The Vine: July 3, 2012
I did something really stupid. Do you have any advice on how, or if, I should try to fix it?
I’ve been married for about 2 years. I knew going in that my husband is a little insecure about other men in my life. I have guy friends that I’ve known for years, never had any romantic interest on either side (some of whom are gay), but Hubby thinks I’m irresistible and they all secretly want me anyway. He’s not normally possessive or crazy or controlling; he’s not jealous about my past. So we acknowledge that it’s an issue, but it’s not a gigantic, red-flag issue. We don’t fight about it. So far we’ve addressed it by me continuing to see my friends appropriately and Hubby and I talking about his insecurities openly, working toward alleviating them. Often Hubby is invited along too, so it’s not like I have a whole social life that excludes my husband.
My husband’s been feeling ill this past week. Nothing serious, but he’s not especially perky or communicative. I had plans with some female friends on Tuesday night. I was going to break them to stay home with him, but he told me I should go ahead and go. Also on Tuesday, I found out that a male former co-worker from out of town would be visiting and wanted to get together. Wednesday evening was the best available time for that, so I went ahead and made plans for dinner with him. The Tuesday plans would have been able to be rescheduled, but since the former co-worker lives in another state, we wouldn’t have an opportunity to get together again for months or more.
I didn’t tell my husband. In fact, I lied to my husband and told him I was going out with some other female friends. Since I was already going on out Tuesday, I didn’t have a chance to sit down with him and talk about it openly beforehand. And then I feared that he would ask me to stay home because he was “sick.” Now that wasn’t an issue the previous night when I was with the girls, but I thought he might make it an issue for the guy. So I didn’t deal with it when I should have. And now I don’t know whether to deal with it at all or to let it go.
I went out straight after work, and the guy and I hung out for an hour and a half and ate dinner. Nothing inappropriate happened. Neither one of us ever thought about anything like that. It’s not an issue of cheating or temptation at all. I was home by 8:15.
I’m afraid that coming clean and attempting to discuss it now with my husband will focus, naturally, on my lie. I would, also naturally, prefer to focus on how I made that bad choice due to a momentary inability for me to deal with his insecurity at that point.
It’s not lost on me that my behavior in this situation could certainly increase his insecurity going forward. Nor is it lost on me that I have so far handled this terribly. I feel fairly confident that I wouldn’t handle a similar situation this way, because I feel awful about it.
So, come clean and have the discussion? Or let it go and handle similar situations differently in the future? Or something else I haven’t thought of? Let me have it!
Jerky Girl
Dear Jerk,
Don’t have the discussion. A discussion turns it into A Big Deal, and that’s the problem here: to date, you’ve trained Hubby, and yourself, to treat his insecurity about your male friends like it’s A Big Deal.
It’s nice of you to want to put his mind at ease with the issue, generally, and I don’t mean to suggest that you should just blow off his concerns because he’s being a big baby. The thing is…he’s being a baby of some size, let’s say a 6, and it’s at least in part because you’ve gone to such solicitous lengths to make sure he’s informed and included and soothed. But it’s probably time for the baby to learn how to self-soothe, as they say.
And for me to put down the baby metaphor now that it’s flattened beyond recognition (heh), so here’s the point: you and Hubby both act like you’ve cheated on him in the past, or like someone else cheated on him in the past, or like you spend a lot of time with ex-boyfriends of serious stature. As far as I can see from your letter, none of these things has happened, and yet the kid-glove treatment continues, and it should stop — because it’s driven you to the point where you’d rather lie about your plans than deal with yet another conversation about the co-worker, his relationship status, what kind of lighting the restaurant has, blah blah blah, which is totally understandable. Ditto your suspicion that admitting to the lie would then become a whole “but if there’s nothing going on then WHY’DJA LIE ABOUT IT AIEEEE” that won’t address the central issue, which: see above.
So. Don’t bring it up, and adopt a more businesslike attitude towards these circumstances in future — “I’m going here, with this guy, if you’d like to come; if not, see you at home later, goodbye now.” Make it clear that, while you don’t want him to worry, you’ve also given him no cause to worry, and you kind of can’t have this talk anymore, because it’s a little insulting and there’s only so many hours in a day and…you just can’t. (Nicer than that.) (A little.)
If that’s not working, he’s spinning about it and/or you’re getting resentful, consider counseling, just for a few sessions. A handful of hours with a relationship therapist could really help in terms of getting to the real issue here, and teaching you both the most productive and kind ways to talk about it, ways that address the insecurity instead of enabling it.
