opposite sex texting friendship debate

[sheep123]

I'm a married W.

My H and I have a married, mutual female friend/aquaintance.

They became texting buddies.

I asked her to stop reaching out to him, please. I had my reasons and neither my H nor she would want me texting HER H.

She apologized, but continued.

My H says she did nothing wrong. I say she disrespected me. . .

When I asked her why she is continuing to reach out to my H, she flipped out and is mad at me. . .

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 23, 2020 by sheep123

[central]

Was there anything inappropriate in their texts?  If not, why are you placing limits?

[sheep123]

I didn't like it. Her texts were flirty, helpless, always needing my man when she has her own. She admitted to cheating on her H before and I know my H can be flirtacious.

There was NO need to be texting.

She was my friend and the point is, I told her the texting made me uncomfortable.

 

Edited December 23, 2020 by sheep123

[FMW]

Without extenuating circumstances for the reason they are texting, if you've told them both you don't like it, they should stop.  It's not that hard to understand why you wouldn't like it, and I don't think it's being controlling.  I'm the last person that wants to be told what to do or to tell my partner what to do.  But if a mutual female friend was texting my husband for just random favors (especially when she has her own husband) I would wonder what was up.    

[stillafool]

Most women would have the common sense not to make a texting buddy out of someone else's husband.  Who cares is she's now pissed off.  She doesn't sound like someone you need around anyway.

[sheep123]

THANK YOU, stillafool and FMW.

That's exactly how I feel.  Thank you for reaffirming that I am not being outlandish.

 

[amygirl908]

37 minutes ago, sheep123 said:

She was my friend and the point is, I told her the texting made me uncomfortable.

This is the only thing important that you wrote. If she was supposed to be YOUR friend she should not have been texting him after you told her that you were uncomfortable. End of story

If she is mad and doesn't understand that being a good friend means respecting you then she isn't a friend worth having.

Like @stillafool said most women have the common sense to not do this period, let alone with your friend's husband.

[sheep123]

THANK YOU, amygirl908.

My husband works with a bunch of women and has a bunch of female friends, but he doesn't TEXT them. Same with me ~ I don't text my male colleagues or male neighbors or male Facebook friends.

There's something about a text that screams, "This is between you and me only." It's so private and intimate. Anything can be said/shared and even misconstrued.

Why should she have that relationship with my H? I don't care if they were even talking about the weather. . . If he's stopping his day to text in private directly to her inbox ~ it just annoys me. 

He doesn't care about losing her as a texting friend. He just feels badly for my pain. He looks at it as I lost a friend because I didn't trust her. He feels I insulted her so she's hurt. I say she hurt me by crossing that line.

 

[amygirl908]

1 minute ago, sheep123 said:

THANK YOU, amygirl908.

He doesn't care about losing her as a texting friend. He just feels badly for my pain. He looks at it as I lost a friend because I didn't trust her. He feels I insulted her so she's hurt. I say she hurt me by crossing that line.

 

Of course! You're very welcome!

Follow up question though - If he doesn't care the why is HE still entertaining the texting relationship? Takes two to text and your friend isn't the only one responsible for this interaction.

[sheep123]

He's not. She dumped us both lol.

She was my friend foremost and friends with him through me. he replied to be polite because she always needed him. I saw the texts.  He looked at it as he was helping my friend, but it didn't sit right with me. 

It's ended,

[snowboy91]

As an overall concept, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with her texting your husband if she is a mutual friend of both of you. The two of you are also individual people and she may want to talk to him as well as you.

But it sounds more like there is a little more context to this - if she is trying to play the helpless card and your husband is playing into that, it's way more problematic, especially if she is known to cheat and your husband is known to flirt. In that case you're right to feel uncomfortable, though it's more about the content and context of their texting rather than just the fact they are texting. If it was, as you say, just talking about the weather, then what's the issue?

If your husband is known to flirt then I would be wary of that too. 

[sheep123]

I'm old fashioned.

I just read so many online articles supporting the fact that opposite sex texting friendships when married are uncalled for. They lead to something deeper.

Being friends is fine. Stop being texting friends.

Texting crosses a line.

Edited December 23, 2020 by sheep123

[Zona]

Having healthy, agreed upon boundaries is essential to a strong marriage, so you have every right to ask them to knock it off.

Why does she get all the blame? What about your husband? Seems like he was going along with it.

[Wiseman2]

Three is a crowd. It's disrespectful to you to care more about this unseemly texting chitchat than your concern or feeling about it.

