Would you give up a dear friend because their partner hates you?

[fridgemonkey]

I'll keep it as brief as I can, but a bit of background will put it in context.

I have a friend, who was also my first love. We were together as teenagers, through uni, and into the first couple of years of adult life (living together). There was animosity when we broke up (on both sides) but we worked through it and became friends. Real friends, with no added benefits. He is one of the good guys and I love him dearly; he is part of my history.

We both, obviously, went on to other relationships and he is now married with a small daughter, and I am with my man and we have a young son.

Here's the point. His wife hates me - she has made that very clear. I've met her a couple of times, including her wedding, she has refused my friendship overtures and acts as though I am dirt on her shoe. She dislikes that we are in sporadic contact. We don't live in the same city, so maybe meet up a few times a year for dinner (which she is also invited to, and always refuses), and maybe email each other once every couple of months, (I use their joint email address, so she can see exactly what I've written). Really, we're not in each other pockets at all.

She emailed me yesterday (without his knowledge, as far as I know) and said that she wants me to stop seeing/talking to Andy because it makes her uncomfortable, and that if I don't, it will confirm her suspicions about me. WTF??

I can't tell Andy, because he'll go mental, but I don't want to give in to her, because frankly, I think she's nuts. I also dontt see why I should be dictated about who I can and can't see. So what would you do? Ignore her? Or do what she says? Because I am unable to see a sensible way out of this.

Personally I would be cautious about blaming her for cooling the friendship that would just make her resent you more.

Could you reply to her e-mail address asking WHY she doesnt like you, let her know that you dont only want to be friends with him but that if she really thinks she couldnt be friends with you too you will respect her wishes and leave her husband alone despite the fact that he is a really nice platonic friend. Does your partner go along when you meet your friend?

Unfortunately some friendships dont last a lifetime, circumstances change - we change, that doesnt mean they were any less important.

That seems fair enough. Friendships do change and it's not always in your power to keep them. (My dp has come along in the past when we've gone out, but as I said, we're not talking about a regular occurence).

If it's causing her such a problem, then not being friends seems to be the right thing to do. Just got to find a sensible way of doing it, without causing any fallout. (I'd be raging if I found out my DP had done anything like this). And it will be sad for me, because I think old friends should be treasured, not discarded.

Personally, I'd rather bite off my own tongue that dictate who my dp could and couldn't see, but that's my choice, and I still think it's a healthy one.

why has she not spoken to her dh about this?

It seems very very odd.

If your friend wants to stay frends then he will not let this happen imo.

Leave it be, don't reply and cool off a little but if he wants to meet then go ahead and meet and act as if nothing has happened.

I would not reply to her

Leave it to him to make the next move in your friendship.

He'll email you if he wants to.

You can then go through all this stuff then! I don't think you should drop him as a friend. Just stop making the running in the friendship and see what happens.

You know I don?t get this whole ?she is the wife and therefore his loyalties should be with her and only her? attitude. Should a wife be allowed to dictate who her husband is friends with because by not adhering to her demands the husband is disloyal? If the wife started insisting the man have no female friends, or no friends at all for that matter would that be acceptable because her radar is telling her something is wrong?

If a friendship is innocent, and there is nothing inappropriate going on, (and from what you?ve written there isn?t) then no-one has the right to dictate that friendship, not even the wife.

IMO she sounds like a control freak. She has emailed you from an address which he cannot access, thus ensuring that he is not aware that she has emailed you. If you replied to that email saying something like ?I?m sorry you feel upset/suspicious and I will not be friends with andy any more? she can doctor it and remove her original email to make it look as if you have contacted her to say you?re going to stop being friends with him and then you become the bad guy.

Or alternatively he could be in an abusive relationship and she might be contacting all his friends asking them to stop contacting him (I had a bf who used to do this; he would see my friends outside waiting for me and would say to them ?oh me and C want to be alone for a bit, so would you mind not coming over to talk to us tonight? he was a control freak and relationship ended when he hit me).

Or she is contacting you because she has taken it up with him and he has told her to get over herself (which she should IMO) so she thinks she?ll go behind his back and end the friendship whether he likes it or not.

You have to contact him and tell him what has happened. But IMO you have to do it without her knowledge. I wouldn?t normally advocate going behind the wife?s back, but she has gone behind his back and I find that very odd indeed. So I would contact him and ask if everything is ok, because you?ve had an email from x sayin she wants you to stop seeing him. Ask if the friendship has been causing problems between him and his wife, and whether he would rather you cooled things for a bit (although email every couple of months and dinner a couple times of year doesn?t exactly sound like a heated friendship).

He has a right to know. And he has a right to a say in who he does/doesn?t want to remain friends with. They?re his friendships to decide, not hers.

oh and don't give her the time of day.

God, I'm astonished that so many people think it's OK for a woman to interfere with her dh's friendships because she's fucked up in the head.

Her jealousy is HER problem, how can it be OK for her to socially ostracise her dh because of it?

