We're coming up on our first anniversary and during our first year of marriage my husband learned (at my urging to inquire) that his best friend was gay. Everyone else around us has at least questioned that this guy was gay and my husband seemed to never want to acknowledge it. I am extremely uncomfortable with this guy and I always thought he was gay from the moment I met him.

I have struggled with accepting him and being okay with their friendship but ultimately I just wish he would go away altogether. But he was the best man at our wedding and has been friends with my husband since childhood. My husband is very close to him and generally feels it is unreasonable of me to ask him to curb his relationship with him.

I trust my husband and I have to keep telling myself that I do because everytime his best friend comes up - that trust gets challenged. I feel like this guy will never be a good influence on my husband's life -not to mention a drain on the energy of our marriage.

What prompted this post is that I just got off the phone with him and he says he wants to plan something "special" for my husband's birthday... UGH! It just makes me feel so uncomfortable. I feel like he is in love with my husband.

My husband is very sensitive about this and I cannot get over how I feel about his friend. I would be happy if he stopped being friends with him altogether but that doesn't seem possible. What should we do?

What exactly are you worried about? Do you think your H might be gay? Or do you just not like gay people?

If you're certain your husband isn't gay or bisexual, I would just reinforce the 15-hours per week that you and he spend in quality time, as advocated by Dr. Harley.

If your husband is not capable of doing that because he's spending too much time with his friend, it means that he isn't investing enough time in the marriage.

Would you feel more comfortable if his friend had a partner? Perhaps you can offer to host the party and invite some other gay men to divert his attention elsewhere.

Other than that, I would say you're preoccupied with something that, well... you shouldn't be. Your husband has a right to his friendship with this man, as long as your husband isn't gay or bisexual and is not cutting you short of quality time to maintain that friendship...

I am worried that his friend will always be looking for more in the relationship... I see him as a liability. I am not worried my husband is gay but I don't like the way it looks. Is that enough? Is that a legitimate need.. for us to look a certain way. I mean his friend has a sort of exclusivity about his way with my husband.. like he has to have special facetime with him... I might be especially bias to that friend.. cuz I don't feel the same way when he's with other friends...

I don't have a problem with gay people. My brother is gay and I am very close to him. I understand that struggle. What I don't like is the way this friend seems to regard my husband in a more than fraternal way and feeling like I have to somehow accomodate that and be okay with that. I don't know if any of that makes sense...

I just want to feel better about it. Everytime he comes around I get tense and I feel like I have to watch him...

I just need to hear what others think about this and if I am not being reasonable?

What do you mean, the way it looks?



If I read you right, it really doesn't matter that he is gay. It sounds like you are jealous of the time and closeness he has to your H. Does your H reciprocate this time and closeness?

Also, is there something about his personality that you do not like? Sometimes people just rub us the wrong way. Often there is not a reason you could say, you just don't like being around them. Sad to say, but you will not always like your H's friends.
The only thing to be concerned about is whether someone is a friend to the M.


I keep going back to the gay thing though. You brought it up, and it seemed to come to a head when it was confirmed. Is there something else going on there?

I'm with Soolee. If the friendship does not interfere with your time with your H, why bother.

I should have prefaced everything by saying, that as a teenager, I had a brief lesbian experience with a bestfriend. It ended and I moved on and never had any sort of relationship like that but she didn't. Today, she's still a lesbian. My husband knows all about this.

That being said, I don't consider myself bisexual or gay in any capacity. But my understanding of this kind of situation is understandably colored my own experience. So to reiterate, I don't think that my husband is gay- at all. But my own experience leads me to believe that sexuality is a very volatile thing and best friends can cross the line; just like any other two close people.

My husband does not share that belief. And frankly is offended by it. But based on my own experience that's how I see it.

I am remiss for what the solution here is... How do I refocus so that this is not an issue - if in fact it isn't. And if it should be an issue how do we deal with it?

I would say, when your intuition says something is up, then something is up. All over this site you will find folks who spent many years trying to talking themselves into and being talked into thinking things were "nothing", when there were really issues there.

I encourage you to try the MB plan. Have you read through the Basic Concepts? What love busters (LBs) do you think you have room to work on? What are your H's top ENs? How could you meet those in ways you are enthusiastic about? How about planning UA time together? What do you all do for fun together?

If you get the book Love Busters, it will tell you that the spouse should sever ties if the friendship is a love buster to you. But that may not be necessary. As he describes, often when you just schedule the time doing things you enjoy together, you'll find that people grow away from folks who are not friends of the marriage.

When I got here, I had a "sky is falling" friend who sucked the life out of me at times with her never ending drama. I think the term for it is "toxic." H had told an MC years ago that I was a nut for being friends with her. As we built up the UA time, I find that I don't often have time to spend with this friend, and when I do talk to her on the phone, I set boundaries so I'm not drained or upset when we hang up.

In one of the books, either "LoveBusters" or "His Needs, Her Needs", the situation comes up where one spouse just doesn't like the other spouse's friend. If I recall correctly, the chapter discussed opposite-sex friendships as well as a friend who just annoyed the heck out of the spouse. In that particular case, there was no rational reason why the husband didn't like his wife's friend, she just bugged the heck out of him.

