Let’s clarify that question: Can/should straight married people have opposite-sex friends? Which begs the question, can/should gay married people have same-sex friends? These questions were inspired by the following recent comment:
I have found that even though I’ve been married for years, I never spend time alone with my husband’s male friends, even men who are part of a couple that my husband and I are super close to. We can have plenty of friendly banter when the couples are all together, but the odd time when one of his friends has stopped by and my husband’s not home, the friend and I seem to have an almost stilted conversation, NEVER any of the playful banter that happens when we’re all together, because I think we’re both very aware of never crossing any lines…
— SS commenting on the post “Your Call: My Friend Keeps Hitting On My Wife”
WELL, we should all just shut the hell up, even if we KNOW what we are talking about because somebody named “reality check” told us what’s what. Cripes. What a delusional creature.
And I found his comments and OPINIONS on bisexuals to be extremely offensive. I am NOT bisexual, but some of my friends and family members are, none of them are like this sad person “told us” they were.
If we all listened to this person, we wouldn’t have friends of ANY gender (or “genitals of our liking” whatever the fuck that means….)
Dude, you are free to state YOUR opinion, no matter how warped it is, but to tell every one in this discussion that the discussion is OVER just because YOU have blessed us with your twisted opinions stated as FACT, is NOT cool.
Let’s squash this subject. You can NOT have opposite sex friends, due to the rule of attraction. Here is a shocker… you are actually attracted to your same sex friends. gasp… So the rule apply’s to your opposite sex friends as well. There is an attraction amongst friends, same and opposite sex, be it ever so small or large there is an attraction. It is highly more likely that you will have sex with that person eventually because you are attracted to them and they have the genitalia of your liking. If you have an opposite sex friend you are “keeping your options open”. Lets be honest. This is your emotional back up person in case your relationship doesnt work out (or your single at 35) even if you are not attracted to that person they supply you with a means to get to other opposite sex people when you are not in a relationship. This idea and the friend themselves are a distractions from your relationship. It is unhealthy. If you want to “keep your options open” then join the dating game and do not commit to a relationship.
If you do feel you are entitled to have friends with the genitals of your liking while in a relationship… then I highly suggest you do some retroflective evaluation and realize that you are selfish and should not be in a relationship, and pretend like you are a good person(selfless). You are not taking the feelings of your loved one into consideration and and just feeding into your selfishness.
bisexuals hmm… lets see. i would suggest they are confused individuals that have a extreme need for attention, or are just perverse. They feel they are the greatest lovers on the planet…again selfish people, all they do is think about how great they are. “Im dirty in bed”… “that makes me great, duh duh duh.” LAME
Couples beware of all these relationship distractors. They will not want you to be in a relationship so they can have more of your time. They will “pretend”(dishonesty) that their life is fantastic and fun, when deep down they are miserable because they do not have what you have. When they obtain your time (you break up with your loved one because they convinced you the grass is green over here) they will just push you aside eventually because they are too focused on themselves.
Last bit of advice mainly for the women… that giddy love feeling in a relationship lasts only 3 years. It is important to recognize and realize this because if you go by feelings… you may believe your relationship is in trouble but in reality you just want the giddyness back. It will resurface from time to time, but it wont be the 3 year patch that happened in the beginning of the relationship.
Try to be selfless honest people. I beg of you.
Rosie: Of course he’s interested in you sexually, men (in my world) don’t seek out women late in the evening because they want advice or friendship. If he’s truly unhappy in his marriage, he should end it before playing elsewhere. I know people change over time and fall out of love, but when that happens, they need to man-up and end the first relationship before starting the next one, IMO.
Well, I do have to disagree with someone who said not to go to “weddings or movies” with friends of the opposite gender.
I have a friend, who is also a friend of My Man, whom I would often go to the movies with, and dance clubs, he took me to a wedding, in which My Man was standing up and I wasn’t (I do NOT go stag. I like to walk into a Gala Event with a nice looking man on my arm. So shoot me.)
We also had plans to go to our Senior Prom together, as My Man is older and couldn’t bring himself to do it, AND taking this man to Prom was MY Man’s idea. (I ended up NOT going with him, because I felt I needed an emotional connection other than friendship to go somewhere like this. So, the three of us went out that night and partied.) This guy would even go shopping with me on occasion, which is something My Man avoids like the plague.