Generally speaking, though, this is as big a deal as you choose to make it. Start choosing to make it smaller. You didn’t, and won’t, do anything wrong; choose not to act like you did, or might. Again, I respect your desire to be kind — but enough already.
Tags: boys (and girls)
Sars is dead on-unless there is some possiblity that hubby will find out later, or from other sources, that you weren’t with the person you said you would be. If hubby and the guy won’t be together for such a long time the whole thing will have been forgotten about, and no one else knows who might slip, intentionally or not, then leave it lie. If however, there’s a remote chance of that happening, better to come clean now and have him hear it from you.
I once dated a guy (let’s call him Bob) who had some severe jealousy issues but with good cause. His ex-wife cheated on him repeatedly, so much so that “his” kids were not in fact his. As in, his kids were not even the same race as him. According to the law in that state, however, the children were born into his marriage and as such were his until proven otherwise (DNA tests, etc.). They got divorced, the kids were declared not his, blah blah blah. It was a horrible situation and left him very scarred, understandably.
After we started dating, his jealous tendencies would come out every now and then. At first I was understanding because I knew what he had been through, and we tried to work it out. I told him, “I get where you’re coming from, but I’m not her.” And he tried to curb his jealous, he really did, but it wasn’t working. Aside from the jealous, everything else was going well, but a girl can only handle so much “prison time” for someone else’s past transgressions before moving on. When we broke up, he said he totally understood why I couldn’t deal with it anymore and he apologized for not being able to move on from the hurt he was still harboring.
I don’t know if Jerk’s husband just has insecurity issues in general or if they are a result of some past horrible relationship, but at some point, Husband has to suck it up and realize he’s got a good woman that isn’t going to stray. But Jerk also needs to stand up for herself, as Sars mentioned, and stop enabling Husband with his insecurities by coddling him so much.
Side note: One time when I started dating a guy seriously, a guy friend told me, “You’re going to have to stop hanging out with your guy friends now, huh?” and I said, “Why would I do that?” My friends are my friends, regardless of gender, and I’m not giving anyone up just so I can land a man. If a man isn’t secure enough to deal with my having guy friends, then he’s not the man for me.
I think it’s great you’re still having a social life despite your husband’s insecurities and maybe even social anxiety. I guess what I wonder most is, how insecure is he? What would he do if you couldn’t or wouldn’t rein it in and be only with him? That’s what I was thinking when you said you made the secret plans…maybe you didn’t want to give him veto power over your evening?
I like Sars’ advice to change your tune about dealing with him in the future. I think it’s important not to let your social life become a power struggle, even if all it means is that you will have to explain your movements to death. Nobody needs to live like that.
Other Big Baby flag of a hue nearing red on the spectrum? Demanding company to be sick at home. I know you said that didn’t happen, but that you feared it might suggests something like that has happened before. And me, I’d put up with it for exactly no seconds.
Assuming the illness in question isn’t dire or otherwise life-threatening? Boy can nuke some soup or pop some ginger ale, load up the dvd player and just kack out in the lazyboy. Or, like Sars puts it perfectly, self-soothe.
I agree: some therapy may well be in order.
I didn’t read much into the illness thing…UNLESS he’s doing the “no, you go ahead, I’ll just sneeze myself TO DEATH HERE AT HOME, ALOOOONE” thing, which, don’t do that. Say you want company or shut it.
But she didn’t say he’s doing that. If she’s taking him at his word and he’s all bent about that, it’s a problem, but I didn’t see that.
It sounded to me more like she was worried he’d use his sickness as an excuse to get her to skip the coworker visit (since otherwise why would saying you were going out with female friends reduce the risk of his needing company?)
I agree that bringing the visit up now is not going to be helpful, but that this situation as a whole IS a pretty serious issue that needs to be addressed more directly. Believe me, I understand your position but if it’s gotten to point of you feeling the need to lie rather than have to deal with his insecurities, then it’s a bigger deal than you’re admitting to yourself. I think all the advice you’ve gotten is spot on, and I don’t really have any to add–just my support that working on this issue a little more aggressively IS the right thing to do. You are not doing anything wrong by hanging out with male friends, and he needs to find a way to accept that and not make you feel weird about it for one more second. It’s a trust issue, and you deserve better.
