Dear Em and Lo,
I have a friend let’s call him “A”, we used to be closer, but as time has gone by, we probably see each other every other month or so, and the occasional email of non-importance (humor, etc). I’ve known for a while that “A” has had a crush on my wife. In fact all my friends think she is a catch.
“A” sends my wife emails several times a week, political commentaries, humor, a little bit of everything, but nothing too personal. My wife was recently hospitalized for several weeks. “A” went out of his way (30 or so miles) to see her several times a week. While she was in the hospital she was up all hours, and my friend would drunk dial her. During these conversations he would tell her about how much of a crush he has always had on her, how special he thought she was, how she should go to baseball games with him (season ticket holder), how he was lonely and needed a woman in his life, and would also ask her for advice on meeting women.
My wife was very upfront about this happening, and just blew it off as him being harmless, and that he was making up for the times when he had dropped the ball in years past when we had a mutual friend in the hospital, and he didn’t step up to the plate.
When I asked her how she would feel if one of her friends called me more than her, emailed me, flirted with me, drunk dialed me, etc., my wife said she got the picture and that it would be inappropriate.
Not more than 20 minutes later my wife said she was going to call him, to make sure he wasn’t embarrassed by the things he said during the drunken conversations.
Now he is coming over for dinner.
I don’t have many close friends, so losing a friend really hurts. I know my wife isn’t attracted to him, but I still can’t stomach his behavior. I feel disrespected.
I have already been struggling with my lack of close friends, trying to figure out what I am doing wrong, why I have acquaintances instead of friends, why I no longer have deeper friendships in my life? Believe me I am keeping my therapist busy.
Do I keep this friendship? Do I try and salvage it? Or do I walk away?
— Virtual Cuckold
Can’t see the poll? Click here to take it.
I believe that VC should be a man and step up to the plate. Many times a man belives that if another man is flirting with his woman, it’s HER place to tell him to back off. If VC tells his friend to back off that will show his wife that he cares about their relationship. It will also show his friend that it really bothers him that he is acting out on his feelings toward his wife. It is truly disrespectful on both parts though, don’t think just yet that I am on the woman’s side. For any woman to allow for another man to make overtures is completely disrespectful and very damaging. There is absolutely no excuse for this behavior. Obviosly this woman likes the attention and by NOT telling him to back off to begin with, She was ENCOURAGING it. Now the man is having to step in to try to repair damage that’s been done. There’s no way to reverse it but VC and his wife can learn and grow from this experiance and move forward together.
I went for option B. She should be the one to tell A to back off.
If her partner steps in and tells A to give it a rest, it looks as if he is being possessive and not giving her a chance to speak for herself.
It’s then entirely possible that A would be more secretive about his contact, thinking that she wants to speak to him but VC won’t allow it.
Ahem.
This is a thinking, functioning female. Were it me, you are damned right I’d be continuing friendship with this guy….NO person has the right to decide who I can be friends with, and were my husband/SO to hop in and tell friend to take a hike, all hell would break loose.
Which, in fact, may be just what is going on here. It was innocent, husband type jumped up in a jealous hissy fit, and wife got angry and is carrying it on simply to assert her right to do so.
You’ve told your wife you don’t like it. Do you do things she doesn’t like? Have you immediately stopped doing them upon being requested to do so? Be honest, now….
“she was going to call him, to make sure
HE wasn’t embarrassed by the things he said during the drunken conversations”
That’s TROUBLE, right there.
Unless her Only reason was to preserve the friendship between her husband and his friend, her conversation should have been a polite, but Very Firm “Thanks, but NO THANKS… This is simply NOT appropriate.”
It seems as if she needs some kind of attention/affirmation/confirmation beyond what she is getting from her husband (and normal friends). Otherwise, she would already have re-established proper boundaries.
If the dinner was set up so that all three of them could discuss and remediate the situation together openly, I could be OK with it. But, most people aren’t able do deal with such uncomfortable situations in an even-tempered, matter-of-fact fashion.
It needs to be splelled out clearly that the friendship is In Crisis (as may be the marriage) and that serious changes need to happen, NOW!
Need Friends?
Join a club, group, or sports league… volunteer, etc.
This works especislly well if the group/organizetion has lots of couples — the ladies can set up Play Dates for their men beyond the regular meetings and help foster bonding.
I’ve had crushes that were un-pursuable…
and the few times I’ve been dumb enough to blurt out (even partially) the depth of my admiration, it took only that first utterance to change the dynamic of a friendship. Some relationships were easily repaired when I made clear that these were just my feelings and I had only wanted to express them — Not Act On Them. Other times, I was not able to re-establish the formre closeness.
Good Luck
and don’t hesitate to get counseling to make the marriage the best it can be.
