8 ms·

I am in the process of a breakup (scare) right now and realizing how much of my social support system is gone when it's attached to your spouse and obviously lo

• nevi-me 3y ago
  I (M) once got into a relationship with someone (F) who was oddly unfond of my friendships, esp female friends. She in a way isolated me from close friends. When we broke up, it was because she accepted a marriage proposal from her 'friend' whom I kept asking her about. Anyways, it took me time to mend some friendships, some never recovered. > Not totally on topic but I have learned my lesson to actively pursue friendships from now on and cultivate them Yes, spousal relationships can sometimes drain us of other friends because of the exclusivity it comes with. We sometimes have to be very deliberate in keeping that balance. That includes taking on new interests, getting to know our kids' parents, etc. I encourage my wife to meet new people, as she relocated across our country, doesn't have a lot of friends around, and stopped working shortly before kids.
  • geraldwhen 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • spondylosaurus 3y ago
      At first I was gonna say "I don't think this is normal," but I'm not straight and so may not be the best judge of what is or isn't normal in heterosexual marriages. In any case, I don't think this is healthy.
      • profunctor 3y ago
        As a straight person I also think it’s strange. I’ve had mixed gender friends my whole life and I’ve never had an issue.
      • phendrenad2 3y ago
        I think it's very normal, and also very problematic.
      • burkaman 3y ago
        I don't think it's normal at all. My only guess is that it's more common in very religious communities.
      • banannaise 3y ago
        Yeah, queer existence blows all kind of holes in the basic premise behind the logic. There's a lot that's fundamentally problematic about it, not least of which is the implication that everyone except your spouse should be kept at arm's length, and this is the morally correct thing to do.
        • bmicraft 3y ago
          Yup, they'd have to basically lock up their SO if they were bi
      • mecha_ghidorah 3y ago
        I'm straight, I definitely don't think this is at all healthy. If you don't trust your spouse to live their life as best they can with your best interests at heart, let alone just not cheat on you, why are they your spouse?
    • qbit42 3y ago
      [flagged]
      • spondylosaurus 3y ago
        Bisexual people can't have friends at all; gay people can't have same-gender gay friends, but they can't have same-gender straight friends either (because you might be attracted to them!), nor can they have opposite-gender straight friends (because they might be attracted to you!). It's a little ridiculous. If you don't trust your partner to behave themselves around someone of their preferred gender(s), there's larger problems at play.
        • BizarreByte 3y ago
          > but they can't have same-gender straight friends either (because you might be attracted to them!) This actually can become a major issue with friendships. Obviously you can't act on the attraction and it can become very frustrating very quickly. I know from experience and I wish I didn't.
          • spondylosaurus 3y ago
            Ha, no kidding! That was every crush I had in high school :P
        • banannaise 3y ago
          A lot of people have very unhealthy mindsets about sex and general emotional closeness. Most people in modern Western society never really unpack their feelings around jealousy, nor do they endeavor to understand their own emotional needs and figure out how to fulfill them in healthy ways.
        • dragonwriter 3y ago
          But gay people can have opposite gender gay friends, but this only works for dyads not friend groups, because X is friends with Y and X is friends with Z implies Y cannot be friends with Z.
    • footy 3y ago
      by that logic, bisexual people can't have any friends? I'm a lesbian, am I supposed to not be friends with men? Or with women? Also, idk about you, but I'm an adult. If my wife didn't allow me to do things, she wouldn't be my wife.
      • oh_sigh 3y ago
        I think, based on that logic, bisexual people could not be friends with people attracted to the bisexual person's gender.
        • dragonwriter 3y ago
          The problem of potential mixed messages and confusion is two-sided, so if the rule made sense at all, it would require avoiding both people who were either known to be attracted to your gender or of a gender you were attracted to. The universal heterosexuality assumption makes those two equivalent which is convenient because it makes the rule seem marginally workable
    • amanaplanacanal 3y ago
      I can’t imagine living like that. But if it works for you, I guess it works. Out of curiosity, how old are you, and how long have you been married?
    • drukenemo 3y ago
      Counterpoint, I have healthy good friendships with women, and my wife doesn’t care. I also don’t cheat on her. Believe me, it can be done. Friendship with the opposite sex allows for a different perspective.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • Daishiman 3y ago
      I am truly sorry that you were raised that way.