Does he have any single female friends or coworkers? If so, surely he could try to be as comfortable with the idea of you being out with guy friends and you are with him being out with female friends. Maybe a nice reminder? The giggly “I love you, you lunatic” way, not the snide way.
Oh man, when I’m sick, the thing I want most in the world is the house to myself. I just want to zone out to whatever I want to watch on the tube, not talk to anyone, and just sniffle away.
I think Sars’s advice is right on. No need to tell him about this specific occasion, but the fact you felt the need to hide what was clearly a very innocent thing is a sign that things need to change. If he knows he’s irrational w/r/t other men, then he should know that it’s HIS responsibility to deal with his negative feelings when you spend time with your friends and coworkers, and not put that back on you. If he doesn’t know that, then it’s time to make that clear.
I think I would start with a couple counseling sessions just for me. It seems like a third party who could help you figure out for yourself what boundaries feel appropriate would be more helpful than anything else. If you are going to change the rules on him, which you are should you take the awesome advice offered by Sars and the other commenters, it would be. Era helpful to know how to address it when he raises it, which he very well might.
Understand that when a system has been set up and feels mostly stable, which this one has and does, at least until now, that the system will resist being rearranged. That means when you change your way of engaging your husband’s insecurities, he may push back because change is hard, and scary, and he’s already in a position of being protected from his fears. Exploring ahead of time what that might look like and preparing to remain firm, kind, and loving all at once can help downgrade what might feel to him like a major crisis to just a minor adjustment.
You guys need to deal with the big issue here. Don’t tell him the truth about this one dinner, but you need some professional help to move through the insecurity. I had a friend whose husband went from adoring her and wanting to spend lots and lots of time together to so clingy and so suspicious that she eventually did have an affair, and ended her marriage. She couldn’t take the constant questioning and neediness. Relationships die from suspicions–justified or not, and the fact that you’re willing to lie about something little to keep things calm could make it easier to lie about bigger problems down the road. Not that you will–just that you could. Talk to somebody together, and individually as well. Good luck, and don’t beat yourself up, just use this as a chance to work on the messy stuff now, while your rings are still shiny!
I’ve had this issue with my husband, though my husband sounds like he was way worse than yours. He was truly horrible. I really don’t know why I put up with it other than the insanity that comes with the initial infatuation. In his defense, he did go to therapy on his own accord but he still was pretty crappy during that time.
It became considerably better once I stopped treating him with kid gloves. I told him to get over it and if I heard one more word about the jealousy/controlling tendencies, I’d leave him. It is harsh but it worked. I was serious though.
I wouldn’t share your dinner with him but I do encourage you to try being a little ‘tough’ with him.
Jealousy is one of the most pernicious, slithery plants in our brain gardens. It thrives on the fact that there doesn’t have to be a reason for it to exist.
Both you and your husband acknowledge that you have never given him any cause for grief with this issue. But the Jealousy Plant, in a lovely and ironic twist, can bloom just as heartily on nothing but irrationality. It can actually thrive on the fact that your husband KNOWS his feelings are irrational. He knows it, but the way you and he have developed of cradling and cooing over his feelings have actually fertilized the soil.
Time to grab the ol’ weedwhacker and poison. As strong as jealousy can seem when it’s in the shadows, just flat out saying “Honey, I’m off to spend time with X and Y, see you at eight” and not letting that become anything else can shrivel it up right quick.
Now that I’ve worked this garden metaphor into the ground: you two have indavertently let this issue come to stand for a lot of things in your relationship–how you say you love each other, for one. He does it by being irrational, you do it by soothing. A new vocabulary is in order.
“…but Hubby thinks I’m irresistible and they all secretly want me anyway.”
This part made me a bit twitchy. There’s this odd little removal of agency from JG. So what if the guys (and/or gals) JG hangs out with find her irresistible? Their resistence is not what’s at issue here.
What I get out of that is that Husband seems to think that if given the opportunity, JG will cheat, so he is attempting to avoid giving her the opportunity, which basically implies that he does not trust her. At all. And that strikes me as a bit more problematic than someone who just has insecurities.