Tell him you want to go to marriage therapy. Let him know you mean business that this nonsense is creating a rift in the marriage.

You spoke to both of them and yet it persists. Avoid being gaslighted with the "it's your imagination, you're just jealous" routine.

If it's creating a problem, well..then it's a problem.

[peachpie]

oh gosh 

Edited December 24, 2020 by matildag

[sheep123]

9 hours ago, Zona said:

Having healthy, agreed upon boundaries is essential to a strong marriage, so you have every right to ask them to knock it off.

Why does she get all the blame? What about your husband? Seems like he was going along with it.

She's the initiator of all texts. He's caught in the middle answering her questions as he didn't want her being upset with me for him being a jerk for ignoring her. . . I saw the texts. he wasn't hiding it.

In the texts, she wanted him to know how wonderful he is and how lucky I was. . . Totally uncalled for. If she needs help, text me or call me and I'm happy to put him on the phone.

There's a line you don't cross.

My H says she's probably mad at me for not trusting her ~ hence I ruined the friendship, but I don't know if men even look at texting the same way women do.

Is my H right? I say SHE ruined the friendship by disrespecting my wishes.

 

[d0nnivain]

I wouldn't like what you described either.  It's the secretive exclusive nature of it that I find troublesome. 

That said I occasionally text my friends' husbands & I know some of my GFs are in touch with DH.  If it's random & social, it's usually to both spouses, like the Merry Christmas texts I may send out later will be to both.  But sometimes a friend's husband will be a subject matter expert & I may ask a series of business Qs.  There is no need to involve my friend but that exchange doesn't go on & on.  Similarly as I have mentioned many times, my husband is a Marine Veteran.  Many of my friends will text him for their friends & family with Qs about VA benefits. I don't need or want to be a part of that.  It's not a threat to my marriage.  It's his job.

Context matters. So does frequency.  Here texts full of compliments to him were out of line.  In the above example I may end an exchange saying "Thanks.  You're the best" but it's an expression of gratitude for the help.  I'm not trying to lure him away or undermine my friends' appreciation of their own husbands. 

What you described was something else altogether & unseemly.  When she didn't stop after you asked her to, she showed herself to be untrustworthy & not a friend to you or your marriage.    Your husband's "sin" was more banal -- responding to be polite but still once you asked him to stop he needed to be more blunt with this woman & tell her to stop / back off out of respect for you.  He needed to pick you & while he didn't break any vow, his failure to establish & maintain the clear boundary was hurtful. 

Your husband may be right that she ended the friendship because she became upset that you didn't trust her.  She was untrustworthy so her hurt feelings are not your problem. Good riddance to her.

Edited December 24, 2020 by d0nnivain

[sheep123]

25 minutes ago, d0nnivain said:

I wouldn't like what you described either.  It's the secretive exclusive nature of it that I find troublesome. 

That said I occasionally text my friends' husbands & I know some of my GFs are in touch with DH.  If it's random & social, it's usually to both spouses, like the Merry Christmas texts I may send out later will be to both.  But sometimes a friend's husband will be a subject matter expert & I may ask a series of business Qs.  There is no need to involve my friend but that exchange doesn't go on & on.  Similarly as I have mentioned many times, my husband is a Marine Veteran.  Many of my friends will text him for their friends & family with Qs about VA benefits. I don't need or want to be a part of that.  It's not a threat to my marriage.  It's his job.

Context matters. So does frequency.  Here texts full of compliments to him were out of line.  In the above example I may end an exchange saying "Thanks.  You're the best" but it's an expression of gratitude for the help.  I'm not trying to lure him away or undermine my friends' appreciation of their own husbands. 

What you described was something else altogether & unseemly.  When she didn't stop after you asked her to, she showed herself to be untrustworthy & not a friend to you or your marriage.    Your husband's "sin" was more banal -- responding to be polite but still once you asked him to stop he needed to be more blunt with this woman & tell her to stop / back off out of respect for you.  He needed to pick you & while he didn't break any vow, his failure to establish & maintain the clear boundary was hurtful. 

Your husband may be right that she ended the friendship because she became upset that you didn't trust her.  She was untrustworthy so her hurt feelings are not your problem. Good riddance to her.

Thank you.

She DID ask him lots of questions ~ questions her H could answer.

She did end texts with "You're the best."

It irritated me because it was weekly and it was stupid questions and the fact that I had told her to stop once before and for good reason.

