opinions?? (poll coming)

Is it ok to have friends of the opposite sex when you are with someone?

  • yea thats fine with me

    Votes: 34 69.4%

  • heck no!

    Votes: 10 20.4%

  • something else altogether (please explain)

    Votes: 5 10.2%
  • Total voters
    49
J

jessica31876

New member
My husband and I have been together a really long time now. I rarely ever get jealous over him talking to other women but the same cannot be said about him. We were talking tonight about guys/girls being friends and if it is ok when you are in a relationship. Now I consider my husband to be my best friend but before I met him (many many years ago) I had alot of guy friends who I saw as nothing more then a friend so I think it is totally ok to have a friend of the opposite sex. So Im wondering am I really the only one who thinks this? Would you be ok with your husband having friends who were female? Would he be ok if you had guy friends? What are your opinions on the subject?
 
it depends on the situation. lol........
really really REALLY depends on the situation :p that's the short version..

the slightly wordier version is........
if your SO and the opposite sex friends use common sense & know normal boundaries and respect the feelings of their SO then it's fine. When your SO goes to a party at a chicks house and spends the night (albeit on the couch) that's not cool, and will probably upset your SO even though she trusts you and you are amazing.
It all boils down to respecting your partner. If your partner is uncomfortable with it- you need to take their feelings into account. Sure, it's perfectly OK to have male/female friends.. but your partners feelings are INCREDIBLY important :p
 
Here's my explanation:

I have dated guys in the past who wanted to continue being friends with people they had slept with in the past. That is the only place I really draw the line.

I'm fine with my boyfriend hanging out with, and even going (on group outings) out with the girls or whatever. I know he has a lot of female friends. I know I have a lot of guy friends. Growing up, I was the girl who was friends with guys. I have never really gotten along with girls.

That said, it is NOT okay to hang out with friends of the opposite sex if he has slept with them. That's where I draw the line. Not that he has, or would. Just that some of my ex's have, and I think it puts you in MORE of a situation for something to happen, if something HAS happened before.
 
I think I'm way too easily tempted to have any level of intimacy with a man who isn't the one I pledged to love and honor for the rest of my life. And I definitely don't want my husband finding common ground with another woman...a woman for whom my husband holds no expections and therefore might easily be led to believe would be a much better wife than the one at home who lets him down occassionaly, and, let's be honest, MIGHT be a better wife. I just can't risk it. So we definitely have a no-opposite sex friend rule at our house.
 
i think it really depends on the situation. i totally and completely 100% trust my husband but if I found out that he was telling some broad secrets that he's not telling me, i'd go postal. i know he feels the same way. yes, we have friends of the opposite sex but they're mutual friends, kwim? out of respect for each other we have an unspoken 'no friends of the opposite sex rule.' i do think it depends though.
 
I hate to say this but I think women can have male friends and not cross the line. I do not think men can have women friends because they cross lines before they even realize what has happened. Just my opinion.
 
Yea I think it depends on the situation. My husbands best friend is female. And I'm 100% fine with it. She has a partner and a child too. I trust themboth and they've never given me any reason to worry. They don't abuse the situation tho. They're always happy for me or her partner to hang out with them, but I don't always want to, because I don't have as much in common with her. There's nothing flirty in the way they act to each other. She's like his sister.

I have had problems with his other female friends tho, because they were flirty with him. Those girls are no longer friends because they made me uncomfortable and he respected that. For the same reason I'm no longer friends with my ex. Dh didn't like it cos my ex had zero interest in being friends with him and would often talk about when we were together. Just wasn't right.
 