I especially like Jen’s point about this being your vocabulary of love; I was really startled by how completely your question was what you do about your failure to appease rather than questioning the way the appeasement had become a central tenet of your relationship. You don’t want Not Upsetting Hubs to be so important that his being upset kiboshes normal life stuff and runs the family. It’s possible to love and honor your spouse without sacrificing yourself to protect him from every little raindrop that falls in life; smack his head, tell him there’s an umbrella in the closet, and move on. (We had babies and gardens, so I figured it was time for a weather metaphor.)
darkBlue: I totally agree. He basically treats her like she’s a cheating hobag all the time. That’s not okay, especially because there’s zero past history on her end to even suggest that she’s ever BEEN a cheating hobag. It doesn’t sound like he has any respect for her when he keeps insisting that no matter what she does (or however much he snoops, because I’d bet he does it), she’s cheating. How do you prove you’re NOT cheating when someone is determined to insist that you are and he just hasn’t found it yet?
Dear god, the guy needs therapy.
I’m a little concerned about the trust issue. Your husband thinks you’re irresistible, well yeah, that’s normal. He thinks other people would LIKE to have sex with you, that’s also normal.
What’s not normal is that he thinks you would like to have sex with them. Either you trust someone or you don’t.
Hee, my first reaction to seeing this today was “OMG, I’m in the Vine!” Do I get pens? I gotta go check my email! Thank you, Sars, for your advice. And thank you, commenters, for yours as well.
Since this happened, I managed to get over the first onslaught of guilt and decided not to discuss this dinner with my husband. I realized that this wasn’t a situation I wanted to place myself in again, so I have been more matter-of-fact about things recently. I think your feedback will help me further to cut back on the kid-glove treatment. I do want to clarify though that although hubby is jealous, he’s not suspicious of my every move. I don’t believe he thinks I’m cheating any time I go out without him. I think he’s afraid that one of these friendships could catch fire though. (Does that make sense?)
Regarding hubby’s friends, he doesn’t really have local female friends. He relocated to my city when we got married, so while I have friends here that I’ve known for 30 years, he’s starting over in that regard. He’s made some friends here, but they’re all men (so far). The relocation is probably part of my free-floating guilt too, lol.
Anyway, we’re continuing to work on it. We were required to see a marriage counselor in order to get married in the church, so maybe it is time for a tune-up. I don’t want our primary love language to be the irrational/soothing variety.
This may be an unpopular opinion, but it seems to me that you’re not treating your husband very fairly here. You assumed his reaction, you lied to him, now you are contemplating therapy to deal with “his issues”? It takes two to tango, and you need to look honestly at how much you seem to be enjoying his thinking every man finds you irresistible, relocating for you, and being somewhat dependent on you socially. He may well have insecurities that you both have to deal with, and I understand needing your own life and friends, but you are, after all, married, so you need to take some responsibility for your playing into the ego boost of the situation too. While reading your letter and the responses, I was wondering how the Nation would have reacted were the genders reversed. I’m not saying you’re the bad guy here, but lying to the hubby a few years in tells me you both have things to work on. JMO.
@Jerky girl “I don’t believe he thinks I’m cheating any time I go out without him. I think he’s afraid that one of these friendships could catch fire though. (Does that make sense?)”
Hee, if my mom was giving him advice, she’d tell him to keep those concerns to himself. She thinks you shouldn’t express such thoughts as it makes your gf/bf automatically ask themselves if there is any truth to their jealousy, something they might not have done if you hadn’t said anything… and in some cases they might find there is an attraction they hadn’t thought about before.
Anyway, good luck, I hope you guys can find a way through this.
I agree with Kristin that you’re not being fair to your husband. Whatever his flaws and insecurities, he has (presumably) at least been truthful with you.
IMO, lying to your spouse about something and then blaming THEM because YOU lied to them is childish, unfaithful to your partnership, and sort of meanspirited. He didn’t bring this on himself; it’s not your husband’s fault that you’ve mistreated him (and you have mistreated him). It’s yours. You’re a grown woman; own your behavior.
I am sure there are things he needs to work on, but don’t let the inventory end at his doorstep – you’ve definitely got some house to clean, too. You lied, you were wrong to do that, and you need to take a good look at yourself and make some improvements, too.
After reading through all of the reader feedback, I was so pleased to reach Kristin’s comment: finally, somebody said what I was thinking about this whole situation!
