My husband and i have been married for two years. I have been and still am an open book (very honest) to my husband since we started dating up todate. My husband will not let me have friends. Definitely i am not looking for straight single male friends but female or gay men for friends. All he says is that i don't need friends since am a married woman and he should be my only and number one friend. I feel that my husband is controlling. I would really like to hear from both men and women on this question. He then threatens to divorce me if i ever go out and meet anybody or make friends. What should i do?

Go out and get yourself a copy of "Rose Madder." Read it. Then decide.

Charlotte

Shule, I would check out the policy of joint agreement, which is based on the premise that you should never be the CAUSE of your spouse's unhappiness. The Policy of Joint Agreement means: Never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse. In conflicts, you would search for a solution that makes you BOTH happy.

My suggestion would be to get the book, His Needs, Her Needs and focus specifically on the POJA. There is always a solution that can make you BOTH happy if you look hard enough.

Basic Concepts

Here is another article that should be very helpful, because it addresses doing things that makes your spouse unhappy, ie: Independent Behavior:


Independent Behavior
Once you are married, almost everything you decide to do has either a positive or a negative impact on each other -- you are either depositing or withdrawing love units with every decision you make. So if your decisions are not made with each other's interests in mind, you will risk destroying the love you have for each other.

I define Independent Behavior as the conduct of one spouse that ignores the feelings and interest of the other spouse. It's usually scheduled and requires some thought to execute, so the simplest way to overcome this Love Buster is to take it off your schedule. If your Thursday night bowling, or visit to a friend of the opposite sex, or spending five hours chatting on the internet while your spouse sits alone watching TV, schedule something else Thursday night, visit someone else, and spend time doing something with your spouse. And whatever it is you decide to do that replaces independent behavior, be sure that both you and your spouse enthusiastically agree to it.

My ninth Basic Concept, the Policy of Joint Agreement, (never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse), helps eliminate independent behavior -- any event or activity that is not mutually agreed to cannot take place. It forces you to take your spouse's interests and feelings into account when you forget that your spouse is an extremely important part of yourself, and should be considered in every decision you make.

Independent behavior is a problem in most marriages because we are all tempted to do whatever makes us happy, even when it makes our spouse unhappy (the Taker's rule). We don't feel the pain our spouse feels when we are inconsiderate -- all we feel is the pleasure gained from activities that are only in our best interest. That's why the Policy of Joint Agreement is so important in marriage. It forces us to behave as if we feel each other's pain -- it makes us behave as if we were empathetic.

A wise alternative to Independent Behavior is Interdependent Behavior, which limits your your events or activities to those that benefit both of you simultaneously. You are both happy and neither of your suffers when you behavior interdependently, making decisions with each other's interests and feelings in mind. When you get to my tenth Basic Concept, Four Guidelines for Successful Negotiation, I'll show you how to replace Independent Behavior with Interdependent Behavior. here

Four Guidelines for Successful Negotiation

Do you have any kind of history of making the wrong kind of friends?

I always had a problem with friends WW would make because she would pick the worste of the worste. Sluts, druggies, etc... Almost like she wanted to pick the bottom of the barrel so she could feel better about herself.

I would try to protect my WW from friends because she has never made a friend that didnt take advantage of her or screw her over.

Controlling or over protective? Maybe he is really jelous.

Shule,

if your husband refuses to let you have ANY friends then that is a real problem. If he won't let you out of the house to have any other contacts other than he, that sounds like kidnapping or abuse. But to be honest, your post sounds like you are a wayward in waiting, if not in fact.

You said:

Definitely i am not looking for straight single male friends but female or gay men for friends.

Sounds defensive. Why are you looking for specific types of friends outside of your marriage?

If you are in abusive relationship you need to get out. It sounds to me like you want the freedom to do what you want though regardless of your husbands feelings. I could very well be wrong though.

You do know that this is a web board primarily focused on infidelity?

I do see that you say " I have been and still am an open book (very honest) to my husband since we started dating up todate."

Mel...somehow, I don't think POJA will work if Shule's husband is trying to isolate her from having any friends besides him....

I disagree. Nothing is ever black and white. She needs to negotiate an agreement that makes them BOTH HAPPY. It should be WIN-WIN, not WIN-LOSE.

