Category: Dating and Relationships
I'm writing this because I'd like to express my opinions and views about people who are seriously involved inrelationships (not online relationships, but relationships where people actually enteract with each other physically, mentally, sexually, etc.). Why are people so insecure? Why is it that if you're a man dating a woman or a woman dating a man, if you have friends (just friends nothing else involved nothing else has ever been involved in the friendship and nothing else will ever be involved in relationship wise because you're just meant to be friends) outside of your relationship of the opposite sex your partner has a problem with that? I hate the fact that it's automatically assumed that men and women can not just be friends nothing more! I hate the fact especially more so if you're a woman, and for the most part you only have guy friends that automatically makes you a slut. That's like assuming that just because someone's black they like fried chicken or if someone's atalian, they like pizza. I think if you discuss with your partner that you have a friend or friends that are the opposite sex as you and try and see if your partner would like to hang out with you and your friends because if you're upfront about it, what is there for your partner to be upset about? I find myself in this situation. I've been dating a guy off and on that I really care for and he constantly acuses me of cheating because I have male friends. I've explained to him when I met him that me and 98 percent of females don't click like that and I've always had better friendships with guys. The guy friends I have now I've had for years either during school or met them at previous jobs and I've never had any kind of relationship with them more than a friendship. He does not believe that. I've even invited him to meet my friends just to try and reassure him that there's nothing to be concerned about but he's not interested. He told me as of yesterday if I want to maintain a relationship with him I need to stop communicating with my male friends. I don't think I should have to do that because I love him and only him and I've been faithfull to him 100 percent. That's not fair that I should have to give up that part of my life in order to keep him around. Not to mention, there have been certain incidents in the relationship that makes me think he's cheated in the past. So I'm asking what is your opinion about maintaining friendships with the opposite sex outside of the relationship? No opinion is right or wrong I'm just kind of curious to see what kind of responses I'd get to this post and my situation.
I completely agree with you and think you should find a more secure and
mature boyfriend. Though I disagree with your characterization of online
relationships as not real relationships, but that's a discussion for another post I
think.
Loving a person and allowing them to rule you isn’t love at all.
Love is a two-way street.
I too disagree with this whole mental thing that if the friend is the opposite sex, it automatically means you’ll want sex with them.
Guys forget that women friends are just as much a threat, if you’re immature enough to go there.
No trust, it won’t work, and you’ll have given up your friends to boot.
The fact he won’t even meet them shows he doesn’t care about the truth, only your agreement.
Will he be willing to give up his guy friends?
To be honest, I think because he's not a social person he wants whoever he ends up with is supposed not to have any kind of a social life. that's kind of the vive I'm getting from him.
An, now what?
I completely agree with you.
I can tell you that some people when they're younger start out okay thinking they support their spouse having a friend of the opposite sex. But as things progress they can become insecure. I don't fully understand the mentality because for whatever reason, genetics, biology or what, I happen not to really be a jealous person of any stretch. Not a cuck, just not jealous.
However, I think I can explain part of it. Proving you've been failthful is basically proving a negative. If you're on a business trip, you sit across from someone at a dinner and engage in conversation with them, you two being of the opposite sex, you may forget about the whole thing later. But if your spouse who may be insecure about these things finds out, she or they may be prepared to ask you questions about the occasion, and your failure to remember details, (to you the situation was unimportant and you weren't contemplating any nefarious activities anyhow), this lack of detail or failure to respond can be very easily conceived by them as proof something untoward was in effect.
I have learned over the years / decades that this seems not to be personal, but those of us who strive to be semper fidelus in relationships are contending with the impossible of proving the negative. It's obviously far from impossible to "keep it in the pants", literally or otherwise. But *proving* that you didn't do anything, that can get difficult.
I can't, for instance, prove to you that I didn't kill anybody. If you wanted to be jealous and insecure, all you'd have to do is retort: "That just proves I didn't find the body with your fingerprints on it!"