I even joined a “Social Networking Site” which I had previously made fun of, because we found this gentleman there, after he moved out of state and dropped out of sight when his marriage ended. (He was very happy to hear from us! He missed us terribly.)I have known him longer than I have known my husband, since childhood, and in nearly 30 years of friendship not a single thing that would be inappropriate has happened between us (And NO, he’s NOT Gay.)
It IS possible, but you both have to honor each other’s Boundaries and Partners.
Nonsense. When it comes to romance, having blind trust of your partner is just ridiculous. The libido cannot be trusted. That’s why we have boundaries. You should assume that at anytime your partner will jump the bones of someone who is attractive that makes it clear they also want them.
And you can further trust that given enough time and interaction the opposite sex friend will become the opposite sex friend with benefits. Again, this is why we have boundaries. My advice to all, avoid the appearance of impropriety.
If you have an opposite sex friend do not in any way do anything that can be reasonably misconstrued as a “date.” Don’t go to weddings with this person, late romantic dinners for two, movies, and trips. Just don’t. In these scenarios someone always develops feelings.
As for polyamory. Fine. OK. Just don’t call it a relationship. You’re a single person playing the field. Jealousy is not always bad. It’s a warning of a threat to the relationship.
You have a right to be jealous when someone is pushing up on your mate, or monopolizing their time under the guise of “we’re just friends.” If your mate won’t put you first, you don’t need to be their mate. Find someone who will.
Romantic relationships are very tenuous. They need loving care and attention. Just because you trust your mate, doesn’t mean everything is going to fall magically into place and they’ll never betray you.
Under the right circumstances I know in my heart of hearts there’s several men that could take me down, and I love the f* out of my mate. I avoid those circumstances. Men and women can be friends. But we’ll never be the type of friends you can be with the same sex. It’s the height of naiveté to think otherwise.
I became close to a coworker and eventually her son and husband. I was single at the time (still am)and for many years we did a lot of things together and I visited them often at their home. I would often see her husband while out shopping and I would mention it to her in innocent conversation. I guess I mentioned it once too often and she responded with, “Sometimes I wonder if something is going on between you two” and then she laughed. I took it as a joke at that time but she repeated it on more than on occasion. My response was that I hoped after all the time she had known me that she knew that would NEVER have an affair with her husband or any other married man. Obviously this created some friction and I soon became uncomfortable visiting them. She never reached out to stay in touch so our friendship ended. However her husband and I would see each other here and there and stayed friends from a distance. One day, he showed up at my place late at night unexepectedly. I thought it was odd bt didn’t ask thinking if he had something to tell me he would just say it. That never happened but the visits continued. Finally, as he was leaving one night I told him to tell his wife I said hello. He responded by saying she didn’t know he was there. I questioned him about it and he just looked at me. I verbalized my conclusion (that if she knew she’d flip out b/c she had already thought something was going on previously). I told him that if he couldn’t tell her he was visiting me that he needed to stop coming by. He agreed but never told me what was going on. After some time had passed, he came to see me at work and told me that he didn’t want our friendship to end and to reconsider visiting them at the house. I told him that I felt uncomfortable and worse guilty even tho I did nothing wrong and wasn’t sure that I could. We left it at that but he continued to keep in touch with occasional emails. He still emails me regularly, and has started to visit me again even though we agreed back then that it wasn’t a good idea. I recently asked him for names of trusted contractors b/c I need some work done to my home and after “leaving it with him” he contacted me and suggested that he do the work I need himself. I suspect he is unhappy in his marriage and in some way is keeping his connection with me b/c he is attracted to me and if I were to make the first move he would reciprocate. I’m not a home wrecker but I truly wonder whether it is truly just friendship he’s after. I intend on broaching the subject with him but do not know how to go about it. I can’t negate the fact that there is a big physical attraction and that the fact that he has come by to see me (a lot more in a short period of time)has had me thinking of him quite a bit. Advice please …
And you made your choice..accurately. You really can’t tell someone else what to do. You tell them how you feel, and they choose their actions—that, in turn, allows you to make further decisions.