If you really do love your friend, don't cut him off without explanation. That's just cruel and he deserves better.

x posts with wannabe. Couldn't agree more.

I'm totally with wannabe - Women's Aid stipulate that controlling who one is friends with is abuse, namely on their site as men controlling women but it works the other way round too.

I find it VERY odd that she's emailed you out of the blue, behind his back (not on the normal email address)

I have a platonic married friend; his wife is also my friend but has health issues that means we don't meet very often at all, but her husband and I do... she's absolutely fine with it and even suggests our meeting more frequently. That is healthy IMO - not being jealous just because I happen to be a woman.

Men and women CAN be "just friends" - it isn't impossible and Andy needs to know what she's done; it is sneaky, controlling and if it continues or spreads, is potentially very dangerous...

I'd email Andy and say, within the body of a normal email about "nothing" (as you say is normal to send) that she contacted you asking to stop emailing but you feel you should tell him because to just vanish would be bizarre and confusing.

If my dh started going behind my back to tell my friends he wanted them to stop seeing me I would have serious doubts about the future of my marriage.

It's one thing to have concerns about a friendship and to voice your fears and insecurities to your partner, going behind their back and contacting their friends on the sly is quite another (and let's face it, we don't know how many other of this man's friends the wife might have contacted).

I had a great friend, known him for years, went to college together (he was younger but we did overlap) came to stay alot with my family, met his wife and that was it, saw him somewhere and I said shame that we don't get together anymore and he sadi well your friends change when you get married very

agree with wannabe - i would not email her but I would perhaps be careful about going in guns blazing bad mouthing her.
not that your suggeted that wannabe

I think Wannabe's got a point.

Yes his loyalty should be with his DW and if it's a problem for her, then it's a problem, but at the end of the day he should have a say in how the problem is resolved. I really don't think it's fair just to avoid him without telling him why. He may be playing mind-games with her, or she may be totally unreasonable, we don't know. But if you just go along with her, you're sort of being drawn into their mad world, whatever it is and I don't think you have a duty to allow that.

I would phone or e-mail your friend saying that his DW has e-mailed me asking me not to see him, she's obviously feeling insecure about our friendship and so I'd be unhappy to see him anymore if I thought it was causing trouble in his marriage, so could he please sort out his marriage before he sees me again. You don't know - maybe he's feeling awkward about seeing you, maybe he wants her to send you mad e-mails so it lets him off the hook re seeing you - people are wierd.

I agree with Lewisfan, she speaks a lot of sense.

It should be his choice if your friendship should end, not hers.

Also, I would call him and ask him if everything is ok in his relationship, because his wife emailing you like this is an indication that something is seriously wrong.

Married men needs friends too, even female friends. It is not all about sex, unforgotten lust, but about sharing a past and possibly a childhood. It is not right for anybody, male of female, to ask somebody else to cut off an important part of his/her life just because.

If you love your friend, dont just cut him out of your life because you assume this is helpful to him and his relationship. YOU dont either have to ascertain this control over him and chose for him, like his wife does. It is not right. With your friends best interest at heart, give him a call. During lunch time, not when he is home.

And Pheebe, a bit of a sweeping statement about other people being emotionally stunted if they dont understand other peoples jealosy issues? Maybe it is the jealous person who is emotionally stunted?

FWIW, one of my dhs best friends is his exgirlfriend, also his first love, but married with a child. We meet up the four of us with our kids, once or twice a year (when on holiday in Warsaw). 15 years ago when I met DH, I was uncertain of her, a stunning blonde but I gave them a chance to prove to me their friendship is harmless. (They never lived together thoug) She means a lot to my dh, and I would not dream of asking him to not be her friend. They had numerous discussions in msn when her dh cheated on her, and I would not even think to stop that. I am secure in my relationshiop with dh, and I respect that he has a past, and he has friends.

Ooh it's just like Ross and Emily and Rachel isn't it?

Sorry, I'll get me coat.

LB I was just thinking that!!!!

I'm with wannaBe, ib and LewisFan - no way does she have the right to dictate who he can and can't see. If the OP was about a female friend's male partner telling someone to break off their friendship because he felt threatened by it, everyone on here would be up in arms about control and abuse.

If Andy and his wife have issues they need to discuss between them then so be it, I would make reasonable, friendly contact as has already been suggested and certainly be supportive of them doing that...but there is no way that one email out of the blue would ever induce me to break off contact with someone I considered a close friend.

Lol quint - touche and all that

Trying hard not to take this thread personally, coming from 'the wife's' position.

Agree, no one has the right to dictate who someone is and isn't friends with, but marriage is about compromise and respecting the other persons feelings and wishes. Jealousy and insecurity are emotions that plague most of us and dismissing them as 'her/his' problem is simply not constructive and lays the groundwork for a relationship to break down.

Agree it is deeply odd that she should email the OP, something I would never have done in a million years. My discussions were always with DH and I always acknowledged that my emotions and feelings were partly irrational, however, they were MY emotions and feelings and therefore were valid and worthy of acknowledgement. We worked through it, we have a shared history these days that no one else will ever have with him. I don't like him being in contact with her but it certainly doesn't bother me to the point I'd say anything.

