PS,

Sounds like the gay guy has no other friends or companions except your H.

And he lives in the same town as you, but wants to spend the weekend? Too much!

You have been married a year, correct? There seems to be a weaning time for single friends of now married people. Things, of course, are not how they used to be between friends, male or female, gay or straight. These relationships must change AND YOUR H SHOULD BE REALIZING THIS.

So your H grew up with the guy, were best friends since childhood, went on camp outs together, had gym class and showers and swimming and sleepovers together AND HE NEVER KNEW THE GUY WAS GAY???

I bet your H has a story similar to yours buried down deep in his past.

The final test, though, is if the gay guy's presence makes you uncomfortable and unhappy, your H, as your loving husband of one year, must accommodate you and your feelings above all others.

IMHO

kirk

PS,

My reading of this, has less to do with sexuality, than it has to do with priorities. You said
He is taking away or trying to take away significant recreational time from your marriage. I can understand why you are worried. But, I see two things in this quote you need to be cognizant of.

1. You are NOT being honest with your H. You cannot stand it, and yet you are not telling him this or why.

2. Second, beside violating the policy of radical honesty, you are not using the policy of joint agreement, POJA. In this policy what you should be doing is negotiating with your H about the presence of this friend in your marriage. He is your H's best friend, good. Your H should spend some time with him, BUT how much, when? This where you negotiate. Your H needs to understand your concerns, and where they are coming from. One of them seems to be your perception of your H's priorities: friend first, marriage second. Where did you get this perception? Your H's actions and responses, right?

Read about the policies of joint agreement, and radical honesty. Also read Harley's four rules for a good marriage. These will give you a different perspective and the tools for you to discuss this with your H in a way that your H isn't being asked: Me or him. He can have both but in proper proportions.

It may be true that your H's friend has designs on your H, but neither you or your H seem to have any evidence of this. I see this as a maturing process. Men and yes women, have to mature enough to realize they would rather spend time with their spouse than their friends.

I will say, this was my first clue that the woman I was dating was in fact the woman I should consider marrying. That was well over 30 years ago. It is still true today.

You want to be that woman in your H's life. To do this you need to handle this situation skillfully. The tools are here.

God Bless,

JL

I don't see anything wrong with having some boundaries in place, but you do have to remember that the same would apply to you as well.

If I were you, I'd tell him about MB and that you two should be shooting for 15 hours of quality time a week, and if friendships, hobbies, work, etc. get in the way of that, those outside interests need to be reassessed as it indicates not enough time necessary to maintain a strong marriage.

I would talk to your husband and explain to him that looking at the friend's behavior with a woman's intuition, it is concerning and mimics a woman on the make, trying to monopolize his time, assuming partner-like responsibilities, such as hosting a party in your husband's honor, and pushing his way into your private lives. Inform him that you aren't comfortable with it and hope that he'll respect your concerns.

Suggest to your husband that he investigate his friend's intentions and to consider some marriage-minded boundaries with regard to the friendship.

I really think it would be a mistake to insist on ending the friendship. It would be so much better for your relationship with your husband if it would find better balance naturally, by him spending the amount of time with you that he should be doing and just keeping your concerns in mind.

Sometimes just saying that your concerned about something, and that you aren't comfortable with it is enough to make that person stay more on their guard and more likely to pick up on the exact same things that are bothering you.

Thank you all so much for your thoughts. Extreemly helpful!!
I've been pondering aobut this today, with all the comments you guys have given and I think refocussing with the 15hr/wk will help. Sort of focus on us building OUR time... we haven't been doing that.

In response Soolee..I have talked with my husband, hinting that his friend may have ulterior motives. He generally dismisses it or makes me feel like I am too judgmental or overly suspicious. I worry that he is right but still can't get the feeling out of my stomach. Sometimes he expresses disgust by the fact that I would think of him of being in a compromising situation with his friend. So I am not sure what kind of suggesting I need to be doing to get him to investigate. It took 2yrs for him to confront his friend about being in the closet. I think the struggle of getting my husband to investigate that makes me weary of asking him to investigate it further.

Well, then, I think if you can hone in on spending 15 hours a week together maybe that is the right approach for now.

I think since his friend came out recently, that (how do I explain this thought) that the difficult part is over for him and that if he does have romantic feelings for your husband, his natural instincts may kick in at some point and end up scaring your husband off.

It could be that your husband is just too close to the situation to see it clearly, in which case it will take something jarring to make him understand, and since he's closed off to your concerns, any change in the dynamics of their relationship is probably going to be determined by how the friend acts with your husband.

Since he 'came out' to your husband and your husband has stayed friends with him, he may be less inhibited about keeping his true feelings at bay and eventually will get hurt when your husband reacts like a heterosexual, married man.

All I can say is to do your MB homework and be there to comfort your husband if he loses this friend at some point. I think your husband is going to need a good listener then, as I know you would not tell him "I told you so."

I don't know. At least half of my friends are gay--men and women. My life is richer because of them. Messy never came into it--though there were times when we were younger and things were more uncertain, socially that is. That all went away when everyone matured and accepted things. Gay people tend to have gay friends and so you tend to become acquainted with their network of friends too. My experience with gay men is they tend to make the best "girlfriends." You ought to see the baby shower one planned for me years ago--I felt like Lady Diana about to give birth the the Crown Prince of England!

I just keep wondering what would happen if you talked with your husband's friend. Since your brother is gay, and you accept him, you should have some street cred with the friend that this is not about homosexuality. It's more about... boundaries and your concern for your marriage. You may share your concern that the friend's feeling are deeper than friendship. I don't know if this would be beneficial or not.