It all depends on the person... in my case, I trust my husband and he trusts me... he also knows that I would kick his you know what if he did something to destroy that trust... ;)
 
joelsgirl said:
I think I'm way too easily tempted to have any level of intimacy with a man who isn't the one I pledged to love and honor for the rest of my life. And I definitely don't want my husband finding common ground with another woman...a woman for whom my husband holds no expections and therefore might easily be led to believe would be a much better wife than the one at home who lets him down occassionaly, and, let's be honest, MIGHT be a better wife. I just can't risk it. So we definitely have a no-opposite sex friend rule at our house.
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This. I agree 100%. In fact, as a newly wed, I recently asked Jeff to remove several female friends from facebook. Now that doesn't include old friends he went to hs with or females who are mutual friends of ours (as in other couples or just someone we know from church or whatever). But if there's a female that he knows that I don't, it's not ok. Period. And I am happy to do the same for him for the reasons Kellie stated above.
 
Oh and I want to point out that it has nothing to do with trust for me. I trust my husband completely, and he trusts me. It's more about temptation. We pledged our love to each other and promised to be best friends forever. Idk... I realize I'm in the minority, but it's something I feel really strongly about.
 
I think it would be okay for my husband to have women friends so long as they are mutual friends, by which I mean that they don't set up activities just for them that I wouldn't be perfectly welcome to join.
 
I agree with those who said it depends on the situation. In our case, I have more friend of both genders then Andrew does at all. He's just not a social guy that way. I asked him what he thought of this and he made a very valid point, "Well, I don't really have to worry with you, do I? All your guy friends are gay or related to you!"
 
John doesn't have any female friends.... but he's never had issue with me having guy friends. So... I don't think I'm any help at all.
 
Sure... with a few rules in place. :)

Opposite sex friendships that pre-date the relationship and have always been platonic are fine. Going out with a group of people or the kids or as two couples is fine. Some emailing and texting is fine. Work friends where there is not really any interaction outside work is fine. Even coffee or lunch is fine in certain circumstances.

What is most important to us is that we do not have an intimate (not just physically, but also emotionally and mentally) relationship with anyone else. No one else should know us better, be told important news first, or be respected or taken into consideration first. KWIM?
 
One of my very closest friends in the world is a guy. He and I have been friends for 10+ years, and the relationship has always been very platonic. I would have a very hard time if I was with a man who asked me to give up that friendship. He has been an important part of my life for a very long time, and severing that friendship would be giving up a part of who I am.

That being said though, I'm with a lot of the others who say that friendships with someone of the opposite sex that you were in a previous relationship with, or someone with whom the lines of intimacy could be crossed is not acceptable.
 
I have a lot of male friends and my DH knows about it and he is confortable with this as he knows I would never betray him, LOL. Some of them he knows personally, but he is absolutely OK when I tell him: "Going for a pizza with Peter M." and he has never met this Peter personally.

Vice versa, DH has been singing in a choir for a very long time, long before we met. I don't know any of girls from the choir personally and I doesn't want to change it. I wasn't even jealous or uncomfortable with one of his former colleague... that girl was a sex-maniac, she was still talking only about sex, sex, sex... she used to provoke all the males at the office, including the boss :D Since I trust my DH and I know his personality, what to expect, I had absolutely no fear that bimbo could lead my DH astray... :D
 
Some of my very best friends are men-and I make new male friends all the time-
Scott has had the same friends since High School with no desire to make new ones-all of them are boys.
I'm to lazy to get all emotional-like the falling in love/lust-with anyone else but my husband. My heart belongs to him-his to me. We have both tried to make it work with other people in the past and fully realize that we are in this for life...friends of the opposite sex are a non-issue.
 
this is exactly how I feel. My husband and I split up for short periods of time and all it did was make us realize we really wanted to be with each other...
ZaCola3 said:
Some of my very best friends are men-and I make new male friends all the time-
Scott has had the same friends since High School with no desire to make new ones-all of them are boys.
I'm to lazy to get all emotional-like the falling in love/lust-with anyone else but my husband. My heart belongs to him-his to me. We have both tried to make it work with other people in the past and fully realize that we are in this for life...friends of the opposite sex are a non-issue.
Click to expand...
 