However, I am shocked at how judgemental of 'the wife' some posters are being and by how this poor woman is being condemned as an abusive control freak when it seems to me she's trying to make her marriage work. We have no more information than the OP gives. Also I would hardly describe the OPs friendship as close, they email occasionnaly, meet up a couple of times a year, and don't talk about anything deep such as their respective relationships. Of course thats irrelevant and I'm not dismissing the OPs friendship and I'm certainly not making value judgements here but when you compare that to a marriage...

Pheebe, I take your point, but at the same time, I dont think any other relationship is as close as a marriage (and if it is, something is wrong), so with that logic we may as well not have friends at all!
At least we agree that something is wrong for the wife to send this email, her aim may be to save her marriage, but the goal does not necessarily justify the means, and all that.... We dont know the homelife of wife and husband, for all we know he may be obsessing about the OP, and she may have had enough.

Everyone does make value judgements based on their own experiences, though - it's inevitable. Just as we don't have the full picture of the OP's friendship with Andy, we also don't have the full picture of Andy's marriage. Either or both is likely to contain a lot more layers of depth than are ever going to be exposed to a bunch of strangers on the internet.

I agree that marriage is about compromise and respecting each other's feelings, but if Andy doesn't know his wife is taking these steps then he isn't being given the chance to do that. Which is why I would stress that the issues are theirs to work on together.

I don't think anyone is labelling the wife as an abusive control freak, just raising the possibility that she might be behaving in an abusive, controlling manner. It's equally possible that she has genuine concerns, but either way the bottom line is that she needs to take them up with her husband first, so that they can discuss things openly.

I think this is really tricky.

I was in a kind of similar situation some years back though it wasn't first love. Someone I'd worked with and had along relationship with. We managed to keep in touch for 10 years before he married, during which time I married and had 2 kids- it was always 100% platonic after we split up, and we saw each other maybe once a year and spoke roughly 2-3 times a year.

When his wife-to-be appeared on the scene and I phoned him on one occasion, she told me that he wasn't home from work and to stop phoning as he was busy . I was furious as I had known him by then for over 15 years and she had known him for about 15 weeks.

In this situation, he sided with his wife- he cut all contact back and I haven't seen him since they married. He admitted that he wasn't prepared to risk her anger etc etc.

I felt hard done by, but couldn't do anything else. He also felt uneasy that I was using him as a confidant about my marriage which wasn't 100% at the time, so he took a step back too. We now do Xmas cards and not much more.

In your situation, i think you need to speak to HIM and get him to handle it. Either he will back her up and realise he isn't ready for this to come between them, or he will carry on seeing you and it might cause them problems.

I can understand how furious you are and it IS unfair, but I think the ball should be in his court.

The on;y other thing I ask is- are you absolutely 101% sure that there is no spark between you and it really is platonic?

How about this scenario.

The friend of the OP is a secretive and manipulative man who likes to keep contact with his "old flame" and then deny there is anything fishy going on when he goes to meet her.

The wife of said friend feels anxious and upset and shut out. The few times she has met the OP with her dh there were lots of shared jokes she was excluded from plus the meaningful glances she didn't know how to interpret.

Surely this interpretation is just as likely as the other view of her as this maniac control freak who needs to be put in her place?

You know what, thinking it through, it seems to me that I don't know her. But I do know him. And I think that he would want to know (as I would) about something this....
...bizarre.

I think a quick phone call saying that, "don't know what, if anything, is up, but this happened", without going into too much detail is the right thing to do. Then they can sort it out between themselves, and if he feels that he needs to do whatever as a result, then I can handle that.

To contact me, in this way, shows that she's got issues about something and it may not be me, but I'm the peg she has chosen to hang it on. And it's not really for me to get involved, I don't think.

You're right fridge- that's what I was saying- it's not your problem- it's what they need to talk about. Maybe she knows he won't give you up, so she has come to you instead of him? But in any case, don't be pig in the middle- it's their marriage.

I think phoning him to say 'is anything up - this has happened' is a really good idea. Probably better than an email as you can more easily gauge his reaction as you talk to him, so you can say the right thing as you go along.

Also, nothing is written down, what you say cannot be sent on to anyone else. Someone made a good point that emails can be tampered with before they are forwarded. With something this sensitive, I think it's best if you talk it over.

But, if you don't want to go this deep into it, and feel it's safer to distance yourself, then a simple, polite reply to the wife's email (sorry you feel like this, hope we can be friends) and a casual mention to Andy about checking it is ok with his wife when he next arranges to meet you is the other way to go IMO

I think, tbh, in some way, you have to reply to the email from his wife otherwise it will just be floating around causing problems and it could easily be interpreted as a hostile, suspicious act on your behalf if you ignore it.

I would, however, wait a week or two before replying. See how the dust settles - no need to dash off a reply immediatly - see how things look in a few weeks time.