That is something that my husband and I have talked about... even today. He feels like he's done so much to curb their relationship... and in fact he has. He avoids his calls and limits the time they interact. And he's more attentive to how I feel than in the beginning. But he feels like it'll never be enough... you know, like I'll never be satisfied with his friendship...
I've told him (especially after sharing i this forum) that I realized that I just don't trust is friend - apart from whatever other annoying quirks in his personality; that I don't trust that he is a friend of the marriage; and that I feel like his feelings for my husband and more than friendship...
So I've asked that we talk about it more often and more freely and develop a certain amount of trust with each other that we can freely discuss it (cuz it's always a difficult conversation) and that eventually I can have a candid conversation with this friend..
I really want to trust him for my husband's sake and I don't want to feel like he is after my husband... I just want it to be okay.

I see how difficult this is for my husband and I want to do everything I can to make it better.. but it's hard because my husband doesn't see it the way I do; and it really depends on how open and trustworthy his friend will turn out to be - once I have a chance to have a deeper conversations with him.

I need prayer!

Another angle to look at your situation is this:

If the friend were heterosexual, would his interactions with your husband be over the top and still encroaching on your privacy?

I think just your mentioning your concerns to your husband and pushing gently for the 15 hours is going to keep your husband more aware of the normal guidelines in a marriage.

I don't think, even though you feel he is dismissing you to some extent, that he can possibly ignore your concerns. Human nature being what it is, he's going to refer back to what you've said whether he wants to or not, when they are together. He'll be inadvertently watchful of anything that would prove you right and him wrong.

A conversation starter with his friend is to politely inquire about him having someone special in his life and maybe the 4 of you could go to dinner some time - little reminders here and there that your husband is off limits and taken, so to speak. Maybe that's over the top, especially if you're not supposed to know.

I think one thing you need to realize, though, is that it would not bode well for you to be over-the-top instrumental in the severing of this friendship. Harping on it, imo, is not going to work. Continually bringing it up, is going to make him withdraw from those kinds of conversations. (He's heard it before, and it's going to sound like a broken record.) Your husband may resent you for it in the end, even if you were right, and that isn't going to help the marriage.

I think this is one of those things that you will need reasonable boundaries for (15 hours with you, no phone calls at dinner or after a certain hour, etc.) However, sometimes nature has to take its course, and it seems with the 'coming out' that this friendship will be evolving all on its own in some ways. Perhaps it won't end, but I believe that new boundaries of their own will be established, and the dynamics of the relationship will change to some extent where you will eventually become comfortable and okay with how things are.

It's unfortunate that your husband isn't being more considerate of your need for security in this regard, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have the situation under control and isn't thinking about what you said.

We women tend to need that reassurance from our men - that they heard us and are working on something to fix the thing that concerns us. However, sometimes I've found all we have to do is just lay some boundaries and then give them some elbow room to handle a situation in their own way, to trust.

You can always put a time limit on what you're hoping to see happen, and then regroup, but I believe trying to micromanage our spouses' social lives can appear a bit condascending, suffocating, and well...dictator-like if we aren't careful. As long as you're both following the MB principles (15 hours, avoiding LBs, fulfilling ENs at least) I think you're okay. That's just my .02.

The principles are designed to help build a strong marriage. I think if you both do the work and incorporate it into your relationship, these outside occurrences and concerns will seem more and more benign and unconcerning to you both - to a point there really won't be much at all, if anything, that the two of you can't handle together or find an equitable solution for.

My thoughts are:

Your H is uncomfortable thinking about having to tell his best friend for life that his wife now wants that friend to back off. And IMO, rightly so. Husband and wife do need to be the most important thing for each other, but they both also need to have an outside life. Running off your H's best friend will do nothing but ruin your marriage. Would you give up your lifelong best friend because she spent too much time at your house and your H found her annoying, even threatening? Honestly? Would you tell her you can no longer see her every week, that you have to schedule times to be with her that won't interfere with your marriage?

Of course his friend should respect your time together. But it's entirely possible he has no clue that he is encroaching...because no one has told him! This reminds me of the man who complains to the neighborhood community association about his next door neighbor driving his trash can over the man's grass - instead of just telling his next door neighbor he'd rather he didn't. Why can you not just tell his best friend that he's always welcome, but you're starting to feel like you're competing for your H's time? The only person in this situation with a problem is you, therefore, it should be you talking to the friend. You are expecting your H to do the dirty work, to be the neighborhood community association, and take on your feelings about the situation. But they are not his feelings, they are yours.

I would suggest that you also look a little more closely into your own feelings about this, about why you have this fear that the friend has designs on your husband. Do you not have faith in your H? That's what you're saying. Either that, or you don't have faith in yourself in being loveable enough. If you were comfortable in your relationship with your H, this would be a matter to laugh off, not stress over.

Also, there's a book by Wayne Levine about what people should have in their lives, in their relationships, to have a healthy one. One of those things is friends and activities outside the married couple. He posits that those outside activities are essential for a complete person, for a non-resentful person. If you try to take that aspect out of your H's life, he will grow to resent you. What's the benefit in that?

I have friends where the wife is so hyper-jealous and untrusting that one time when he (understandably) quit answering her every-15-minute phone calls, she took the $100,000 car he bought her and drove it into a telephone pole and left it there, just to tick him off for not answering her. Don't turn into that person.

The only answer I see is for you to talk honestly to the friend about the proper amount of time for each of you to have with your H and for the need for him to respect the mechanics of a marriage. And then back off yourself. Push for a healthy marriage and quit concerning yourself over something that may not even be there, but that might be driving a wedge between you and your H.