Ask yourself why it might be that religions have prohibitions against "lust", say the famous Sermon on the Mount and other texts? Adultery, cheating, whatever you want to call it, telling your spouse you'll do one thing sexually and then going around behind their back and doing another? Statistically not the norm. So, for authorities and others who need to justify their existence / belief about things, they must move the goalposts, just like modern political movements do. Now just change the definitions around so that you don't have to have done anything at all to have cheated. Just thought something about another party.
I think that is what causes all the trouble with friends of the opposite sex. In some cases, even with a homosexual of the opposite sex. A homosexual! Meaning someone who would not have the least bit interest in you sexually because you're not their sex.
It all comes down to the fact you can't prove a negative. I can't prove I've never released a computer virus of my own making. Most people are free to assume that indeed I haven't. But when it's sex, often times the commonly held notion of western enlightenment, guilty until proven innocent and all that that implies, is thrown out.
Take it or leave it, that's my theory on why. Again, I don't think it's personal to the individual. Surely in some cases it probably is. But for the most part, I think I describe things accurately. even if in my 20s you could had told me this till I was blue in the face, and I'd have run out the same ideological tripe "Of course you can have friends of the opposite sex." Not saying one can or can't. Just saying, if the other party has any insecurity, it will be up to you to prove the negative, and that is largely impossible.
It is not up to her to prove the negative; it is up to her to decide whether or not this man is right for her, can she accept him into her life knowing this is one of his weaknesses that will likely not go away. Is he more valueable than her group of longtime male friends? Is a life with him worth the sacrifice of those friends?
And one thing to consider about those male friends...what happens when those male friends get married or in long term relationships and their __girlfriends__ decide that you are a threat? You might be willing to forgo the jealous guy to maintain the guy friends, but they in the long run might not be willing to do the same for you.
(They might already be married/committed, etc. just something to keep in mind
Love/sex/relationships can be messy
I agree 100 percent trying to prove the negative is completely impossible when you deal with someone who's extremely jealous! But I must say, people who are extremely jealous to the point that it doesn't matter what you say or do to try to clear the situation up, it does not put the other person's mind at ease and that sucks. I'll give an example, 3 weeks ago, I had a really bad cold and missed 3 days of work. I ended up going to the doctor during one of those days and my boyfriend text me and asked me what was I doing. I told him I was at the doctor's office and that I would call him when I left there. This upset him and when i checked after the doctor's visit, he had sent several messages talking about i didn't tell him i was going to the doctor and that i might as well just keep screwing whoever i was screwing at that moment. It bothered me a little, but i figured i could clear the situation up by letting him see the papers i got from the doctor (the note i was going to take back to work when i went back, the prescriptions, and the paperwork which described in detail why i saw the doctor and the results of the visit) i was also going to give him the phone number to the doctor's office if he wanted to call them for himself. Hell, i would've even given him the address to the place so we could there together and verify this information, so i sent all this information to him, but it didn't matter he was convinced i was sleeping around and there was nothing i could say or no evidence i could give to prove that this was not true to make him change his mind. In his mind it was what it was and that was it, but that's not fair to me that's like acusing me of murder without any kind of evidence proving that i did it and i end up being convicted by a jury and going to prison for life or being sentenced to death because a prosecutor just said "fuck it you did it that's what i believe so therefore, you must suffer the consequences because of what i believe happened!" How is a relationship supposed to last under those kind of circumstances? I mean it can't you'd have one partner who's extremely jealous and the other partner walking around on egg shells because they don't know what will trigger the partner's jealousy. That can be very uncomfortable! O and yes, my boyfriend knew i was sick. I had been sick for 2 and a half weeks befor the doctor's visit and he even was trying to care of me because i didn't feel well.
I take it back-no contemplation needed. Your guy has a huge problem and you will be asking for misery if you continue with him. He is controlling and irrational.
Well, if my male friends were real friends, they wouldn't hide me from their girlfriends/wives that might reduce some of the stress, but as this guy, i love him, but the jealousy is putting me in a position where I'm not sure if i want to continue this relationship. Like i said why should i give aspects of my life if he's still in contact with his ex-girlfriend, he has a profile on a chatline (dating chatline), and he outright flirted with another woman while i was with him.