      • dang 3y ago
        Please don't cross into personal attack. You can make your substantive points without that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines in other places too. We've already asked you more than once to stop that. If you keep this up, we're going to have to ban you. I don't want to ban you, so please fix this.
    • HelloMcFly 3y ago
      This is really sad to read and indicates a learned lack of trust in intimate relationships and/or with one's own behavior.
      • dang 3y ago
        Please don't cross into personal attack. You can make your substantive points without that.
        • HelloMcFly 3y ago
          I take umbrage with the idea that just because it wasn't a nice affirmation or multi-sentence deconstruction of their position that it was a "personal attack". My comment was a) a genuine human emotional response followed by b) a factual observation that such a mindset is clearly derived from a lack of trust.
          • dang 3y ago
            Of course I believe you—but you're referring to internal state that the rest of us don't have access to and which you didn't encode in your comment. Intent doesn't communicate itself—especially not in this medium, where all we have access to are tiny globs of text—so it has to be made explicit. The burden is on the commenter to disambiguate this: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=burden%20disambiguate%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Since your comment didn't do that, I read it as more of a putdown than it sounds like you intended to convey. Commenting on someone else's intimate relationships and psychological state is exceedingly personal territory. Internet users often, unfortunately, step into that as a way of being snide to others (it's even a bit of a trope, though I'm not saying your comment went this far: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22internet%20psychiatric%20diagnosis%22 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a...). And this becomes much more likely when the context is an ideological battlefield, which gender issues are.
    • digging 3y ago
      This sounds miserable and pointless to me. I would without question prefer to live alone forever than in such a constricting, untrusting situation.
    • sillyfluke 3y ago
      I call this the Mike Pence rule. Because as I recall at one point he was in the news due to his alleged behavior of not meeting with other women without his wife present. I don't adhere to it, but I'm not judging or downvoting you and don't know why others are. I'm surprised other commenters are surprised to be honest. Surely I'm not the only one who has been subjected to a seemingly endless stream of rom-coms where the protag ditches their SO for their good/best/work friend my entire life? So it shouldn't be surprising that some people are wary after being subjected to such propaganda. It can be an issue when one person in the relationship has way more opposite sex friends than the other. It's hard for some to admit their insecurities in that situation, so they silently accept it instead of having a fight over it (which probably would have been healthier).
      • burkaman 3y ago
        > I'm surprised other commenters are surprised to be honest. I'm surprised because I've never met anybody like this, and while I've heard about Mike Pence I'm not sure I really believed it. Thinking about it more, since I don't hang out in any male-only spaces (where would I find such a thing?), almost by definition I'm never going to meet anybody socially who follows this rule. Also, as other commenters have pointed out, this philosophy completely falls apart unless you genuinely believe that everyone is heterosexual, or you refuse to be friends with anyone who is not.
        • sillyfluke 3y ago
          >Also, as other commenters have pointed out, this philosophy completely falls apart unless you genuinely believe that everyone is heterosexual To be fair, the post he was responding to specified the context of the relationship as between a "(M)" and "(F)".
          • burkaman 3y ago
            But the relationship isn't relevant, this is a philosophy for how to treat everyone outside the relationship. Many of those people are the same gender as you but might still be attracted to you (oh no!), or a different gender but have no interest in you so there's no potential for mixed signals. So the rule a) does not protect you from accidentally leading someone on, and b) does cut off a bunch of potential friends for no reason.
    • dTal 3y ago
      Gender isn't the only aspect of someone's 'type'. What if she has an inflexible sexual preference for men over 6ft? Is she then allowed short male friends?
    • wizofaus 3y ago
      "Safest", I'll grant. But "sensible " to me means actual trust between partners that such friendships are purely platonic - unless of course there's hard evidence that they aren't. It's admittedly rare to see (assuming all involved are heterosexual) but it can and does work.
    • epidemian 3y ago
      I think the downvotes you're receiving are misjudged. It's a personal opinion to have, and as long as you're not harming or forcing that opinion onto others, i respect it. I don't share it though. And it's interesting to think what assumptions lie beneath it. If you were bi, would your wife not allow you to hang out with men too? And if she were bi, what would you think of her having woman friends? Do you think this arrangement would also be "the most sensible thing to do" for a non-monogamous person, or for someone who's monogamous and completely at peace with their partner?