The solution in that case, IIRC, was for the wife to put the marriage and her husband's feelings ahead of her friendship. And in fact, once she made it clear she was willing to drop the friend to make her husband happy, I believe the husband found it was no longer such a big deal.

In my opinion, if the wife objects, for whatever reason, to any of the husband's friends... the husband has an obligation to take her seriously, to at least hear her out. Doesn't sound like he's done that here, sounds like he is dismissive of her concerns.

CC:

I suppose I would respectfully disagree with MB here, with a few caveats:

1) I could be wrong - haven't thought it all the way through.

2) I would agree that any friend who is no friend of the marriage should be dropped.

3) The friendship should NOT interfere with any POJA or the 15 hour principle

Having said that, a couple of things come to mind. One is that our spouses have lifelong friendships. Just on the law of averages, it seems that there will be some we don't like. While I see the need to draw boundaries, I think one has to pick battles carefully.

Here's another: replace "friend" with "family member". Does that change the dynamic? Suppose you really cannot stand your SIL, but she is nonetheless a friend of the marriage. Would it be reasonable to say "I cannot stand your sister, and since it bothers me, you should quit talking to her and seeing her." ?

My W has a friend of 25 years that is closer to her than a sister. If I were to tell her that she needed to drop the friend, I would need more than "there's just something about her I don't like."

Mr G,

I agree a husband should not tell his wife she needs to drop her friend, or vice-versa. That would be a selfish demand. You cannot make your spouse do anything. You can make a thoughtful request... and to be persuasive, I agree the thoughtful request should be more substantial than "I don't like him".

My thinking is, if it bothers the wife enough to bring it up, the husband has an obligation to hear her out with an open mind. No matter what it is, if it is a problem for one spouse, than it is a problem for the marriage, and requires a good-faith effort from both to resolve.

(I remember specifically that Harley wrote in that chapter about a husband who just found his wife's friend annoying. I just don't recall which book it was in...)

Also... if I read preciousstone correctly, she thinks the gay friend has a sexual or romantic interest in her husband. That, to me, isn't all that much different from the husband having a female friend who has a sexual or romantic interest in him. Preciousstone's intuition may be picking up on something here...

CC:

This is why I like reading your stuff. You always manage to pull it together so it makes sense!

Thanks!

I am so happy to have this feedback. This has been an ongoing struggle in my mind that I want to be honest and fair about. But I think I would agree with Mr. Goodwrench except that this is more than just a casual not liking someone. I genuinely don't trust his friend as a friend of our marriage.

It's not just that he's gay, it's that he seems very clingy with my husband. He wants to visit, spend a weekend at our home. If that weekend won't work, what about next weekend? He wants to schedule a special weekend thing for my husband's birthday. Can we save that weeekend or this day so he can have something "special" for him. I don't know, man, woman or otherwise, it's too much. I can't stand it.

He's the only non-family member that is so clingy. None of our other friends on both sides, have so much as spent the night - only a few have had the time or attention to visit. (We moved out of the state where most of our friends and family live.) I feel like his friend NEEDS to see him and NEEDS to schedule time with him. My husband doesn't see it quite so intensely. But I do. I know that friends love spending time with each other but he's the only one like that... that seems almost to lobby for time. And it's not like we don't have time. We do. I just don't want him to have it because he NEEDS it so much. If he were a female or a straight male friend, I would be still annoyed by it.

I've only read His needs, her needs but I feel we could benefit from the love busters course... Nevertheless, I think that Mr. Goodwrench has a great point that my husband should have the freedom to have whatever friends he likes, even if they are annoying... maybe I could be okay with that, if the friend didn't seem to be so clingy...

That was the chapter I was referring to in Love Busters. This is tied in to Rule Of Protection, not to be the cause of your spouse's harm. You wouldn't ask your wife to cut ties with her sister unless

1) She was horrible to you, your W, their parents, or the kids

or

2) You were deliberately trying to harm your wife, in which case Rule of Protection would kick in, and you wouldn't ask.

But I could see how a friend would be THAT annoying. We all know a few

PS:

Yeah, that's a little different. Have you talked to your H about maybe REDUCING the visits and contact? Sounds like he invites himself over too often and is not respecting the privacy and time of your M.

Does your H encourage him to "feel at home"?

No my doesn't tell him to feel at home. But I'm at fault too because whenever he's come over, I've been extreemly welcoming out of respect for my husband and also cuz, I can't be mean to him in person. Instead I behave the opposite way - and overcompensate by being overly sweet. I've also done this out of a need to change my feelings about him. So he has no way of knowing how much I detest his presence. In fact, what bothers me the most is that my husband seems to have trouble saying no or feeling guilty for saying that he can't spend time at our home.

Is this gay man in a relationship? Have you ever met any of his gay partners?

No. I've never met any of his partners. I don't know that he is open to being open about that - at least to me. He only came out to my husband in November and that was after years of hinting and prodding at my husband that I suspected he was in the closet. And it was only after my husband asked him point blank. I have however, met some of his friends - most of whom, I suspect are gay too... Do you think we should get involved in his friends personal life - seems messy...