O that was just one example if you only knew the whole story.
I don't know you or him and it is none of my business but D-R-O-P him NOW! He is jealous, controlling and irrational and he maintains a profile on a dating website? You're already pretty far gone if you are accepting this from him. I'll grant the dating profile might not be so terrible depending on how long you've dated or what you've agreed to.
I am female and can't imagine tolerating the control and I wouldn't want anyone to put up with that kind of behavior from me, either.
Ok yeah, that's very unhealthy. I'm certainly not an expert on your situation,
but that is not healthy. You don't need that kind of treatment. No girl needs that
kind of treatment. That's bordering on abuse in my opinion.
If it's this bad now, it's only going to get worse as time progresses. Also, the guilty dog usually barks first. My x used to always accuse me of cheating or wanting to cheat, when in fact, he was the one going after every skirt in town. I never suspected because that isn't something I would do so I wouldn't expect it of my partner. He expected it of me because it is something that he would, and did, do. Does that make sense?
I don't know anything about you but I strongly urge you to get out of this situation. It sounds ridiculously unhealthy.
I agree that if your male friends get in to a relationship, you might get dumped as a friend due to the girl thinking you're a threat.
That is no reason to dump them now, because they're not the problem as I see it.
Forget to charge your cellphone one day while you're out shopping, and you've have been sleeping with someone.
I have said on these boards, that I've put all this cheating from my life. A woman simply can't cheat me, because I give her permission to do so from day one.
I don't mean cheat, she doesn't have to. I mean, if she becomes interested in someone for whatever reason, I tell her to simply tell me.
She doesn't need to worry about backlash. We can talk about her reasons, and I'll give her some time to decide what she wishes to do.
I strongly believe if a person wishes to be with you, they will be.
No manner of promises, guilt, force, and whatever will keep them with you.
Same on my end. If I tell a woman I'm faithful, she can put that in the bank and forget about it. If that should change, she'll be the first person to know.
Ooh, I think steam is pouring out of my ears, reading this.
Daileyt, you should not have to prove that you were at a doctor's appointment; fuck that psycho, manipulative crap!
I hope you can see that this isn't healthy. This man is controlling, it's far more alarming than jealousy and insecurity, and it escalates, over time. Do you want to spend a good portion of your life explaining your actions and thought processes and behavior to someone, justifying every tiny thing you do? If it continues, you will have zero confidence in yourself, and he will destroy you. No one should live like that. That isn't love, and the sooner you extricate yourself from this toxic person, the easier it will be to do so.
If it seems I'm overreacting, it's because I've known relationships like this to progress to outright abuse. I guess I'm reacting more to the dr thing than the friends. I don't believe your friendships are the sum of the problem here, though.
I won't get into the can of worms of friends of the opposite sex. I don't have anything original to say. Some people are trustworthy, some not, so there's probably no rigid rule to adhere to, with that. It seems a case by case question.
Without getting into a lot of personal detail, I'd say I'm not really comfortable with such friendships; it just seems best to save yourself the headache and avoid the pitfalls of them..but maybe that's easy for me to say. I'm more comfortable with having female friends, anyway. I'm not entirely comfortable with my partner having women friends who share confidences I'm not part of, but I also don't want to dictate who he can have as a friend, or be constantly suspicious. that's not the way to have a contented life.
"i didn't mean to hurt you, I'm sorry that I made you cry.
i didn't want to hurt you, I'm just a jealous guy."
It is a fact that many are not comfortable with friends of the opposite sex as post 16 points out.
I personally don't understand how it safeguards anything.
I strongly believe that for this reason so many married, or in a "committed “relationship women have suffered STD's when they were faithful.
Yes, I suspect women enjoy intimacy with female friends, but in these cases, they aren't likely to go cruising, seeking strangers for it, so they aren't likely to give the husband, or boyfriend anything.