It's interesting how someone can miss the point that mutual care is the only thing that makes sense in marriage.

When she tells her husband that she wants him to care for her by suffering so she can have what she wants, that means she doesn't care about him. That misses the whole point of mutual care, the only thing that makes sense in marriage.

Or if he is insanely jealous and is actually mentally ill, then the answer is not to CRAM her wishes down his throat but to get him psychiatric care. If that is the case, then it would cruel to TORMENT a mentally ill person that way.

p.s. I would point out that you don't need his permission.

Something isn't adding up here. What's the rest of the story? Why does your husband feel this way? Do either of you keep secrets in the marriage? Do either of you go out to dinner, bars or dancing without telling the other? Have either of you had a lot of opposite sex friends during your marriage to date without the support of the other spouse? Do either of you keep separate sets of friends that are not friends to you as a married couple, and hang out with them? Do you share recreational interests?

Bingo!

I have never had friends who have had any negative influence. So on that i can say that i have always surrounded myself with positive people. I never mentioned in my post that am a foreigner. All my friends are back home. Since my husband and i have been married i have only been out once without him and it was a dinner party that i was invited at by a girl i work and my husband was ok with it. He dropped me there and he knows this girl that invited me. And i always do tell my husband everything i am doing so its not a matter of me springing up ideas. He has said that the will not allow me have striaght, gay, or female friends as long as i am married to him because we should always be together, and that there are rules that i need to follow. Half of the time we are together in the house he will be napping for 2 or 3 hours. When i tell him he is controlling he says that i am crossing the line by saying that. For instance there is this gay guy i meet and i told him about him and he was like its ok you can go and meet him. The next day it was him going off on me saying that maybe this guy wants money from me and he may not be geniune. ( he always says everybody wants money) I have a couple friend who i tired to make our hang out friends since the girl is from the same country i am from but he still doesn't want that. He says that all straight american men can't be friends to a woman without wanting to sleep with me. I have never cheated in any relationship that i have ever been in and neither am i looking to cheat on my marriage. I hope this gives your move information. Thanks for your post.

Shule, I was just going through my books to look up this issue and found a really good one for you. Get the book Lovebusters and read Chapter 9, Resolving Conflicts over Friends and Relatives. Here are some excerpts:

pg 176, Lovebusters

Don't have any relationships without the enthusiasic agreement of your spouse. Otherwise the relationships become Love Busters.

Your spouse is your most important friend and relative. No others should ever be allowed to come between you. Follow the Policy of Joint Agreement to make sure they don't.

You would probably benefit also from Chapter 8, which covers Independent Behavior.

Good luck!

Thanks for your post. My husband told me that all straight american men will not be friends with a female without wanting to sleep with them and he has made it clear that he will not let me have straight male friends, so thats why i am looking for gay or females friends but also that he has refused. And i have told him that i want him to be involved with in everything i would like to do. I have even suggested to him to look for a couple friend that we can hang out with...but he says we don't need friends. All my life i have always had friends. All the friends i have are back in my home country.

Thank you for your post. Since we have been married i have been out by myself once. I went for dinner at a workmates house, which my husband was ok with and he even dropped me there. He knows the girl that invited me. The reason he has given me for not letting me have friends is that am married and i shouldn't be looking for friends outside our marriage. None of us goes to dinner or bars or clubs alone or with other people. We do go together. We are not bar or club goes but when we do is once in a blue mine. Dinner we do go out a lot and we do so together. All friends i had before marriage are all in my home country. Ofcourse for him he has friends that he works with but none that i can say he is close because everything they do together is when he is at work. Yes we do so recreational interests. Bottom line i feel that my husband is controlling and when i tell him thet he blows up and starts yelling at the top of his voice and calling me names. And i also thinks he keeps secrets from me.

Thank you for your post. In everything i do i talk to my husband and i ask for his opinion. I have never asked him to compromise his happiness for me. I have even asked him to look for a couple from his work place that can be our friends, but he wouldn't even want to do that. I have done nothing that he is not happy about. If i want to make friends and hang out with i would have done that. But i haven;t because he doesn't want it. But i still don;t understand to why he will not let me do it. I know there are people who are married and they do have friends together as a couple of individual friends. I have no SINGLE FRIEND. All my friends before marriage are all back in my home country.