I really don’t see you popping one of these women in the face, now, or showing up to tell them that they are hitting on your husband and now go away?
It is funny how the “appropriate response” changes when the gender does.
I was married for 14 years.
My husband has what he says is friends only female. He told me that he likes to flirt and do things for other women that is who he says he is. He has gone over to their homes and does things for them behind my back. One he says that he has feelings for , it makes me sick. The woman and my husband know what they are doing. She just thinks that she is so special.
We are now getting divorced. The whole time we were married not once did he say that I,m going over to Johns house to have a beer and hang out , it was always going to womans homes behind my back. not once the whole time that we were married did I ever even look at another man, it never even occured to me. I always went out of my way to make sure that my friends became his friends, but the courtsey was never extended the other way. It is so hurtful. On top of that he told my sister that he likes to flirt and that he wants his hugs and kisses from other women and that when he went back to his Moms second wedding before we got married that he slept with his 1st cousin while he was there. It makes me sick to the core of my bones , that I was married to a liar with a sick mind and that he was never loyal to begin with.
Well, sort of. I probably can’t tell you how to be married…I’m not very good at it. But then again, I CAN tell you what screws up a lot of marriages……
So I can tell you what NOT to do. Jealousy is a major no. People get pissed ’cause you don’t trust them, then they decide not to care and do something—or someone!—else anyway……
shannon and angela? really?? no guy friends at all? I find that quite bizarre, i can honestly say that when someone becomes my friend their sex is the last thing on my mind, surely they’re just people you get on well with?? what does the contents of their pants have to do with anything? I make acquaintances easily, but friends rarely and those i make i’m very close to so i wouldn’t given any of them up, male or female due to a jealous partner. I feel, if i was sexually attracted to them it would have come up before (after all, why would you be just friends with someone you got on well with and fancied? they’re called new boyfriends ;0) ) so no-one should be threatened by them.
I do not think it is a good thing, I would not hang out with guys and would be very hurt if my husband had female friends we trust each other and it is a respect thing plus we dont trust the other people, I know we can always say no but if we dont put our self in that mess then we dont have to deal with it…
NO,NO,NO! I do not think that this is ok. I have been married 8 yrs and my husband and I have a wonderful marriage very trusting open and honest.He and he alone is my best friend I dont want nor need another man in my life! If you want a friend there are plenty woman out there to chat with. Bringing another “friend” of the oppiste sex in is a mistake no matter how open and trust worthy you and your mate are! There always will be the all mighty “WHAT IF”. ~SHANNON~
lmao. It is SOOO obvious that Fuzzy has never been married or never will be married. She is honestly, the last person who should be giving marrige/dating advice. Grow up honey, sounds like no man would want to marry you anyway….
Rachel….
Good on you for trying to get over it. I am the “other woman” in a lot of relationships in that my friends are couples, I am better friends with one or the other—and I’m bi. I can’t win, and I really wish that all of this would go away.
But I am serious…if you force the friendship underground, you make the likelihood of something untoward happening. Remember distance isn’t always an obstacle to a good relationship, either. Sometimes it helps.
Fuzzy, I agree you have a point there. But the things that happened weren’t so serious for me to break up with him, they just shook my trust a little (and everyone knows that even a small shake can change a lot of things). I decided to give him a chance if he was up to solving things with me, and he is. He already did a lot of nice things for us, and things are slowly getting better.
My case is the opposite of Morgan… one of the dearest friends of my boyfriend is a super beautiful model. I confess I’m not the queen of self esteem, but I doubt that any other girl would manage not feeling threatened by her presence.
He says she is only a friend, they’ve been friends since primary school. I try to believe him, but when he claims there’s no sexual attraction I really can’t believe. She calls the attention everywhere she goes, she is just stunning besides being a sweet girl (before meeting her I hated her, but after I even think of her as one of my friends too).
The situation is annoying because I really don’t want to affect their friendship, but I also don’t want to feel threatened.
Just to make things more challenging: we are in a long-distance relationship. 🙂
These are the reasons why I think opposite-sex friends are trouble. 🙁