I know some people in a very similar situation to this (except in their early/mid 20s and dating, not married). Despite being told firmly and repeatedly by the girl that she is only interested in being his friend, he continues to touch her inappropriately and try to ruin her relationship with her boyfriend (who is/was supposedly his friend)by insisting that he is a ‘player’ who doesn’t care about her (which is a massive lie). The couple are now in the process of cutting off ties with this supposed ‘friend’. Hopefully VC’s ‘friend’ will take the hint and back off before this needs to happen…
Madamoiselle L, I agree with you that men have trouble making/maintaining friendships, as they seem to need an excuse to get together (fishing, watching a game, etc.) whereas women can just socialize…however, if I had a friend who was repeatedly hitting on my husband, that would just be a “no go” area, and I’d write off that friendship pretty fast, regardless of how many or how few other friends I had. Also, 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…so, no, I guess we can’t know what VC’s wife was thinking for sure, but as a woman, my gut feeling is that this is some sort of power trip for her, especially after her husband talked about his concerns and she’s STILL encouraging the guy…
Lee,
The dinner situation happening right after their conversation really bothered me too. Either she still isn’t quite getting it, or it points to something more troublesome. He should also learn to step up and put a stop to something like that. I’d be like, “Fuck, no!” If the friend lived in the same town and not 30 miles away, I’d also be worried that something more could be going on. The whole thing really needs to be dealt with.
I don’t think any of us here know for sure if this man’s wife really knew the guy was hitting on her originally.
This is hard, because men past college age (and women to a lesser extent) DO have a hard time making new friends. I remember a cousin of mine had a huge posse of friends in the old neighborhood, and moved out of state to start a new business. He bemoaned the inability to make new male friends. “What am I supposed to do?” he asked me, “Go up to some guy in a bar? He’ll think I’m hitting on him. It sucks.” And, as I said, I have almost PUSHED My Man into friendship relationships with other men, because he just is slow on the uptake, I guess.
He still spends most of his time with the kids and me, with only a few male friends he sees occasionally. (One lives next door to us, and the majority of their relationship, if the the guy’s wife and I don’t schedule something to do with all four of us, is standing in the driveway talking about cars and sports. They have the occasional lunch, as they work close to each other, but if my closest friend worked two blocks from MY job, we’d be inseparable! Not two lunches a month. 🙂
It’s hard for adults to make new friends, but especially men over college age. I commiserate with this man, but his “friend” really crossed a boundary which may cause an irreparable break in their relationship.
There is certainly nothing “simple” about this situation. I hope he and his wife can work it out to a comfortable closure situation.
A friend who calls up your wife and tells her he has a crush on her is not a real friend. Tell him your wife talked to you and you don’t want to have any contact with him. Let your wife know how you feel and ask her to cut off contact with him, too.
I think your wife probably just enjoys the attention, but she should be willing to follow your lead in this since he’s your friend.
Don’t put up with bad treatment in order to have a friend. Look for new friends.
The wife is very aware of what is happening. The sad part is she is keeping it going, a serious slap in the face to her husband. Even after VC discussed with her how it made him feel and how it would make her feel if it was reversed she still went and talked with the “friend” and invited him to dinner. Buddy, she has no respect for you and it is obvious that something is going on. You need to see a psychologist for marriage therapy ASAP. If she hasn’t done something yet, it will happen very soon. No one that cares and loves you would put you through this pain. She is either angry with you, or is emotionally immature and needs counseling.
I think you should start with a and b, but in the end it’ll boil down to d, because the guy has NO respect for either of them, or the word “no,” and continues pushing the wife. Ugh. Not someone you’d want to be friends with anyway, I think.
I also agree that the wife may very well not have clued in that this guy REALLY WANTS TO BOINK HER right off the bat and was just being nice. Been there, done that, awkward.
Women don’t always realize it right away when you man’s friends hit on you. Sometimes, especially if you’ve known the guy a while, there’s a “no way, it’s innocent kidding around” thinking, as you don’t actually believe this guy would risk his friendship with your man for such an unlikely coupling, especially if you’ve done nothing to egg him on and feel nothing for him BUT friendship.
Of course, some guys think your answering the phone, occasionally making eye contact or even just and saying “hi” is encouragement, and and one guy’s innocent teasing is an other guy’s all out flirting. So, sometimes we can’t tell.
I’m the kind of women who sometimes gets along with men better than some women, most of the time, and most male relationships involve a LOT of teasing and dissing and trash talk, so I usually see this kind of thing and engage in it as one of the boys. Once in a great while these things “cross the line” very stealthily. I’m usually the last to know.