    • dragonwriter 3y ago
      > Opposite sex friendships just don’t make sense. Yes. They do. > There’s always the potential for a mixed signal. That's also true in same sex friendships; bisexuality and homosexuality do actually exist. The solution to this is communication, not avoiding friendships. > My wife would never allow me to hang out with another woman solo I'm sorry your wife doesn't trust you, and I'm glad that neither my wife nor I have that problem with each other. > unless it was someone’s wife If them being someone's wife negates any risk, than surely you being someone's husband should, too?
      • dpig_ 3y ago
        Masterful reply, with a satisfying finisher. Fatality!
    • mecha_ghidorah 3y ago
      It sounds like you and your wife don't trust each other, which makes me wonder why on earth your married in the first place
    • shermanyo 3y ago
      So does this mean gay couples shouldn't have same-sex friends? And bisexual couples shouldn't have _any_ friends?
    • carlosjobim 3y ago
      You're right and that's why hackers are down voting you and protesting against your comment. Part of respect between spouses is that you don't spend solo time with people of the opposite sex. Also: – Soccer players aren''t allowed to touch the ball with their hands. – What!? Then how am I supposed to play handball? The above is basically the replies here.
    • dang 3y ago
      Please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents. They're tedious and eventually turn nasty. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  • lezojeda 3y ago
    [dead]
• LeanderK 3y ago
  I see this happening again and again, sometimes repeatedly to the same persons. A friend of mine is currently going through this, but his solution to the problem is immediately trying to go into the next relationship, as fast as possible. I am very much looking forward to the next breakup. Another friend of mine just never got in touch with me after her new relationship, funnily we got to know each other from the last relationship to a friend of mine where I know she neglected her older friends to favour her new circle. To be honest, I am not interested in being friends with a person when I get sidelined the moment someone goes into the next relationship. I have better things to do than to revolve around someone else life. I have my own friends. It's a very frustrating experience because you try to stay in touch and you don't know what's going on. It's not your fault. I try to balance my relationship and my own, personal life. Breakups happened and rougher times in a relationship happen and it's essential to have your own friends. It is very important to me to not give up my identity and my social life. But it has to be said I also don't really accept too much inference into my own life and I don't think I could be in a relationship where each one doesn't have their own space. I know relationship that wouldn't really work for me because you have to negotiate stuff that is not negotiable for me.
• globular-toast 3y ago
  I've been taught that lesson many times. But it's just too easy for an introvert to be in a relationship and not have to socialise any more. Over years I've given up on trying to be a social person and I just need to be honest about it: I hate socialising and will only do it when there's a clear and direct reason for doing so. The biggest reason is sex. Once that's not needed the reasons for doing so are very few and far between.
  • danenania 3y ago
    Another way to approach it rather than trying to socialize or make friends directly is to find one or two weekly activities you enjoy that involve a group or collaboration of some kind. Sports, exercise, and boardgames are common ones but it could be anything. People tend to make friends naturally this way over time, but even if you don’t, at least you are doing something fun and developing a life independent of your partner.
    • globular-toast 3y ago
      Tried that. I can never be consistent with it; my mind resists it every time. One reason is my natural schedule never seems to align with society. For example, I like cycling, but I'm never going to make it to a Sunday ride at 9am. Another reason is I don't necessarily like the kind of people who are into geeky stuff. I find board game nerds and computer geeks tiresome and annoying. It's better to communicate with them over the internet, at home. I don't think one should have to force themselves to do something they don't want to do several times a week. Nobody else does that. Instead of friends I rely on my mental health, my skills and the financial system for insurance. It would be a big mistake for me to let my health deteriorate, get married or quit my job, for example.
      • danenania 3y ago
        “Another reason is I don't necessarily like the kind of people who are into geeky stuff. I find board game nerds and computer geeks tiresome and annoying.” Well my point is to find something you enjoy doing and not worry about liking or socializing with the other people there. You can find the others annoying and they can find you quiet and unfriendly at first, but if you keep going regularly there’s a decent chance you’ll click with some people eventually, even if it takes a year or more. I get the motivation and timing issues though. There is definitely a hump to get over in establishing a new habit.
• avtar 3y ago
  This hits close to home. Wishing you the best <3
• XCSme 3y ago
  Be strong man, breakups suck, feel free to DM me if you want to talk.