My wife wants me to end a friendship
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Q.
Hi Meredith,
I’m hoping you and this forum can help bring perspective to an issue causing some strife between my wife and myself. Quick background: married over 30 years, recent empty nesters, and we’ve been happy. Here’s the rub. I have a friend, a woman, whom I met through a music site and we have since gone to a few shows of mutual interest, sometimes with others, a couple of times just us.
We live hours apart, so it’s not often we get together, but we do share texts about music shows, releases, etc. She’s a friend and there has been no hint, no leading conversations that would suggest that either of us is interested in more than this.
My wife has met her, as there have been a couple of shows we have all been at. A few months ago she told me she wanted me to stop being friends with her and cut her off totally. She admits that if this person were male it would be different, and that as a married man I should not have a married woman friend that I keep in touch with or attend an event with. I think it too harsh to cut out a friend whose only fault is that she is female and is somehow threatening to my wife, despite my assurances. Am I off base?
– NotMikePence
A.
I agree with you. I love that you’ve found someone who wants to see live music like you do. What a gift, especially after a certain age.
In my opinion, your wife’s take on this is unfair – and hurtful to the world! Studies show that men are incredibly lonely. Meanwhile, a lot of women are experts at making strong, lasting connections. The math doesn’t work if people have to rule each other out based on gender.
But it doesn’t matter what I think. Your wife tells you she can’t be comfortable with this. You can either follow her rule or try to negotiate and dive deeper into the “why.”
Some of her discomfort might come from years of being told that friendships between straight men and women aren’t important or real. It’s hard to shake that off. I blame a lot of people for this, including parents and grandparents, Mike Pence types, and 1980s/90s rom coms that only show men and women as “friends” with a wild amount of sexual tension. You could ask your wife to think about this.
Also, consider (and ask your wife to consider) that she might be jealous of you. How are her own friendships? Does she share a hobby or passion with an amazing person who can show up and talk about it for hours? If you’re going to push back, bring this up … with kindness.
I would push back, by the way. Friendship – wherever you can find it – is an ingredient for joy. It might be worth giving her the book “The Good Life,” about a very long-running Harvard study focused on men and happiness. I read it, interviewed the authors, and learned a lot. The most important lesson? Connections are everything.
– Meredith
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