Are you okay with your husband going out drinking and dining alone with other women?

[Anonymous]

How do you handle these situations in your marriage? Would it make you uncomfortable? If you're not irrationally jealous, does your husband respect your feelings?

[Anonymous]

It depends. We are firm believers in the value of having friends who are "friends of our marriage," so we don't socialize (especially alone) with folks of either gender who haven't proven that they can and do support our commitment. Read Not Just Friends to understand why.

We are in the lefty liberal category and not especially religious. Just have a nuanced view of infidelty having seen it happen in our families.

[Anonymous]

I'm not fussed about my husband going to dinner with women because I trust him. And because I have a number of men I go to dinner with - old mentors, past ex's, etc. Would hate for DH to tell me I can't do that. In fact, that would be a marriage breaker for me.

[Anonymous]

My husband works mainly with women (he's a writer) and goes out to lunch with his colleagues one on one and in groups in which he's the only man all the time. I work mainly with men (I'm an attorney) and go out to lunch with male colleagues all the time.

If I decided that I couldn't eat alone with men I would have torpedoed my career as a law student. Such an attitude is unbelievably privileged to me. To have the ability to declare that you will never eat alone with a member of the opposite sex? Wow. I wish I had the luxury of telling my bosses that. I believe the entire Price Waterhouse sex discrimination case (back in the 80's) was about the fact that career contacts are not just made in the office, they are made in social contexts as well.

[Anonymous]

People like this are batshit insane. If you can't trust your spouse, then why exactly are you married to that person???

[Anonymous]

I can't argue with the position expressed by Ta-Nehesi Coates on this, who is similar to Pence.

I'd never do that for Myself or spouse, but respect their position.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can't argue with the position expressed by Ta-Nehesi Coates on this, who is similar to Pence.

I'd never do that for Myself or spouse, but respect their position.

Link?

[Anonymous]

I can't see *much* of a need to dine alone with them.

It has happened with DH once. He has two hs friends that have been hs/college sweethearts. They eventually married. We are all friends. She came to D.C. to visit her own friend that we don't know. With her for 5 days, but our friend wanted to meet up with DH once. Difference is, I was invited. Now, work schedules happened and I couldnt go to lunch & touristy stuff with them. But I met with them later for dinner, we all hung out for a while.

If professional, that's cool too. But wouldn't an office meeting work? A working lunch? Fine. But how often does that need to happen, and wouldn't you then order in? If it's more of a shmoozing working lunch, I feel more people are probably involved.

I have a couple of close coworkers who I eat out with alone often. But we never uninvite other people. Dh could always meet us. We ask people on the way out, "wanna come along?"

Nothing against it, I'm just thinking it really doesn't need to happen often.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not fussed about my husband going to dinner with women because I trust him. And because I have a number of men I go to dinner with - old mentors, past ex's, etc. Would hate for DH to tell me I can't do that. In fact, that would be a marriage breaker for me.

This too weird for us. We'd never socialize alone with the opposite sex. Work meetings, etc., are OK. I don't call that socializing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People like this are batshit insane. If you can't trust your spouse, then why exactly are you married to that person???

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How do you handle these situations in your marriage? Would it make you uncomfortable? If you're not irrationally jealous, does your husband respect your feelings?

DH has had dinners "alone" with many women. He travels a bit for work and when he is in a city where we know someone he will meet up and usually have dinner or lunch with them. Some are women, some are men, some are couples or groups of people. I am a little jealous of him and the friend he is visiting- since they get to see each other and catch up- but not jealous in a romantic way. I don't have as much opportunity for that, but it does happen from time to time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can't argue with the position expressed by Ta-Nehesi Coates on this, who is similar to Pence.

I'd never do that for Myself or spouse, but respect their position.

It may be different for someone who has a bit of fame and encounters opportunists.

[Anonymous]

It doesn't bother me. If he wants to be with someone else, I am not going to beg him to stay with me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People like this are batshit insane. If you can't trust your spouse, then why exactly are you married to that person???

+1.

[Anonymous]

To me, "going out drinking" is entirely different than having a meal with wine. Meals are fine.