Happy New Year Everyone!

I am new on this forum and am also newly married (2nd time after decades from 1st one).

My husband and I are both have friends of the opposite sex before we got married. After we started dating, my friends kept a respectful distance to give us space to build our relationship while my husband's female friends didn't which I did not have any problem with at the time because I knew that they were friends for many years before we met.

Now that we are married, my husband's female friends still expect to have the freedom to meet with my husband as they had before we were married and not acknowledged my place in his life. One of his female friend, is continuelly co-responding with my husband via emails and asking him to meet with her for coffee.

I do honor friendships that we each have before we were married and want to keep them going. Yet at the same time, I would like to have a healthy boundary around these friendships especially when it comes to time spending with friends and each other. I would have no problem with either one of us meeting with our friends and preferably doing so a in group setting and not one on one. I discussed this with my husband, and he disagree and said that putting boundary on friendships like such would inhibit everyone freedom to be friend with each other.

One of his female friends continuelly asking to meet with my husband without my knowledge, and sometime when I was within earshot when she did it. She showed no consideration to me as her friend's spouse when asking to meet with him and excluded me. My husband would tell me before he go and meet with this person.

After she did it a few times, I had a talk with her, so I think she is aware of the boundary that I was asking. However, my husband still has not put out aboundary with either her or any of his friends. He does let me know when they plan on meeting for coffee. He said she is only friend, and he has no interest in these females, so in his mind there was no boundary necessary. He does give this particular female friend free range of his time which really bothers me.

My husband is very friendly, thoughtful and playful when relating to people. I don't think he realize that his playfulness can be interpreted by his single female friends as flirtiness.

I would like to get some perspective on this forum from both males and females point of view about this and would appreciate feedback from everyone.

Hi. I'm female. My point of view on this is that Dr. Harley suggests 15 hours of one-one-one time with your spouse weekly. That amounts to about 2+ hours a day, so if meeting these friends intrudes on the time that should be used to connect with each other, it's going to jeopardize the stability of the marriage - just as anything else would - hobbies, work, etc.

This is not so much about inhibiting freedom as putting the marriage first and recognizing that you are married people now and have a commitment to invest time into the marriage.

It is also about protecting the marriage from potential situations that would jeopardize the stability/strength of the marriage, such as keeping company (at least alone) with the opposite sex.

It may not be a problem for you to spend time with your male friends, just as it may not be a problem to your husband to spend time with his female friends. However, the thing to remember is that if what we do is an issue for our spouses - then it's an issue to the marriage and needs to be addressed.

So, while I do not think it's a great idea to spend time with opposite sex friends, I don't see a problem with thinking about this and figuring out what you WOULD be comfortable with. For instance, maybe it would be more acceptable to you if he had a male friend along.

If you were merely dating, this would not be an issue, but you are married now, and your commitments are primarily to each other. You can still have hobbies and friends as long as you're spending those 15 hours together each week.

Also, a person who is not a friend/supportive to the marriage (i.e. the woman who did not respect your presence or the fact that your husband is married) may be one of the people that you should talk to him about. It is this kind of behavior that would be concerning to me.

Just my opinion.

Thank you for the feedback. I really appreciated. I talked with my husband about it and also spoke to his female friend, so we'll see how it will go from here.

I also expressed to my husband the uneasiness that I feel just as I had written here.

It's nice to know I can reach out on this forum and voice my own thought. So thank you! I hope to hear more from both males and females on this forum.

Hi GiftofLove and happy new year to you too!

Can I ask what are your feelings about your husband's friends? Are they a very close knit group that has been together for a long time? It seemed to me that you might feel a little excluded as you said you didn't think they were acknowledging your place in his life after the marriage.

My husband has a group of friends from college that are super tight. It's a mix of girls and guys. They can be really intimidating to a newcomer. I honestly don't think they realize it because they are so comfortable with each other and have known each other for so long. They don't mean to be exclusionary, but their communication style is very lockeroom-ish. They like to give each other a hard time, embarass each other, be totally un-PC, etc. It's fun if you're in the group and used to them, but it can be tough on someone who's new, especially if they don't get this group's humor. It takes awhile for it to grow on you, speaking from experience.

in the only 2 serious relationships i have had, one of them being my marriage, i did NOT enforce my boundaries on female friendships and each time it bit me in the [censored].

good for you for starting to enforce boundaries and for telling him how you feel.

i know i WILL enforce this boundary in the future.

mlhb

Hi Gift--how are things going with your H? Better, I hope! I am replying to your post because I have a similar situation. My H is and has been friends with this particular woman since they were in college together. Since we started dating, I have never really been included in the friendship. Last year I discovered that they were communicating a lot, texting, etc. and even meeting at the mall after work or for coffee. So there were nights when I thought he was at work when he was actually with her. This made me see red. My intuition prompted me to look at his cell phone, which is where I found texts back and forth between the two of them. Stuff like "Is it ok to call?" and "Meet me at the mall after work." And this woman has never been a friend to the marriage, and indeed has been hostile to me in public (for example, by ignoring me even though we were seated at the same table at a function, etc.). I too have been trying to establish boundaries in the friendship. I suggested perhaps no visits without my prior knowledge, or perhaps some time that is set aside when we can all visit together, us and her and her H (she is married too). But my husband refused to agree to this, as he was "doing nothing wrong" and his relationship with her was "a nonnegotiable."
Perhaps you could ask your H if he would be willing to modify his arrangements with her in order to increase your comfort level (which after all should be his top priority). If not, you have reason to be suspicious and should do everything you can to find out what is really going on between them. Not telling him that you are doing this is key, because once they find out you are "on" to them, WSs typically take it further underground.
Good luck to you, and keep everyone here posted with your progress!

From the perspective of a male in a similar situation as your husband: You can, and arguably should, enforce such boundaries. However, you have to be prepared to address whatever it is that's keeping him from wanting to comply. If he's meeting with this friend on a regular basis, I can guarantee you he's getting something from her that he's not getting from you. It could be anything. And he may be processing it as nothing more than friendship. But it's something he's 1) not getting at home, and 2) can't get when you come with him to meet her. So, there's a deficiency there somewhere. You have to be ready to hear what that might be and adjust to meet his needs accordingly.