I voted yes. I have two very dear guy friends. One of them was a guy I met before DH and I got married and one whom I met afterwards, but DH doesn't really like. LOL But, they respect that I am married and never come over/call unless they know DH is here. They don't want him or anyone else to get the wrong impression.

I think if opposite sex friends respect the relationship and avoid the appearance of anything improper, then it should be ok.
 
emmasmommy said:
yes, we have friends of the opposite sex but they're mutual friends, kwim?
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This is us. Yes we both have friends from hs and freshman year of college, but it's not like either of us every talk with them. And at this point, we pretty much know who most of them are now anyway (not necessarily met, but we know names on facebook)

And it isn't a trust thing with us either--because we trust each other 150%. It's just kind of weird honestly. I wouldn't like for him to be talking with some other female and I wouldn't with a male. Our friends are all mutual and that's different.
 
LeeAndra said:
Sure... with a few rules in place. :)

Opposite sex friendships that pre-date the relationship and have always been platonic are fine. Going out with a group of people or the kids or as two couples is fine. Some emailing and texting is fine. Work friends where there is not really any interaction outside work is fine. Even coffee or lunch is fine in certain circumstances.

What is most important to us is that we do not have an intimate (not just physically, but also emotionally and mentally) relationship with anyone else. No one else should know us better, be told important news first, or be respected or taken into consideration first. KWIM?
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This. Especially in bold.

There is only one guy that I dated, with whom I am still friends with. That friendship has distanced, for many reasons, but he is still an important friend in my life. Jordan was wary at first, but once he met the guy he was fine with our friendship and really enjoys him. However, if my husband decided that he was no longer comfortable with our relationship, I would respect that.
 
I've got friends who are guys. Two of the people I chat with most often on Facebook are male. But just old friends, not former lovers. When I worked I always had male friends & went to lunch with them daily with no problem. DH has female friends, most of which are from his job and are married themselves. I don't mind. DH is the sort who loves to look at women but guilt overcomes him at the very thought of cheating, so I don't worry about it much.

But no former lovers. That's just awkward
 
DH and I had a big blow up about this very topic two days ago, so my knee jerk reaction right now is NO. NO FEMALE FRIENDS FOR YOU! Especially recently divorced, calling and texting, getting him to do favors "friends". :glare:
 
I only have casual men friends (my husband's friends, collegues and college buddies that I run into). They are not people I speak with on a regular basis.
 
SirScrapalot said:
I'm gonna go with it's all good in the hood because, otherwise, I wouldn't be here..kwim?
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Oh Aaron you cracked me up with this! Sure have missed reading your posts ... guessing school is keeping you busy? :)

I've got friends that are male ... one is my dh's best friend ... he is a stay at home dad ... and for years since we met way back in Cub Scout days we have run around together shopping bargains, going to Sam's Club, etc. He's married and I'm married and it's just a friendship ... would never think of it any other way. My best friend married one of my other very good friends and that made my best friends married to each other ... lol ...

I've mainly got girl friends because of the common bond of scrapbooking ... but when it comes to robotics ... it's a majority of males there ... I have more to talk about to the males there than the females generally. I'm so NOT all about make-up, cooking and clothes shopping ... I'm more about computers, robots, geeky toys and the like.

dh knows what my values are ... and that I will never betray ... I just do not believe in that!! They are friends and that is all there is to it.

Now my confidant and very bff is Stacy ... she knows more about me than any one EVER has in my life!! She knows things I just couldn't begin to tell a male ... no matter how good of friends we are. ;)
 
I want to add that you can also tell who will have unholy intention towards your SO. Sometimes it's just so obvious. My ex have a few female friends who clearly wants his affection. That's why he's an ex :p And surprise, surprise; he married one of his 'best friend'.

Thankfully my fiance only has his bros so no more drama for me. I do have two close male best friends that I've know for 15+ years (who considers me one of the boys :p) We're just like family, and my fiance likes them so all's good.
 
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