Great post, Mark!


I don't think a married person who has opposite sex friendships has good boundaries in the first place. That IS a sloppy boundary. It has nothing to do with self esteem or confidence, but in practicing sloppy boundaries. And a sloppy boundary would be engaging in opposite sex friendships. We see the result of same every day on Marriage Builders when some affair began as a "friendship."

Its the ones who think they WON'T have an affair who are usually the ones who DO. The reason being because they are so ignorant to the risks that they really have no boundaries. They are the ones who so believed it would never happen that they practice NO boundaries.

I have also worked in a male dominated field for the past 20 years and thought it was ok to have male friends until I realized that the natural evolution of any such friendship is to begin to talk about one's personal life. It is ridiculous to think one can sustain a friendship without doing that. And once one begins talking about their personal life is when a line has been crossed.

It happens so subtly that most don't even realize what is happening until it is too late. Sort of like the frog in boiling water.

I have great self confidence, get plenty of attention of home and all that, but when I sensed it happening to me, I KNEW Dr. Harley was right and BACKED OFF. I do not have male friends outside of my marriage, I do not go to lunch alone with men anymore [unless it is a group] and I don't discuss my personal life with men. I have ended my friendships with male friends from AA for this very reason.

My marriage is too important for me to play games with. There is no "friendship" that is worth the risk to me. We see the fallout from these "friendships" every day on Marriage Builders and that is not a risk I am willing to take.

And to Mark's point about taking time away from marriage, I agree very much. My girlfriends and I get together during the week for lunch, but my weekends and evenings with my H are sacred. Our time together is the glue that holds our marriage together and I don't allow anything to interfere with that. Remember what Dr Harley says about the importance of 15 hours together per week being necessary to create romantic love? I believe he is right as he is with most things.

"It's not the friendships themselves that have or don't have boundaries."

Yes it is. Depending how close one allows a friendship to be.

The closer one allows a friendship to be the lower the boundaries are.

One can not have an increase in closeness without lowering boundries.

First boundary to never be lowered is opposite sex friends.

To me, it's not a question of can or cannot. It's a matter of understanding the risk/consequences.

If one chooses to have opposite sex friendships, then they are more likely, relative to those who choose to not have opposite sex friendships, to have an A. "More likely" doesn't mean they will or they won't, just more likely.

Many will say that the above statement does not hold true for them personally, because they have adequate boundaries. Which is implying that the above statement is only true for those that do not have adequate boundaries. Then the data about the % of A's and how many of them started as "friendships" suggests that the general population does not have adequate boundaries.

So then the question boils down to, is it a good idea to operate under the assumption that one has better boundaries than the general population. IMHO, it is not a good idea.

IME, most people's biggest problems can be traced to assuming they will do better than the general population. It's a pretty recurrent theme in most people's lives, i.e. "I won't have an unplanned pregnancy." Many do. "I won't get pulled over after drinking." Lots do. "I can handle my credit card debt." Many can't. "My spouse won't cheat on me." Lots do., etc.

Its ironic that many of our successes also come from this same assumption that one can do better than the general population. So to me, the answer is not neccessarily to completely avoid that or to always assume one will do no better than the rest.

But one should carefully consider what will happen if that key assumption is wrong. If our boundaries turn out to be no "better" than the general population, what will one lose and what will one gain. In the case of opposite sex friendships, if one's assumption is wrong, they will likely lose their M in exchange for a few friends.

So while I am extremely confident about my boundaries, I still wouldn't risk those consequences.

CORRECTAMUNDO! Not having opposite sex friends IS the boundary! Opposite sex friends MUST be friends of the marriage! "Shared" by the husband and wife, if you will...There shouldn't be "alone time" between the opposite sex peeps! That is courting disaster...Daring temptation...A very bad plan...

Mrs. W

That's like what I used to tell people: "I am a GREAT drunk driver! Trust me!"

LMAO! Because, of course, YOU were the "RESPONSIBLE DRUNK DRIVER"!!! Duh!!! (oxymoron, much? )...That makes perfect sense!

