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

Forum Index » Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)

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

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]DH has quite a few female friends from before I met him when he was in grad school.  These are long term friendships that have never been romantic.  I have no problem with him going out to drinks and/or dinner with them when they're in town.  These are the only women he ever goes out to dinner/drinks with, all his other friends are men.  I'm not going to police his behavior, I'm fairly certain he won't cheat and if he does, he knows what the consequences will be.  [/quote]

As a woman with a number of guy friends from college, I want to say: THANK YOU.  These relationships are about as platonic as it gets between the opposite genders, and to me the guys are really like brothers.  I'm not saying don't bring up something specific if it bothers you, but having had exes who became exes because they suspected my guy friends, I can say acting this way just makes the accuser look ridiculous.   Having said all that, we all know each other's spouses and hang out in groups and the spouses are always more than welcome (and for the most part we all get along well).[/quote]

Eh, you might think they're platonic.  It's possible they're only platonic because you that boundary.  I say that as someone who thought like you until I realized a guy I was friends with and thought our relationship was "as platonic as it gets" actually wanted more.  This is someone I knew for years.  It kind of ruined the friendship because, once I realized he wanted more (or was up for more), it changed the way I saw the time I spent with him.  My husband trusted me, so that was never an issue.  But my husband did tell me that he thinks a lot of women are woefully naive about their "guy friends."  The topic came up with some of our friends (guy friends that both my husband and I know), and they all admitted to having female friends (friends they've known for years) who they'd totally sleep with if they thought the opportunity was there or that the friend was open to it.  But they all said that they never tried anything or even hinted because they always got the vibe that the female friend wasn't into them in that way.

But I think that exposes one of the issues with platonic relationships.  Often they are unbalanced.  And while one person may see it as completely platonic, that doesn't mean the other person doesn't have a physical attraction.

None of that is to say that women and men shouldn't be friends and maintain those friendships after getting married.  But I think it's helpful to not be naive about the possibilities and the danger zones.  That helps to establish boundaries and to understand where and in what circumstances there may be vulnerabilities.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics