I was wondering if this statement was heard quite a bit or not. Its all I heard from my WW. If I said anything that showed my unhappyiness towards having these friends..then she would say.."you just dont want me to have any guy friends". Hmmm I wonder why I would want that. I am a guy....I know how the game is played. What type of guy invites a married woman to a college football game & tailgate party without seeing if her H wants to go. She went on a few occasions with out me with someone she worked with on occasion. I wouldnt know about it until 2-3 days before the game. Her story..."well I knew you didnt like going so I decided to go anyway". Thanks dear W for doing that. Even going with other women bothered me.....only if I perceived these female friends as bad influences. The kind that are recently divorced & looking for fun anywhere.
Just my two cents....something to look out for.

Hey Jeffrey,

Yup I've heard it, my WW told me that the house she was staying at (I caught her there) was just two guy friends. I think you've read my story so you know how that turned out!!

Native.

Jeffrey,

This is very bad news and I think you know it.
How do you think she would be feeling if the roles were reversed and you kept saying you were going with your female buddies? She is clearly disrespecting you. I don't know why you would put up with this? Are you waiting for something to happen? No consequences to her actions equals no motivation to change.

I think it is in the WS handbook. Mine says he's "just a platonic friend". If that were the case he wouldn't bedisrupting our family like he is. I would not be filing for D and we would be able to work through our issues.

Bryanp,

You are like lemonman Jr. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />

jeffery.. That is still my WW's line. He is just a friend and you don't understand. Why am I not able to have friends?

I told her you can have as many as you like, I love that you do have friends, you just need boundries as do I.

Men and woman don't mix well in socail settings. I have noticed it can lead to an A.

Well I havent posted my story here in a long time. The story I am referring to was a year & a half before she wanted separation....which was Feb of this year. Since May, I filed & now we are no longer M. I couldnt stand it at the time. It was just one guy then....someone she worked with in the legal system...same age as her. It might have been different if the guy was 20 years older & married..and she was going with his family. But this guy was her age (25) & single. I wonder if he even thought about what it looked like from afar. Who knows what she told him. Deep down I think it was a self esteem issue for her. Later she was around a lot of guys in her night class that she was taking. One time she went to a party without me, but with another guy...a classmate in her class....the guy came by our house, picked her up & then went to the party. She told me it was "a party just for people in the class". This was while we were in MC!!!! What goes thru someones mind to justify this. She lacked common sense I guess.

The book is called Not "Just Friends" for a reason...

Well jeffrey

all I can say is my OM was 'just a friend' too.
I can't talk about anyone else but it seems a familar theme.

I'd be very leary of this whole thing if I was you. Has there been anything else to set the alarms off??

Maybe your possibly WW should come here and talk to some of us FWW to see what price you pay...kids, husband, friends, parents, sisters, brothers just to name a few.

Wish I had!.

Well actually we are thru. I filed back in May & its over. She wanted the separation back in Feb. SO I stuck it out for 2 months. I couldnt bear it any longer. After I found out she was visiting one of these "friends" at his parents house...several times...like every other week....I just broke down.
Well the warning signs were all over the place. We were in MC at one time...not for an A at all...just b/c she was generally unhappy. I still have no clue what I was supposed to get out of the MC. Well we did the MC for 8 months, which I believe was too long. I think the C was just riding us for the insurance money. Anyway it was during the MC that she would go out to bars with her newly found classmates after her night class with them. This happened a few times a week. I was rarely invited. I never got a phone call telling me where she was going or asking if I wanted to go too. Later on, I noticed she started changing her appearance. She would change into thongs before going to off to her night class. I asked her about it. Her reply, "to hide panty lines". I'm wondering why are you worried about that in a night class. Well I confronted her about it...she would get mad. "You're trying to control me". Whatever. Later on, I found some notes she wrote in her car one day. These were little scraps of paper with her hand writing talking about her thongs & "that they have your name written all over them". I also found other little notes with a guys handwriting on it. "Lets find another room". Mind you, we were going to MC at the time. I confronted the MC with what I had found. He talks to her in our joint session & she proceeds to tell me "thats the way we joke around in class". OK...flirting instead of learning I suppose. I was told by the MC that she didnt mean to jepordize my trust in her. It seemed at the time that the MC sided with her. Later on, while I was out of town gone to a seminar she went with a female friend (one I mistrusted due to possible bad influence) to a seedy country bar 50 miles away from where we lived. I found the receipt in her purse timed at 1 am.....I confronted her with it. She explained that she didnt want to tell me b/c I would have gotten mad at her. Hmmmmm I wonder why. So, how could I trust her anymore. After 8 months of MC, I got a new job in a town 80 miles from where we lived. I got an appt so I could be close to my new job. The MC ended on a good note, with the thought that she would come live with me once her night class ended. There was a 2 month separation we had to endure. I would come home on the weekends or she would come see me. We talked on the phone every night & emailed each other at least once a day. To keep things in perspective, we lived 80 miles apart..me in my appt & her in our rented house where I used to live. When her class ended, she needed to take an exam that was held in the town where I just moved to. Well instead of staying with me, she decided to get a hotel room & stay with a female classmate there. Come to find out, the rest of the class was staying at the same hotel too. They all went out to eat that night...she didnt invite me. Her B-day was the day of her exam. She was at a hotel instead of being with me. I cried on the way home from visiting her. Sorry for the long story. It goes deeper as time went on.

originally posted by Aussie's wife:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> all I can say is my OM was 'just a friend' too.
I can't talk about anyone else but it seems a familar theme.

</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Mine too <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="images/icons/frown.gif" />

I'm so sorry jeffrey to hear that.

It sounds like a all too common thing. Young M gets in with a bunch of singles and wants to live that lifestyle........ forgets the cost of it all.

By the time regret comes around its too late.

Should you feel a need to talk about it then please do so. It is a pretty horrible situation for amyone.

Jeff - how old are you? Any kids with your former wife?

WAT

'Just friends'?....

Heard it, used it... it's bad news, dude.

dewt

I'm an FWW, and my FOM started as "just a friend" too. I now wish the friendship could have stayed platonic, because now that the A is over and I've had NC for two months, I still feel like I have lost a friend.

However, I do not subscribe to the generalization that a man and a woman can't be "just friends." They can, if they observe boundaries and don't cross the line. I have a lot of friends who happen to be male, and my H has friends who happen to be female.

IMHO, it's not always as Billy Crystal's character said in the movie "When Harry Met Sally" -- where a man and a woman can't be friends because one of them always wants to have $ex with the other.

If boundaries are observed, it is possible.

My very very humble opinion is that Jeffrey and his ex-W got M'ed too young. From what I could gather, they're only in their mid-20s and she wasn't even done school yet. I'm stricken by how many people who end up here got M'ed in their late teens and early 20s. Of course, I'm at the other end of the scale.

<small>[ December 28, 2004, 08:49 AM: Message edited by: GBH ]</small>

GBH,

I was pondering your theory on getting married young. Does age really have anything to do with an A? Besides the obvious examples, virginity and experimentation, knowing oneself sexually, living the young exciting single life (exaggerated IMO).

I'm under the impression that marturity, character, and life experiences have more to do with whether an M will fail or not.

My 2 cts, Native.

This posting of just friends ters my heart up. A year ago my husband wanted to ride to college (1 hr each way) with a younger (13 yrs) female colleague. I said why would you want to set yourself up for this? He said he couldn't just say no. Well, she was just pregnant with her husbands baby when they started to ride. Then he of course had to take care of her and dine with her afterwards. aLL THE WHILE i WAS UNCOMFORTABLE YET i TOLD HIM HE WAS A BIG BOY. tHEN AFTER THE CLASSES HE started studying with her in her classoom. He told me it was no big deal. Then in June I found some not real spicey but kind of uneccessary e-mail interchange. I wrote her a letter and sent her the book "the power of praying for your husband" and told her I loved mine and didn't understand the situation. She wrote me right back that they just had a goofey frienship and I was to be assured she was a chrisitan and commited to her husband and I had nothing to worry about.And that she was sorry for hurting me. Then in July my husband had a conference with 20 coworkers her as one. She had her own room, which most didn't. H said something lame about needing to pump for her new baby (6 weeks old at that point)so I bought it. But I think that was the beginning of their physical relationship my H can be very persuasive and charming and what an opportunity! Well, after a year it has become....
I am still not confirmed but I have moved out and he is seeing someone.. But he keeps throwing me off by telling me she is a committed to her husband christian. I still am dying to know if it is her and should I try to reach her H and if I do and am wrong what will I look like?

Native, you and your WW are another perfect example of having gotten M'ed at too young an age. You're both 27, married 8 years, so that made you 19 when you got married, correct? Now your wife is leaving you (and three very young children) at home while she goes out clubbing several times a week. I hope I'm not mixing you up with someone else.

Is it me, or is this not a classic case of immaturity? She sure as heck isn't mature enough to be a good W and mother now, so what makes you think she was mature enough to make this kind of "lifetime" commitment eight years ago?

I really feel bad for you and your three little ones. Clearly you are the more mature of the two, but she clearly lacks any resemblance to maturity.

I am thanking heavens that I didn't marry the guy I was dating at age 19. Would have been a huge mistake.

Just my 2 cents, and sorry for the 2x4.

<small>[ December 28, 2004, 10:38 AM: Message edited by: GBH ]</small>

Thanks GBH,

I think we both agree that this is a maturiy issue. Although I really fail to see the correlation to when we got married. Yes we were young, and probably crazy young teens. However if WW would have done this 5 years ago, before kids, before our other life choices, then I might be able to see your point better.

As you know marriage is a journey so you start at one point and hopefully grow together. So we started young, albeitprobably immature. However does anyone believe that in going through life you don't learn life lessons and mature? I just don't understand how you can't "grow and mature" that is what life is, the marriage journey is. So at the time of our M I didn't give much thought to whether she could have made the "lifetime commitment" we both probably couldn't have, but over time that is/should be expected of your S.

So maybe we are agreeing to disagree, but I don't think the age of a couple has much to do with and M or an A. I feel it's back to maturity, character, and life experiences.

Native

allthngspsbl

you have some real issues here, why not post this again separately and ask for some advice.

There are some really basic things you need to do with fighting an affair.

Okay, Native, look at it this way: How much maturity and life experiences does a 19-year-old possess? Very few, IMHO, and typically, not enough to prepare them for marriage.

In addition to all the lovey-dovey stuff, marriage involves getting a job, setting up a household, managing a budget, raising kids (if you decide to have them), and a whole lot of other practical things. It also means considering needs of people other than yourself. Very few 19-year-olds, who have lived at home all their lives, have any experience with any of those things. And in some cases, some 35-year-olds don't either, if they've been living under mommy and daddy's roof all their lives.

It's my experience that people who have spent their early adult years living on their own and learning how to manage a job, household, and budget have life experiences that better prepare them for marriage.

Yes, of course people grow together once married, even if they get married later in life. But 19-year-olds, IMHO, are barely more than kids themselves. It wouldn't hurt to get a few years and life experiences under their belts first.

There are always exceptions. But even my own family members have said if they could do it all over again, they'd have lived on their own for a while before settling down and getting married.

In your wife's case, she hadn't gotten the clubbing out of her system before you got hitched and now, three kids later, you're suffering for it. She was clearly too young and immature to get married in the first place.

I do hope she smartens up, realizes what she's doing, and snaps out of it. In the meantime, you've got to be the mature one and take care of your kids.