Reply to Does your spouse have a best friend who is of the opposite sex?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Everyone who is saying your spouse is your best friend, cut the bullshit. That doesn't count.

I am a single female but one of my best friends is a gay guy. Would his being gay make our closeness more acceptable than another male friend?[/quote]

I'm hesitant to wade into this debate b/c I was certain I was done posting on DCUM, but so be it.

First of all, I think you are being purposefully obtuse.  Yes, of course, it's implied that the idea is, would you be okay with your spouse being closer to someone he/she could potentially have a sexual/intimate relationship with than he/she is with you?

If you are a single female, have you ever been married?  You offer no explanation about why a spouse "doesn't count" as a best friend.  Just because you haven't experienced that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Here are my thoughts.  I think men and women (even if they are both not gay) can be friends.  And I don't think that is the issue.  What we are talking about is very *close* friends, in fact, the closest of friends.  And that is where the problem lies.

I have no issue with my husband being friends with other straight women.  But I do have an issue if he is closer emotionally to those women than he is with me.  Why?  Because my life is completely intertwined with his.  Marriage isn't just about sex.  It is a partnership.  And if he has a deeper emotional connection to another woman, especially one that could also meet his sexual needs, then that is problematic.

Getting married doesn't mean you give up all of your friends.  But it does mean that you put this one other person first.   I don't think that intimacy is just sex.  It's also sharing deep secrets and inner feelings that you don't necessarily share with everyone.  If my husband is experiencing that intimacy with another woman, then, yes, I have an issue with that.

That said, I don't think that marriage is for everyone.  And if you are best friends with one woman and then marry another, with the intention of still maintaining the level of closeness you have with the best friend, then you are doing a disservice to everyone.

No one has to get married.  If you don't want to be in a partnership, if you don't want to pledge a commitment solely to this one other person, then don't get married.

Having said all of that, I do also think that marriage does, by necessity, affect even relationships with people of the same sex (or with gay people of the opposite sex).   For example, sure, my husband still has close male friends, but we are partners.  I would think there is a problem in our marriage if he is frequently sharing things with them that he doesn't feel comfortable sharing with me.  Again, our lives our intertwined.  We don't need to know all of the mundane details about each other, but we definitely need to know the deep things.  And the level of closeness between us should be deeper than any other relationship either one of us has.

I didn't get married until later in life, because I felt pretty strongly that, to me, I'd prefer not to get married at all than to marry someone with whom I wasn't *best friends.*

I also have seen so many examples of people who were best friends for years, arguing up and down that neither of them had any physical attraction for the other, and then one day, when the circumstances and timing come together, guess what?  It turns out they are attracted to each other.  So I am very skeptical when people insist that there is no attraction, especially when there is clearly chemistry.  And with most "best friends," even of the same sex or even with opposite sex but gay, there is a kind of chemistry.  If your spouse has that chemistry with someone else to a greater degree than he/she has with you, that's an issue.  It's certainly more of an issue if there's potential for a sexual relationship, but I would also argue that it is an issue even if there is no potential for a sexual relationship.  It doesn't mean the spouse can't be close to other people.  It means that the spouse shouldn't be CLOSER to other people than he/she is to the person he/she married.

In my observation (purely anecdotal), the beginning of the end to a lot of marriages seems to be when this happens and the couple doesn't address it.

[/quote]

Did you write a longish post about a DH with ADHD (I think) in another thread? I forget which one. Same kind of lucid, intelligent, compassionate stuff as you wrote here. I really respect what you write. I mean that sincerely. While I understand the impetus to stop posting, if people like you don't post, it opens the door for a lot of crap to filter in. I hope you will at least leave your thoughts here on occasion to raise the average just a bit.
LHP[/quote]

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