My Man and I had a friend who we had to cut loose because of crossing the line, or trying to. He had known this guy since they were kids, I knew him as long as I had known My Man, and he was just a buddy. I wrote to him a lot, when he was in the Marines, (pre internet) because I felt bad he was so far from home, and was always playing and trash talking with him. He had a tragedy when his first wife died and things changed, I didn’t notice at first. Yeah, there were some “drunk calls” (thankfully not often late at night) but when he started showing up, again and again, at the house “because I was in the neighborhood” when My Man wasn’t home, asking if I wanted to have a beer with him (I don’t drink, and he knew this) or wanting me to go to lunch with him, which I always declined, stuff like that.
Then one day I found him going through my dresser drawers, My Man had to lay down the Law and tell him, under no circumstance was he to come to our house when HE wasn’t home, nor to call me, and eventually it was just too uncomfortable and my husband had to break all ties with this guy. I was honestly clueless, until the dresser drawer incident. I don’t what he told My Man when he was caught doing this, but it pissed him off to no end.
My Man doesn’t have a big load of good friends, either, so it hurt to have to let this guy go. (And at the same time, this dude was getting in trouble with the law, leaving his girlfriend every other weekend, (and asked if he could stay with US! UH-UH!) and things were just going downhill with him in all spheres.) I think a lot of men stop making friends after High School or College, especially when they get married and have a family, and have to work etc.
A lot of guys tend to rely on the old friends they made when they were younger. Most of they few newer guys he hangs around with now, I actually have to PUSH him in order to get him to respond to new friendship overtures. (“Billy called you four times and you were tired or busy, for heaven’s sake, go out for a beer with him! He’s trying to be a friend.” I’ll get a mumbled, “OK.” and foot shuffling, but then he’ll have a good time, I swear it’s like setting up Play Dates for a Toddler….so I can understand when a man doesn’t want to lose an old friend and make new ones.)
But, for VC, IMO, he needs to lay down the law with his buddy. Especially if the guy is professing affection for his wife and there are numerous “drunk calls.” Not good, I know now. VC, your friends need to respect YOU and respect your woman. Hitting on your woman is NOT respectful, and he needs to know it is not cool and it could end the relationship. Once you know a guy is interested in your wife, it is really never the same, so I don’t know how this will work out. I know you don’t want to lose and old friend, and he’ll probably fall back on the old “Oh, man I was so drunk when I called her. I don’t even know what I said.” Maybe you could save the friendship, I have no idea.
I guess it depends on how he responds when you put down some guidelines. Sometimes a break will help, but if you are like most guys every time he talks to your wife or even looks at her, you’ll get upset. I don’t blame you, but at least talk to the guy, man to man.
Good luck. And don’t blame your wife, my guess is she really believed it was just an innocent friendship.
Wow, Dave W and Johnny totally have the man’s point of view covered, with wise words and humour. I think Dave is right that the wife is enjoying the attention, or she would have shut “A” down right away, and I love Johnny’s solution to put himself into the conversation, to remind the inappropriate friend that there’s already a man in that relationship. Now, here’s a woman’s point of view: Personally, I think VC needs to ditch this “friendship.” There’s a big difference between acknowleding that a friend’s spouse is attractive, and acting out. The wife needs to put her husband first and not use “A”‘s attention as an ego-boost. If she’s attractive, then she knows what male attention is like, and it’s BS that she claims “A”‘s attention is innocent, women know when a guy is hitting on them, or even giving them the once-over. So, she must like/be encouraging the flirtation, the question is why? Is she insecure? Does she feel like she needs to remind her husband that other men find her attractive? Does VC have enough troubles of his own that his wife feels she’s not getting enough attention at home? These are the questions I’d ask, right after VC informs his wife that “A” is definitely not welcome in their home.
My friends don’t hit on my girl, but when other guys do, I handle it by barging in. No aggression or anything, I just try to express the following: “I see you’ve met my girlfriend. Cool. Now you’re meeting me. I’m am now the center of this conversation.”
They invariably fuck off fast.
Next time he calls your wife, ask her for the phone and give him a friendly, “what’s up, dude?” YOU are who he’s talking to now.
Also, embarass him. In a ‘kidding around’ tone, say something like: “it’s cute that you’re in love with my wife, but why don’t you try hitting on a single girl, ya loser?”
Finally, if he doesn’t get the message, get rid of him explicitly. Tell him he’s a scumbag and to get lost.
I chose the first option, but I’m not too optimistic. “A” has already shown that “VC” isn’t very important to him by prioritizing his wife over him with e-mails, etc. He needs to talk to his wife again about this too, and not just simply chastise, but be aware of underlying issues she might have. Being very attractive, she might be used to receiving adoration, and could somewhat rely on it for affirmation.