a throwaway comment from her partner and not actually something this friend said.

OP- for someone who claims not to 'do drama', your response to this non issue with his friend is very dramatic. Are you really thinking of breaking up with him over his friend's reported lack of enthusiasm when discussing you?

I wouldn't read that much into it. They don't seem to have that regular contact that it would impact your day to day relationship. I'm in my early forties, but if a friend I saw infrequently got into a new relationship I might prefer to catch up with the friend I hadn't seen for a while than spend time making small talk with a stranger. I do think she should meet you at some point though, I agree that is quite unusual. Could your DP have told her it was a newer relationship than it actually is, so she wants to hold off until next year or something?

You said “He said she has been incredibly supportive during the latter years of marriage and divorce.”

That’s his point of view. She could have been sick to death of hearing him moaning/complaining/crying about the whole process and maybe her nerves went on edge at the prospect of nursing him though another heartbreak.
So she didn’t pry/encourage him.

So when he originally said he was visiting I didn’t really say anything. Friend didn’t know about me and this is how they usually meet up so it seemed sensible. I have had some further conversations with DP, he told her about me, she said she was pleased for him then started talking about other things and didn’t ask anything else during the weekend but they had a lot to catch up about. He suggested that she come to see him / us next time and she said she would prefer him to visit her as usual as she might not feel comfortable coming here. I don’t feel I can say anything myself now about him visiting in future so I need to decide whether it is something I can live with or not.

I thought I would test the theory of several PPs that they just talk about shared history and are not that interested in others. So asked DP if friend has had any relationships since her divorce and yes she has had one serious one. My DP knew a huge amount about this person including some details about their love life. Clearly the ‘lack of interest’ in each other’s relationships theory doesn’t stack up. For those of you ‘cool mums’ saying that it would not be a problem for you if a friend of opposite sex shared intimate details of her sex life with your DH or DP then I’m pleased you are so carefree. As for me, I am not happy with knowing that she chose to share that with DP.

If I’d posted without the context that my DP was spending weekends alone with another woman and she confided in DP much personal information but didn’t want to hear about me would you still say this was ok?

OP, this is silly. You’re pissed off she hasn’t shown enough interest in you and the details of your relationship, THEN you say you’re relieved your boyfriend didn’t tell her any intimate details, and now you’re pissed off that your boyfriend has been made privy to details of HER sex life with a former boyfriend, long before you came on the scene. Look, I’m with you in that I don’t want private details of my life shared with anyone — I don’t talk about that stuff with my own friends, and I don’t expect DH to — but I can’t prevent him from being told things by his friends. I certainly can’t time travel back and tell him he’s not allowed to hear stories from his friends before I ever knew him.

He suggested that she come to see him / us next time and she said she would prefer him to visit her as usual as she might not feel comfortable coming here.

Why not? I'd be asking that.
As it seems the friendship is on her terms then, he visits her only. I'm guessing you were not also invited to visit.

OP, I don't think you're being silly. I wouldn't like this. less so if I hadn't actually met the woman.

I'd also be asking, as they meet a couple times a year (is that right?) has he met any of HER partners. Specifically the one who she had a quite serious relationship with. He seemed to know alot of details abut this man, which to me suggests he did meet him, chatted with him and therefore learnt a fair bit about him or she talked about him alot during their visit.

The bit that would bother me, given the fact above, is that your DP mentioned you, then she changed the subject and didn't want to hear anything about you the rest of the weekend. I find that a little bizarre.
When I've had friends visit or I've visited them that I haven't seen in a long time we discuss aspects of our lives, including new relationships. And always its been said, ohh I'll have to meet them, we'll all get together.

It doesn't really matter, if you trust him, and his feelings an intentions.

And if you don't, you have bigger concerns than this one friend.

Do you trust him? If so, why is this bothering you?

If not, why are you with him?

@Bookworm20

He suggested that she come to see him / us next time and she said she would prefer him to visit her as usual as she might not feel comfortable coming here.

Why not? I'd be asking that.
As it seems the friendship is on her terms then, he visits her only. I'm guessing you were not also invited to visit.

OP, I don't think you're being silly. I wouldn't like this. less so if I hadn't actually met the woman.

I'd also be asking, as they meet a couple times a year (is that right?) has he met any of HER partners. Specifically the one who she had a quite serious relationship with. He seemed to know alot of details abut this man, which to me suggests he did meet him, chatted with him and therefore learnt a fair bit about him or she talked about him alot during their visit.

The bit that would bother me, given the fact above, is that your DP mentioned you, then she changed the subject and didn't want to hear anything about you the rest of the weekend. I find that a little bizarre.
When I've had friends visit or I've visited them that I haven't seen in a long time we discuss aspects of our lives, including new relationships. And always its been said, ohh I'll have to meet them, we'll all get together.

I have checked and he didn’t meet her partner, he wasn’t invited to stay at that time as she was usually busy when he tried to arrange things. I think the intention is to meet a couple of times a year but sometimes more time just drifts by. So everything he knows about her partner is from conversations they had over time.

Funnily enough I am going to stay with old friends (a couple) on my own in a couple of weeks. I’m sure they will want to meet him once they know I’m in a settled relationship.

I will have a talk with him at some point soon, suggest we meet each other’s close friends (there aren’t many) and then decide after that how our ongoing friendships might work. I’ll say I would hope to mix and match seeing friends individually and together. If he doesn’t agree to this then I will probably step away.

I think I will also make it clear that while he may feel comfortable discussing anything and everything that I don’t want very personal information about me being discussed. I hope he will agree.

I have no indication he is interested in her romantically, as PPs have said he was free to date her after his separation but didn’t want to. I am not sure about her, I certainly feel she is at least put out by him being in a new relationship and this is about her power as one of his oldest friends, possibly she was hoping for a relationship with him. I’m actually can’t be bothered with this and if it becomes clear that she is trying to step over boundaries then I will just walk away. I’m just so over this type of interference. I was very happily single for a long time before meeting DP.

Well, if he didn’t meet her last serious partner either, then surely it’s a fairly safe conclusion that this is just the way their long friendship operates — entirely one on one, meeting a couple of times a year by themselves, not really altering the pattern whether or not they’re single or in relationships? I don’t see where you’re getting your idea that she’s in any way romantically interested in him from — she’s had 35 years to act, and while presumably they were both married for some of that, she’s also been single and fully aware he was unhappy in his marriage, and had plenty of opportunity? Seeing someone at six-monthly intervals, often longer, and monthly phone calls, doesn’t exactly sound like the white heat of passion…

Just tell him you are not happy about this and see what his reaction is before you decide to walk away. Whatever PPs say only you know what you can tolerate.