I’m not saying that you have no right to have male friends, or that he’s right, or justified, if feeling so insecure, but my question is this: why are you so determined to retain and see your male friends, if you know that it makes your spouse seriously unhappy? There is give and take required from both sides here, I think, but I would suggest that you might want to consider just what kind of kick you get from having these other men in your life – even if your relationship with them has been entirely platonic, there’s no doubt that it boosts a woman’s ego to have nice friends of the opposite sex (and I say this as somebody who does have plenty of friends of the opposite sex, and who also had to learn to deal with this sensitively for her spouse’s sake, even though he’s never been the slightest bit insecure or jealous). When you get married, you enter a world where you have to compromise and, sometimes, put your spouse’s happiness ahead of (or, at least, equal to) your own. So, group get-togethers that include male friends and your spouse? Great. One-on-one get-togethers with a male former co-worker… is that really a vital social engagement?
Every marriage is different, and you’ll figure out the way to make yours work for you. But I’ve got to say, as somebody who has been very happily married for more than 13 years, if my spouse was sick (or even “sick”) and I had been intending to go out with anybody, male or female, and he wanted me to stay at home and keep him company, I think I’d postpone my night out and stay with him. He’s the one I’ve chosen for life: he comes first. This cuts both ways – I come first for him, too.
I agree with Kristen’s point, but not with Jacq. If it comes to point of having to choose between an SO or your friends of the opposite sex, there is no decision to be made: you leave the significant other. Why? Because then you are allowing the SO to dictate what friends you may, or may not have, and that way lies the step towards a controlling relationship. Yes, there is a lot of give and take in a relationship, but not to the point where you give up your friends (exception, of course, being where your friends are toxic as hell, in which case you have other issues).
Also, assuming that the only reason that OP has male friends is because she “gets a kick from having these other men in [her] life” is incredibly presumptive and very unfair. I know that I, personally, have a lot of male friends not because I get a kick out of being surrounded by adoring men; I have a lot of male friends partially because I get along better with men than women, and partially because I went into a male-dominated field in University and my friendships developed from my classmates. For all we know, the OP has a number of male friends for the same reason, or equally valid reasons other than stroking her ego.
I mean, yes, the OP should take some responsibility for the fact that she has allowed hubby’s insecurities dictate the way her relationship with her male friends pan out, and yes, OP probably shouldn’t have lied to her hubby about hanging out with this male coworker. But at the same time, the insecurity is her hubby’s, and he also should be taking more responsibility for treating it.
I used to be incredibly jealous. I hated the feeling of it so much, but I never thrust the responsibility of that on the man I was dating. Instead, I recognized that the problem was mine (as has hubby here – for that, I’m proud of him), and I went out of my way to alleviate my own fears (for me, meeting the friends who triggered the jealousy and getting to know them well helped) and a little self-cognitive-behavioural therapy to get over my jealousy issues.
All that to say, I agree that OP should stop treating hubby’s issue with kid gloves and that some couples therapy is in order.
I also would highly recommend that hubby consider therapy sessions on his own to get to the bottom of why he is so insecure and jealous, and engaging some cognitive behavioural therapy to help him learn to overcome (or at least deal with) these jealousy issues with out needing the constant reassurances from OP.
why are you so determined to retain and see your male friends, if you know that it makes your spouse seriously unhappy?
ARGH. Totally, completely, unequivocally disagree with Jacq here. That attitude is not okay in any context whatsoever. The LW’s issues aren’t with having male friends; they’re with communication. Period. The end.
No no no no no no no.
why are you so determined to retain and see your male friends, if you know that it makes your spouse seriously unhappy
Another question might be why he IS your spouse if having said male friends makes him that upset in the first place. I mean, yeah, relationships require compromise, but that’s…not what that is, really. That’s disordered thinking. Not to be a dick about it, but if it’s causing that severe a case of the Eeyores and it’s NOT an ex, the problem is not the friendship.
But: let’s not assign a force to the LW’s husband’s feelings on this matter that might not exist, either. Based on the information we were given, he’s more “passive-aggressive about some mild territorial discomfiture” than “seriously unhappy.” They do have reasonable discussions about his feelings. I think she’s just tired of having those for the tenth time, and that’s fair.
Yeah, with Emmers and Fellsd and Sars on this one.
Personally? I don’t think someone who tries to dictate his or her SO’s friendships–whether that’s a flat-out “I don’t want you hanging out with men” or a passive-aggressive “well, you caaaan do it, but I will be sad at you for the rest of the evening”–doesn’t deserve to have an SO. Red card, kicked off the dating field for at least a year and some major therapy.
Way I see it, life’s too short to put up with walking balls of insecurity and their tenth-grade promise-ring bullshit. But I’m admittedly pretty harsh about these things.