Reply to S/O what do you gain from maintaining a a friendship with a man whose wife hates you?

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Reply to "S/O what do you gain from maintaining a a friendship with a man whose wife hates you?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't think that I would feel comfortable hanging out with a married guy whose wife hated me.  That just sounds like a really bad idea and when their marriage blows up, as it almost certainly will, I would not want either one of them to point the finger of blame in my direction.

Send cards and talk to them openly on Facebook.[/quote]

I think it’s up to him to decide whether to maintain friendships that his wife disapproves of.  If he’s keeping up a problematic friendship, that’s a problem between him and his wife, not the wife and the friend.[/quote]

Yeah, well it would be my choice not to be hanging out with a guy whose wife *hated* me. I have about zero interest in that kind of BS drama and I would be p*ssed at a friend for putting me in a situation like that.  I do not want to be collateral damage when that ticking time bomb goes off.  No thanks![/quote]

How would the friend be putting you in that situation?  He can’t control his wife’s emotions, he can only control his own behavior.  If his wife has turned super controlling and possessive, he might really need his friends.[/quote]

He is the only one who has the power to get out of that relationship.  I didn't say I would stop being his friend but I would absolutely stop hanging around with a guy whose wife hated me.  And I would tell him why I was not comfortable hanging around him.  While I might love my friend and want only the best for him, I've got a marriage and a family of my own to consider and my husband.  Putting myself into the middle of my friend's bad marriage does not seem like a wise thing to do.  Too much could go wrong and, quite frankly, I would not want the stress and the drama of it all.[/quote]

The difference between us is I don’t let other people’s crazy stress me out.  If she’s losing her mind every time we get coffee, that’s her problem. I don’t worry about it because there’s no conflict in my friendship or in my marriage.  It’s all good here.[/quote]

If she is flipping out on your friend every time she finds out that you met with him for coffee then just think about what your friend is living with. He needs a wake up call.  By you, a trusted friend, saying "Hey, your wife's reaction is w-a-y over the top.  I'm honestly afraid for you and I don't want to trigger your wife by seeing you" that might be enough to wake him up and deal with his marital problems.[/quote]

You sound like a jealous wife trying to justify her controlling behavior.  It would be up to my friend to decide whether our friendship is worth that, and if he continues the friendship, clearly he thinks it is.  Plus, a crazy wife isn’t going to become sane just because we stop being friends, she’s just going to turn her crazy on him in a different way, because ultimately the crazy is about her, not our friendship.[/quote]

Uh, nope.  I would hope that a friend in a bad situation like that would extricate himself from that marriage.  I would not want to be "the reason" for his wife exploding all over him or onto me.

You don't invite crazy into your life like that.  Not even through the back door of a friendship.[/quote]

I would also hope my friend would get himself out of his marriage too (for his own sake, not mine, I’m happily married).  But me walking away from him as a friend wouldn’t help that happen, it just leaves him more isolated and vulnerable to her abuse, which would still happen, she’d just find another excuse.  That’s what abusers do.[/quote]

That is why I wouldn't just walk away from the friendship.  I would explain to him very clearly why we couldn't see each other.  I would also continue to talk to him publicly on Facebook.  [/quote]

If you think this would help, you really don’t understand abusive relationships.  Abuse isn’t about the actions of the victims, it’s about the emotional impairment of the abuser.  No matter how perfectly the victim were to array their lives, the abuser would find an excuse to abuse them anyway, because that’s the only way they know how to get the ugliness out of themselves.  This is why you will sometimes see victims do things that seem like they’re trying to provoke the abuse (which in turn gives the abuser an excuse for their behavior) - they know the abuse is coming either way, and provoking it now gets them a brief respite afterward rather than living under the shadow of when is the abuser going to lose it.  If the victim maintains the provocative friendship, then the abuse because more predictable, and thus more manageable.  If the victim loses the pro active friendship (by choice or not), then they’re left with the anxiety of wondering what will be the next target, what will the abuse try to take away from them now.[/quote]

Why on earth would I want to make staying in an abusive relationship more manageable for my friend?  Wouldn't it be much better for him to Get Out of that relationship?[/quote]

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