If we'd open our eyes, and minds to that fact it isn't who our partners associate with, but how honest we allow our partners to be about such things, I believe we'd do far better.
When you absolutely know something, you have something you can deal with. You have a choice as to what you want to do about it.
Everyone is safer because know one need sneak about.
It is far easier to mend a broken heart then Herpes, or AIDS.
When you are in the dark, because you can't conceive, or see that your mate’s friends can't possibly be interested in them, because they are of the same sex, it doesn't stand to reason.
I know that STD’s aren’t the half of it, it is the heart that is more likely to get hurt, but again, a broken heart can heal.
You’ll heal it much faster if you have honestly and can get a start on it sooner then when you feel betrayed.
I agree to what most of you are saying. Like I've stated I havn't even put the whole story out there and no I don't want to have to continue explaining every little move I make because he's trying to keep track of me. Honestly, I don't know if this is just who he is or if this is who he's become of circumstances that recently occurred in his own life, but we havn't even been together a year yet and this behavior continues to get worse and worse. Hell, I'm not going to lie, right now I'm questioning my own sanity for dealing with this madness for the last 10 months and no that's not a good thing. I guess I'm just the type of person who wants to try to clear things up hoping that things will get better, but there not unfortunately. As for the profile, at the time I discovered it, we had been seriously in a relationship for 6 months and he created it one night after we had an argument and something told me to check this chatline (women's intuition) because that's where we met. He claimed that it was an old profile, but if you create a profile on a phone chatline, if you don't access it for 4 weeks it gets deleted from the system. So, either he's been on the chatline the entire time we've been together or he created a new profile. He says it was old and he hadn't been on it for months but he went back on it one night after we had an argument because "I still had money on the account and I didn't want it to go to waste." I guess he thinks I'm stupid because why would he be worried about money on a dating account he supposedly hadn't used since we've met? I told him to if he wanted to use lame excuses, he needed to find him a stupid woman because they'd accept that crap, but I forgave him for that, but like I said I'm tired of having to explain my actions all the time. The only time I get a break from that is when I'm at work because believe it or not, that's the only he actually believes I'm not screwing anyone!
You're not insane or anything. Its perfectly natural to want to stay in a
relationship even if its not a particularly good one. It happens all the time. its
part of the nature of abusive relationships, sadly. The key is what you're going
to do from this point on.
Here is my 2 cents on the topic.
Often, an abusive person will start with trying to isolate his/her partner from friends/family... Exerting jealousy and needing control are also part of said profile. I am not saying that your boyfriend is an abuser, but just be very careful and think if you really want or can build a relationship on such shaky foundation.
I have friends of the opposite sex, and my current partner is aware of them. I have no problem with them meeting each other when the occasion arises. Personally for me, I don't feel comfortable being alone with a single mail friend when I am in a commited relationship. - As a group, and or when my partner is around ... yes!
I don't feel a need to cause unnecessary stress to our relationship.
Agreed with Post 9 this guy is apparently very controlling and you should get out.
Also, make sure you take your things. You may say to yourself "Things aren't that important!" But an abusive person starts by trapping the abused, taking their resources away. Getting you off where you can't get away, or controlling the finances, etc.
If you can, make a clean brak. Break it off, get a third party or even call the cops requesting what is called a civil stand-by when you go get your things. It's serious shit when it goes down like that.
An abuser is not counting on you to be proactive. What about those friends? Male and female alike: Are they telling you things like this? Are they hedging around the issue? Talk to them, they're in your area, ask them to be completely honest with you about him. Then ask them for help. You're not weak because you're in this situation. Abusive types merely know how to exploit certain human tendencies.
This is stuff I might have been glad to know when younger
Ask yourself deep down: Are you afraid? Not just annoyed or perturbed or upset. What do you think will happen if you don't answer that text?
The answers you give yourself will tell you all you need to know, you'll see if we're being crazy or not.
Oh, and take this from the voice of experience. Don't get into the car with an abusive person, ever. If yoyu're blind they know it and can drive to a location you can't get away from, or at least they're betting you won't take off down the road and try.
