I posted on this topic before, but since then have changed my perspective on the situation. My husband is "best friends" with a group of people who have openly said that they don't want to have anything to do with me! These "friends" rarely come by our home, and, most of the time when my husband has free time, it is spent with these people without me or our family. My husband has confided in me and told me that they have even gone as far as to tell him to leave me and our family! Initially, I felt like my husband would grow out of these "friends" and realize that they are not a positive influence for him or our family, but, I have now realized that my husband is and will continue to associate with them and accomodate their wishes of not bringing me around, even when there are other couples around.<P>This one friend of his has even gone as far as to tell my husband that he doesn't want me to know where he lives or anything about him. Which I could care less about him or his life, but when my husband is agreeing to leave me out of his social life and be secretive with me for because his friends don't want him to tell me-I begin to have real big problems with that. When I try to get my husband to do couple things with mutual friends who respect me and our family he resists at every turn. <P>So, me and my kids are living in my husband's hometown with no family, no friends, and he is constantly leaving our home to be with people who don't want us around. I have sat back and observed all of this for over a year now, and nothing has changed. I am TIRED to no end. I really feel that my husband has no respect for our family by continuing to be around people who talk about me and purposely do things to ruin our family. <P>After I confronted him about how I feel about him ALWAYS leaving us to be around people who don't even come visit our family he told me that I should've been nicer and that he doesn't care if anyone ever comes over. I feel betrayed, deceived, and used. I feel like my husband is only living in our home so that he can get his finances together so that he can completely abandon us with little or no financial setbacks! I feel totally withdrawn from him, like he is the enemy, I see him as no better than these so-called friends of his.

Dear bmptbaby,<P>Okay, your H and his "friends" don't know you come to MB, do they? So, you have privacy, you can be honest.<P>1. Who are these "friends?" Old schoolmates, work colleagues, barflys, teammates from some sport?<P>2. What does your H mean by you weren't nice to them? Specifically. Did you throw a rock at someone's car? Report one of them for tax fraud? Hang up the phone on one of them? Swear at one of them? <P>3. Where do they meet? <P>4. Have you seen a professional counselor, someone familiar with your faith? Someone who believes in saving marriages if at all possible?<P>5. You are hearing from your H that the friends refuse to associate with you. Do you believe him? Or is this his way of sleazing out of saying "I don't want to be bothered with you and our family and I just want to be a "boy" and keep the convenience of a roof over my head, hot meals, a warm bed, and the respectability of being a married man."<P>6. You're living in your H's home town where you have no friends or family, just H's family and friends. What kind of relationship do you have with his family? Do they like you? Do they think he's justified in his behavior? <P>You should be your H's best friend. He sounds immature.<P>------------------<BR>Belle, Domestic Goddess

Bellevue, <P>Thank you for your respsonse. These guys are his high school buddies. My husband and I met back in the fall of 1994, my freshmen year in college. He introduced me to these guys back then, and I was not impressed then! They came off as rude, immature, and vulgar (Does being nineteen justify this behavior?-maybeso) Anyway, my husband and I married in 1996 and we were still in college, we didn't have much to do with his friends because they were all living back at home (none have graduated from college). In the first couple of years of our marriage, I tried to demand my husband to make new friends (a major lovebuster) but to no avail, my husband would go and tell his friends all the negative comments I made about them, and in turn they grew to dislike me as much as I disliked them, so much so that they began to support him leaving me and our daughter. Now, almost three years after our one-week separation where my husband went to live with the same guy who is demanding him to not bring me around, my husband is still hanging out and partying with these guys. I got involved in some personal matters where my husband's best friend is concerned, where I told his then girlfriend that I knew that her and my husband were intimate, this broke my husbands trust in me and for that I am sorry, but his best friend has used that as the reason he doesn't want to have anything to do with me even 3 years later! <P>I never thought that my husband could be making up the fact that they don't want me around because he really doesn't, but he keeps his friends and his social circle separate from me. I don't know their phone numbers, where they live, nothing! I told him that the more he condones and accepts them isolating his family, the more he displays to me the lack of respect he has for me and our family. I feel that my husband loves our children, but not as much as he loves himself, his material things, or his friends-he doesn't deny that. Therein lyes the real issue, if he holds himself, his friends, and his "things" above our family, then he will NEVER do what it takes to correct the situation because for him there is nothing to correct. <P>I feel lonely and distant more than I ever have in this marriage, and I don't know if I am being unreasonable by expecting my husband to disassociate with people who don't want to have anything to do with his wife or family. I have heard a lot of guys say that they had to eventually let friends go when they finally decided to marry because they didn't fit into their lifestyle, but, unfortunately for me, I feel like my husband would rather ruin our marriage, family and home to uphold the selfish wishes of his friends.<P>His parents live in this town, but I don't have a lot to do with them, mainly because of his mother. His mother has supported the break up of this marriage from day one, and when I have come to them for advice or support, his father is empathetic and tries to help, the mother basically advocates divorce and even went as far to tell me that my marriage was irreconcilable. My husbands relationship with his parents is distant and unaffectionate, his mother did and said a lot of hurtful things to him growing up which he is still not able to get over. The father is still struggling with the way things are and were to this day!<p>[This message has been edited by bmtbaby (edited December 01, 2000).]

It seems that this must be going around, I am a man in your shoes. I have been married for going on 9 years. I used to have my friends and I used to go out, but my loving wife confronted me and told me that was not how to make this marriage work and in after the birth of our first child, I came to see that she was right. Now that I don't go out and have cut all of my friends, to show her that I will not let friends of nightlife come in between what is more important. She has a group of friends who I don't associate <BR>with. It started as a "girls night out" sort of thing and now it's a "we gotta be in the club type of thing". My 4 year old daughter tells me she's going to the club like mommy.<BR>My wife and I argue because she is on the phone with one of them all the time and they do not respect the time that I have to spend with my wife. I told my wife to make a choice between her friends and her family. She wants both, I put my foot down and told her that her friends have to go. I make it so that every time one of them calls they feel really unwelcome or not wanted. To me it is not right but I am at the end of my rope.