 

 

[elaine567]

My guess your husband is playing a duplicitous game.
She and he were texting. I very much doubt you saw ALL the texts.
He now blames you for ruining the friendship and hurting her.
He has her back not yours...
Your marriage is I guess not as strong as you believe it to be...
 

[Lotsgoingon]

 

You have nothing to apologize for. Far from it (and I'm a guy), I actually think you need to draw a sharper line with hubby.

I worry you're treating hubby as some passive, clueless guy who has no power to set limits. Dude has a responsibility to repel outside threats, more than you in this case. I don't care if the other woman initiated the texts. Hubby could have said "stop!" And damn the awkwardness. When it comes to threats to the marriage, awkwardness is unimportant. Her flirty texts have caused the awkwardness.

Sounds to me like hubby isn't as good at setting boundaries  and that he might be conflict averse. He is also extremely naive to believe you shouldn't see this woman as a threat. She's definitely acting like a threat, and you'd be foolish to ignore that threat. But it's hubby's job to protect the relationship as well. Why didn't he cut it off? Not just not engage, but say No, stop texting?! Why didn't he do that?

I can imagine hubby's response: "it's no big deal." But the problem is that this little texting can insidiously slip into more and more intimacy.  She's already flirting and praising him--so she's already crossed a line. And if hubby doesn't push back, this woman will likely escalate.  Pretty soon passive hubby (sorry that's a judgment) will have normalized a certain inapproprirate level of flirting with this woman. Sometimes it is NOT enough to simply ignore what someone does or says. The appropriate response is to push back and say "stop!" I can see easily in the future where had you not intervened, this woman in her  gradually and sly way calls hubby out of the blue--maybe at work, away from you.  She one day talks over some emotional issue with hubby and asks hubby to meet her for drinks. Hubby says no or gives some weak response. Woman later asks hubby again (since hubby's "no" is so weak)  and without an ability to firmly say "NO!" and "Stop!" he might slip into going out ... and then ... Affairs happen as much out of naivete as out of lust, especially when a particular person has trouble saying no.

So hubby is wrong to not see the disrespect in this woman continuing to text him in flirty ways. But he's also wrong in not holding himself accountable for stopping the texts. 

And btw: this perspective comes from someone who has close relationships with married women. Three of my closest friends are married women. There is absolutely no flirting. No late-night texting.  No secret praising of the person as a wife partner or such. If you saw a transcript of our conversations and zoom calls, you possibly could remove the name of the woman and a random person wouldn't necessarily know I'm talking to a woman. You'd of course probably surmise that these friends were women because sometimes we talk about men and women and differences and sometimes they give me dating advice about how women think. Or they'll be talking about hanging out with their sisters and so on. 

So why is confronting this woman your job?! It's hubby's job to repel the threat! And hubby's passivity has you coming here doubting your own sanity. See how messed up that is?!

 

 

 

[sheep123]

4 hours ago, Lotsgoingon said:

 

You have nothing to apologize for. Far from it (and I'm a guy), I actually think you need to draw a sharper line with hubby.

I worry you're treating hubby as some passive, clueless guy who has no power to set limits. Dude has a responsibility to repel outside threats, more than you in this case. I don't care if the other woman initiated the texts. Hubby could have said "stop!" And damn the awkwardness. When it comes to threats to the marriage, awkwardness is unimportant. Her flirty texts have caused the awkwardness.

Sounds to me like hubby isn't as good at setting boundaries  and that he might be conflict averse. He is also extremely naive to believe you shouldn't see this woman as a threat. She's definitely acting like a threat, and you'd be foolish to ignore that threat. But it's hubby's job to protect the relationship as well. Why didn't he cut it off? Not just not engage, but say No, stop texting?! Why didn't he do that?

I can imagine hubby's response: "it's no big deal." But the problem is that this little texting can insidiously slip into more and more intimacy.  She's already flirting and praising him--so she's already crossed a line. And if hubby doesn't push back, this woman will likely escalate.  Pretty soon passive hubby (sorry that's a judgment) will have normalized a certain inapproprirate level of flirting with this woman. Sometimes it is NOT enough to simply ignore what someone does or says. The appropriate response is to push back and say "stop!" I can see easily in the future where had you not intervened, this woman in her  gradually and sly way calls hubby out of the blue--maybe at work, away from you.  She one day talks over some emotional issue with hubby and asks hubby to meet her for drinks. Hubby says no or gives some weak response. Woman later asks hubby again (since hubby's "no" is so weak)  and without an ability to firmly say "NO!" and "Stop!" he might slip into going out ... and then ... Affairs happen as much out of naivete as out of lust, especially when a particular person has trouble saying no.