Mrs. W

Priceless



Friendships require an investment of time. When we don't spend time with our friends we tend to lose those friends or we drift apart. That's exactly what happens in a M. Work, chores and responsibilities take up a lot of our time, but when we infuse another person of the opposite sex into the equation and we spend the little amount of recreational time we have left to share with THEM instead of our S, we are heading down a very rickety road.

Our best times, our most fun and memorable times should be had with our S.

Something else I like to point out when asked this question:

Even if you could be certain (which is not really possible,) that you would not fall for your friend, you cannot know their heart. What if your thoughts remain innocent, but their feelings grow into something else? Even if these are never acted on, it is unhealthy for a marriage, for someone to carry a torch, even a secret one.

Don't be a stumbling block! It isn't the kind thing to do.

As Christians, we do carry a lot of responsibility to help our brothers and sisters be pure of heart with our actions, rather than make purity more difficult. The devil likes nothing better than to use Christian friends to pull each other into the pit, for it is a double coup to harm the family and the Church with one fell swoop.

And I want to add, it is a huge red flag when someone says they make friends so much more easily with the opposite sex.

Friendships don't just "happen", they are cultivated. If you are automatically finding yourself mostly with friends of the opp. sex, it means you are making more efforts to bond with them, and you are putting out vibes to them. I have yet to meet a man or woman whose majority of friends were opp. sex, who didn't have a HUGE problem with boundaries.

When a woman says "But all the women I know are just so catty" or a man says "But other guys just don't 'get' me", rest assured it is because they do not conduct themselves in a trustworthy manner, and other women or men rightfully sense they are the enemy.

Excellent posts KIR!!! ITA!!!

Mrs. W

hehe...when I was single, I had both male and female friends, but the people I spent the most time with were the guys. They did fun stuff, I reasoned. Then I discovered, slowly over time, that people thought I was sleeping with all my guy friends, and my girl friends were hanging on hoping to date my guy friends! lol. Even though it's not easy, I'm so glad to be married now. I'm not 'friends' with any of those people anymore.

I learned the hard way that it's not a good idea. My WW started out as just friends with the OM. Heck we were all friends and hung out as couples. THe OM was married. Hanging out as a couple is ok but it went south when they started hanging out alone. Obviously a big mistake looking back but I trusted my wife 100%. I didn't encourage it and didn't know the extent but was aware of it on certain occasions. I think my WW was pretty innocent when she 1st started. And I think a lot of women really don't understand how men view women in regards to friendship and sex. I think for a lot of women, even the ones who have A, that they really weren't looking for it but fell into it. But for a lot men who become friends with women (M or no) it is always on their minds or at least thinking its a possibility.

The slippery slope reared its ugly head. My WW was one of those woman who also said men and women could be friends. Thanks goodness she no longer is saying that. I think the main problem with opposite sex relationships is temptation. If 2 people are reasonably attractive there is always going to be some kind of underlying sexual tension. It is human nature! That's why there are 6 billion people on the planet. To deny it is why we end up on this board. I do agree with other posters that most people can control their urges. Well my hat is off to them but I would rather not be put into a position that increases my chances or my WW chances' of having an A even by 0.1%.

We often get questions here about whether or not it should be considered appropriate for husbands and/or wives to go out partying/drinking/dancing etc with friends. Usually this implies same sex friends, though once the decision is made to allow yourself that recreation time apart, including opposite sex friends is but a small change in boundary.

When we are single, we have friends. These people, same or opposite sex, meet our ENs in some way that makes us feel good. Those who do a good job of meeting some EN we tend to cultivate friendships with and those who do not meet some EN we tend to drift away from. If you think back to when you were young (more of a stretch for some of us than others) you made friends pretty easily. We all had that one kid in the neighborhood that we spent almost every waking moment with. This was your "best friend."

This best friend liked the same things you did or at least liked to do the same things you enjoyed doing. For guys this might have been baseball, football, hockey...As you grew older, your interests changed a little and either you and your friend both changed or you drifted apart. As you developed an interest in some other activity, unless your friend shared that interest, you began to spend more time with others that did share it and less and less time with your "best friend" until you no longer even hung out together.