You need out. And again I stress, you're not weak, emotionally dysfunctional or whatever other shrink words they got. You just need to get the support of your friends and pack your stuff, especially your most important belongings like birth certificate and such, and GTFO! If your friends cannot or will not help you, call for a civil stand-by from the police department. Don't call 911 for this unless you're being immediately threatened. You're a woman so they're not gonna laugh at you like they would a male, or would have 20 years ago, dunno how it works now.
But for the love of gods, gargoyles and the great balls of Buddha, please don't get into a vehicle with him, for any reason at all! Don't do it, man, I'm just saying, don't!
Well when it comes to things, his things are his place and my things are at mine. We don't share any finances or have any living arrangements together. As for being alone with the opposite sex as friends, you as a person should have the will power to control those kinds of circumstances. You control who you have sexual contact with and who you don't. I personally don't have a problem being alone with any of my friends (male or female) because I don't want to ruin the relationship I'm in whether it's this one or someone else in the future I may be serious about, so with that in mind I know I'm not going to sleep with my friends. I've had one friend who told me several years that they wanted more than a friendship, but once I told him I didn't feel that way about him the issue was dropped. Pluss, for me, it would be awkward to have any kind of relationship other than a friend with my male friends because I've known them for a long time. They've told me things about them that if I was seriously involved with them would repulse me. Most of my male friends are like brothers to me because we've grown up together, so being more than friends with them or even being sex buddies with them really weirds me out!
I've been in a vehicle with him, but we havn't dated long enough to live together or share any kind of financial responsibilities. My friends say the same things they think he's a psycho too.
I agree you are okay and not having a problem because you're trying to work things out.
That is mostly the problem with relationships, people don't try for a bit.
After you've tried, you won't feel bad for breaking it off.
10 months is reasonable.
I also agree that if you can’t be alone with a friend of the opposite sex, you need to admit to yourself you are more interested in them then just straight friends.
Any relationship that can, or might turn sexual, even for just the pleasure, is more than friendly.
Nothing wrong with that either, but it needs to be faced and admitted.
That male, or female friend you shouldn’t be alone with unless you don’t care how it goes.
I agree with the last post.
Agree with what others are saying; this guy of yours sounds quite selfish and immature. Please get out; you don't deserve that. Lucky that you don't share a place and all that comes with it and you can more easily get out.
Ok, let's say just for the sake of the argument that you are, in fact, guilty of everything he accuses you of. doesn't that make you question his own intensions? If he thinks that lowly of you, why the fuck is he still with you? That should answer your question really. If this wasn't the issue, it would be something else. The guy is a controling monipulator, playing on your emotions and eating away at your own self worth.
Yes you're right.
My fault is though I've been trying to hard for to long to clear my name with him that's where I screwed up at.
Well, it's never too late to unscrew up, if you will. Because, as someone whose last relationship was the most unhealthy one I've ever been in, I can tell you that it doesn't get better; it only gets worse. So, that being said, getting out would be the best thing you could ever do for yourself.
Yes, this is all kinds of wrong. Get out now.
I like what another poster said about his own intentions. This is a generalization, I know, but in my experience those who have been unfaithful tend to be more paranoid. Since they've done it themselves, it seems all too likely that others might be doing it. It's very damaging for the other party because they are essentially paying for mistakes that aren't theirs.
all true
My mother was in an abusive relationship for almost the entire time I was growing. Baileyt, he had many of the characteristics that you talk about your guy having. It will get worse, and you will never convince him that you are not cheating--he has already decided that you are and that's that! What I suffered from being a victim of this relationship has caused me not to even be able to stand it if someone raises their voice to me. I cannot go to sleep easily because I am afraid my stepdad will come and wake me by hurting me. He forced us to watch him beating my mother when I was only ten years old, and there were younger brothers and sisters there as well. If you haven't left him already, please don subject yourself and any possible children you have to this kind of treatment. Best of luck to you, and I hope that you find a happier place. L
It may not be that extreme in all cases. Some people are just insecure.