So hubby is wrong to not see the disrespect in this woman continuing to text him in flirty ways. But he's also wrong in not holding himself accountable for stopping the texts. 

And btw: this perspective comes from someone who has close relationships with married women. Three of my closest friends are married women. There is absolutely no flirting. No late-night texting.  No secret praising of the person as a wife partner or such. If you saw a transcript of our conversations and zoom calls, you possibly could remove the name of the woman and a random person wouldn't necessarily know I'm talking to a woman. You'd of course probably surmise that these friends were women because sometimes we talk about men and women and differences and sometimes they give me dating advice about how women think. Or they'll be talking about hanging out with their sisters and so on. 

So why is confronting this woman your job?! It's hubby's job to repel the threat! And hubby's passivity has you coming here doubting your own sanity. See how messed up that is?!

 

 

 

Thank you.

I wonder if it's my perception and paranoia that made the texting seem worse to me than it was? Was I to allow this as she's a friend? Was it selfish of me to say don't text?

By the way,  he DID meet her in person many times in addition to answering her texts to help her with things.

Every article I read says texting is a slippery slope. She's cheated and my H can be a flirt. Not a good combo.

She's insulted about my "lack of trust" because we "are all friends" and I "should understand that." Her H is too busy to help her with things.

My H says he didn't see her praises of him as flirtacious at all. he said she was expressing her gratitude by saying how lucky I am, and how he's one in a million, and he's the best ever. . .I don't know ~ being a woman, I believe I could see her games. It appeared she was planting seeds. I read articles that women play helpless to make a man feel needed. . . I don't know. Am I paranoid? I just know I would NEVER text a married man.

If she had one-two texts/favors every now and then ~ fine, but needing him 2x/week for months is infringing, I feel.

Now no one is friends.

I am torn wondering if I should have tolerated it vs. did I save my marriage?

Edited December 24, 2020 by sheep123

[Lotsgoingon]

You have to take a stand in a marriage. If the marriage cannot stand this issue, then the marriage was on flimsy grounds to begin with. And trust me, if hubby can't set limits here, there will be others he'll struggle to set limits with. 

Why can't you believe in yourself? You afraid of disagreeing with hubby? 

There was no friendship with this woman if she's throwing a fit here. There was only the illusion of friendship. 

I do think texting is uniquely intimate. Phone calls between friends are better ... zoom meetings as well. Texting sorta has this meaning that I have the right to interrupt you now and interrupt you with little feelings I'm having right now.  It's a bit too intimate. I text my women friends, and they text me, only when we're setting up the next phone call or zoom meeting.  If I have an emergency going on and I want to bounce something off of one of my friends, I might text them and say I need to talk, urgent. 

This woman is also slyly criticizing her husband when she compliments your husband. That is flirting. And it's being inappropriately intimate. Your hubby is blind to what's going on. What he this blind when you and he were dating? Does he miss social cues? 

You cannot "win" this argument with logic. This is one of those times you just have to assert that you feel this way and draw the line. You don't have to convince hubby. Now is hubby being critical of you? That's a total mind twist. You are not being unreasonable. 

 

[Foxhall]

I guess women are always naturally suspicious at their man texting other women.

In my case I had plenty of years where I got no attention whatsoever from women and then all of a sudden in the last five years or so, I developed a few close women friends,

I enjoyed the novelty factor of this,

I have then been dating someone for about a year and a half now and she is not happy that I still text other women,

I find it hard to let go of the novelty factor, I enjoy having contact with these other ladies,

but I also want to make the relationship work and hopefully it can go the distance,

I know I enjoy having the attention of other women and I look on this as harmless,

I suppose if we ever get to marriage and so on , I cannot really justify having other close female friendships.

 

 

[Foxhall]

1 hour ago, Lotsgoingon said:

I do think texting is uniquely intimate

Interesting point,

it can lead to building temptation I suppose and things developing in a way they should not.

[elaine567]

11 hours ago, Foxhall said:

but I also want to make the relationship work and hopefully it can g the distance,

It may not go the distance if you hold onto these other women, knowing your woman is unhappy with your little harem.
Usually what happens is she tells you she is unhappy, you ignore it, it is "harmless".
On her end it starts to rankle, she may bring it up again, she may not, but again you continue to ignore it, it is no big deal, it is her problem not yours...
Resentment starts to build and one day she realises she has had enough... 
She is done.