If you are like most of us you had several changes in friends over your lifetime and each one was precipitated by a change in your interests and/or theirs.

But now we get married. For most of us that meant that we met someone who we began to spend a lot of time with. We developed the same interests and eventually fell in love. But if we examine what Dr Harley says about falling in love we can see that what took place was that this other person began to meet some EN or combination of ENs that we had until his/her Love Bank balance exceeded the romantic threshold.

Now for some of us, that meant that we stopped hanging around with our friends from our single days. Even those who remained single long after we got married began to drift away. We no longer went out every Friday night and drank ourselves into a stupor and slept all day Saturday to recover from our stupidity. If children came along quickly, we adjusted our own lives again and soon we had little contact with anyone who did not have something to contribute to our lives.

Most of us did that, but some tried to maintain the same lifestyle they had when single. For these folks marriage was usually pretty short since a divorce often followed the wedding in short order. This is because for the marriage to flourish any friends must also be friends of the marriage. These people WANT the couple to remain together, happy and fulfilled with each other and do not have any intent to intrude into the relationship in any way.

Ironically, it is often one or both of us being thrust into a new situation where our set times together begins to change that leads to affairs. A new job that takes the husband away for weeks at a time or a new job in the big city with a bunch of often single and usually younger coworkers for the wife can turn a marriage upside down. This might even be something for which you have worked and looked forward to your entire life.

Unless we make time for each other we end up not meeting each others ENs very well and now this new group of "friends" become our ticket to getting those ENs met. Our best and most fulfilling time is not being spent with each other but with others. Meeting around the water cooler leads to talking over a cup of coffee at break time which leads to sitting at the same table during lunch, sending each other little jokes via email and looking forward to spending time together as friends.

At fisrt even the spouse might see these new relationships as a good thing. The shy quiet unassuming housewife blossoms into a self-confident and happy woman. The man who seemed to never be able to find a job he liked is suddenly excited about going to work. So when Friday rolls around and one of us asks, "Would you mind if I went out with the gang from work tonight?" the spouse seldom gives it a second thought.

Pretty soon the only time we are together is when we are asleep or when we are dealing with a problem of some sort. Our ENs are getting met by our frends and anything our spouse should be meeting is going unmet because we are not giving him/her the time to meet them. We are vulnerable to an affair becuae we have stopped taking deposits from our spouse in favor of the deposits being made by our friend(s).



And if it has been allowed to get to this point it takes an immense act of the will to prevent it from becoming an affair.

Back to work...


Mark

Sooooooo not true.

Majority of my male friends were friends as we had similar interests. I was not at all interested in them in a romantic way... EVER.

I had one girl friend in highschool. The rest were male. I got along better with them. Why? Because, they are not catty, were more accepting of my shyness and never made fun of me. I was teased prior to highschool by the girls in my grade. They treated me poorly, and as a result, made me feel uncomfortable being around women. (I still am)

Now, on the flip side, I have seen instances where there should not be alone time with the opposite sex. My bf had a friend who was female, and started to get angry when bf did not talk to her as much when we started dating.

When bf suggested meeting me, this girl got very angry with him and informed him that she could never be my friend, nor would she ever like me. (the conversation happened on messenger, so I was reading along as it happened) My bf then told her that was too bad, and that he hoped she was proud of herself, as she not only lost me as a friend (potentially) but himself as well. He has not spoken to her since.

There are some people that cross boundaries, but not everyone does or will.

I think it is a case by case scenario, IMO.

I agree!! Some people are better drunk drivers than others! Case by case basis and all that!

p.s. I betcha I can drunk drive better than anyone on this thread!!

Mel makka me laffa sooooooo hard!

Mrs. W

P.S. Some peeps 'round here seem to be the EXCEPTION to EVERY rule...:RollieEyes:

Yep, and people who think they are the exception are in danger for that very reason.

According to "When Harry Met Sally".....No.