Shule, just keep negotiating until you find a happy solution for you BOTH. I hope you read the books I recommended because if you follow the advice in them, I think that your marriage will be so fulfilling that you won't feel such an odd urgency to look outside of your marriage to get your needs met. All of your emotional needs should be met in your marriage, not outside of it.

I suspect your H does not feel he is #1 in your marriage, and I get that from your posts too. That might be the CRUX of the problem. Perhaps if he felt that he were #1 and had a SAY in choosing friends YOU BOTH LIKE, he might relax.

I think if you come to him with a plan that takes his FEELINGS fully into account and recognizes that HE is the most important thing in your life, he might become more open to the idea of having couples friends. He wouldn't feel so threatened.

I don't understand why you keep acting as if you need his permission, Shule? You don't need his permission. He is not poppa daddy.

And maybe he doesn't understand your desire to have friends outside of marriage. But that is beside the point. The point is to find a solution that satisifies you both, not to attempt to push your desires onto him no matter what. I don't see him being controlling at all. I see you trying to control him by bending him to your wishes.

Flip the gender in this topic and you have my situation.

Do either of you keep secrets in the marriage?
-after bring up that subject when it was mentioned on a TV show, she told me that she will always have secrets that will not be shared with me, that everyone has secrets, and all of her friends have secrets from their husbands or boyfriends too.

Do either of you go out to dinner, bars or dancing without telling the other?
-regularly, she eats out when she travels for work and I'm expected to account for every dime I spend on food.
-she regularly meets with friends, co-workers and work acquaintances for lunches, dinners, and after work parties, especially during her weekly business travel.
-I rarely know where she is staying when she travels or what she does when she is gone. She says that she would rather not bore me with work related things. I usually find out when a friend slips up and says something and she interrupts the conversation to change the subject, then usually the other person gets the hint and drops the topic.

Have either of you had a lot of opposite sex friends during your marriage to date without the support of the other spouse?
-she has several "brother-like" male friends that she met somehow through work (I assume) that she meets for lunches, dinners, and even shopping. She told me that she can talk to them on a deeper level and help them with their problems. Several are have challenges with their marriages or relationships. She says that all people have problems in relationships and that they just need someone outside of the relationship to talk with. She often flirts with these people over the phone and in public, but says that it's only friend stuff.
-she has another male friend, originally single when they met through work, but now married male "friend" that she met years ago through work and he constantly calls her, sends her gifts on most holiday and her birthday, and he usually meets her for dinner (without me of course). I have never met this man or been introduced, even when he has come to town (he lives in another state) and they usually go out for a brainstorming work-related dinner. I was denied attendance to this dinner because it was work-related and would involve conversation privileged to the company. This is a common excuse. Another excuse is that these are HER friends.

Do either of you keep separate sets of friends that are not friends to you as a married couple, and hang out with them?
-We don't have any shared friends.
-She told me in the past to go find my own friends and that she was going to have her own friends and interests. But she always finds a way to find faults with my friends. She recommended that I find friends that can provide a benefit to enhance my life, people with money, people with benefits. She has put down every friend that I've had in the past. She says that I don't know how to pick friends and tries to hook me up with some of her not-so-close girlfriend's husbands. People without similar interests too.
-Her friends from work or work related activities are mainly people that I haven't met and only hear about on occasion when she is on the telephone or she has to go to meet them. She rarely discusses her work activities anymore and says that she wants to keep her work and personal life separate.

Do you share recreational interests?
-Not really, she told me that she doesn't like any of the activities that I enjoy, but to go ahead and do them myself.
-We only go shopping together occasionally, sometimes on the weekend and other times I accompany her to a store when she is home in order to get some time with her, but I am often told to go find something else to look at when we get there.
-She likes to shop, dine, and go dancing and clubbing with her friends and co-workers (without me) and travel to visit her friends that live in other states. I'm not included, nor have I ever been invited.

Shule,

What nationality are you and your husband if I may ask? Is this possibly a cultural issue?