Is It Okay To Be Jealous Of Opposite-sex Friends?-Nyssa's Opinions On Life-Page 2

Topics on Page 2:

—Is it okay to be jealous of the opposite-sex friends of my spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend?

Is it okay to be jealous of the opposite-sex friends of my spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend?

Not unless they’re sleeping together.

If you’re in an exclusive relationship, particularly marriage, it is common and natural to feel jealousy. However, unless your significant other (SO) is truly cheating on you and you’ve caught him/her red-handed, you must learn to trust him/her not to cheat on you.

(To clarify, “cheating,” or “adultery,” is sexual contact with another person. It is not, for example, having a close friend of the opposite sex, talking to someone of the opposite sex, playful flirting, hugging, snuggling, talking to an ex or someone who used to have a crush on you, etc.

(Though in order to keep yourself from crossing the line, I highly suggest avoiding porn or sexual fantasies about your friends. That helps you to see your platonic friend as a person, a fellow creature of God with feelings and opinions and talents, not as a sex object to lust over.)

Follow me down below the table of contents for the rest of this article:

Flirting and other supposedly “inappropriate” behavior

By “flirting,” I do NOT mean it’s okay to touch your friend in inappropriate places, such as the breasts or backside or thigh. That is more properly called “coming on to” or “seducing” or “groping.” I also do NOT mean putting your tongue down her throat. By “flirting,” I mean what is also called casual, innocent banter.

As Christine Schoefer writes in the Salon.com article Strangers in the Night, Americans often get too uptight about flirting, making it a part of seduction, when it should be perfectly natural for anyone to flirt with anyone no matter what their orientation or marital status, expecting nothing more than a moment’s diversion:

There is no question that most of us have flirted strategically at some point. But what if mating is not on our minds at all? What if we are happily settled, and dating is the last thing we desire? Do we disregard everyday erotic vibrations altogether for fear of being misinterpreted as hunters on the prowl?
In the past few decades, even strategic flirting has come under attack. The women’s movement, which coded all erotic innuendo as patriarchal, blasted flirtation as yet another means by which men objectified and intimidated women. It took me years to realize that flirting was not misogynist by definition and to reclaim it as fun….
When practiced artfully, flirting is as light as a chocolate soufflé, stick a fork into it and it collapses. The pleasure of flirting is that you can play whether you are in a committed relationship or not. On my European travels, I learned that you do not have to be young, beautiful or single to flirt, just alive. Regardless of your sexual orientation, you can engage in it with men and women.
I have flirted with solidly committed white-haired men, with women as married as myself, with adolescent lifeguards and ice-cream vendors. Sometimes, I fear that if I go too long without a European sojourn, I’ll get too rusty to pass on this art to my daughters.
The worst a flirtation can do is to evoke jealousy in a third person. Because American culture teaches us to be single-minded when it comes to sexual attraction — seeking a partnership for bed or for life — acknowledging the erotic has an unsettling effect.
But since artful flirtation is not intent upon acting, it poses no threat, really. Watching a lover flirt with someone else can be like a pinprick piercing the bubble of our complacency, but what’s wrong with stirring up the energy?

So you have people getting upset with their flirtatious mates, acting as if they are cheating, demanding that they stay away from that flirtatious friend or co-worker.

I really feel this is too much being made about nothing. Some of my best friends are incorrigible flirts, never stopping even while happily married. Some people misunderstand, but most know they’re just having fun.

I remember a co-worker flirting heavily with my former boss, even touching his arm, but everyone knew she was just playing, and laughed. Meanwhile, furious wives write to advice columnists about their insensitive lout of a mate who lets his coworker flirt with him and touch his arm, then says she’s overreacting. (I forget if this was Carolyn Hax or Dear Prudence.)

Who do you think is happier–the spouse who gets jealous of a flirtatious mate, forcing him to change his ways, or the one who just laughs it off? Does the marriage contract read, “Even noticing that other people are attractive and/or fun to be around is now verboten“?

I’ve spent all of my adult life among people who enjoy flirting for its own sake. People who are happily married but see nothing wrong with innocent flirting socially, in the workplace, even at church. I don’t see why some people make such a big deal out of it.

I also have friends who have no problem cuddling up to you on the couch, putting a head on your shoulder, that sort of thing, and mean nothing more of it than friendship or maybe a little innocent flirting.

One girlfriend, my matron of honor, always wanted to loosen me up, and is a shameless flirt. I know and have known plenty of people–socially, at work, on BBS’es in the 90s, at school in the past, and especially in the Society for Creative Anachronisms–who flirt freely and shamelessly, including my matron of honor, whom I have known for 20 years and whom even marriage has not tamed. Guys often misunderstand her intentions, but she’s no trollope.

People at my last job used to flirt all the time: One of my bosses winked at me and flirted with me, one of the secretaries and any pretty girl who came to visit; I was sure one of the secretaries had a thing for my other boss, since she would flirt with him and touch his arm, and he would laugh and say “That Nancy,” but they were both happily married and it was just an innocent game. I never had a reason to think they had taken it to another level, that either of them were anything but faithful spouses.

I have also discovered that Greeks are huge flirts, constantly flirting with each other (despite being married to others for years), right in the church basement, but nobody taking it seriously. For example, the elderly altar server saying, “I have one wife but I need another.”

Or the 50-something guy flirting shamelessly with one of the 50ish ladies, telling her to show him her pretty face etc., during Greekfest meetings, even though both are happily married and I have no reason to think they were doing anything but flirting and playing innocent games. One old gent even told me I looked like I came from a certain island where the beautiful Greeks come from, and in his younger years, he would’ve gone after me. LOL

As for SCA people, I know a guy who will flirt with me and tell Cugan that he’s cute. I can be flirted with by three guys in one dance practice with my husband right there, and he doesn’t mind. When I first started playing in the SCA, Cugan told a guy friend that I was wearing a simple peasant dress; the guy said, with Cugan right there, “It’s not the dress, it’s the peasant in the dress.”

One day at a birthday party, Cugan and I went to visit a couple of his friends who I barely knew; the guy cuddled up to me on the couch and put his head on my shoulder, while the wife watched and smiled.

On a later date, his flirting got far more blatant and outrageous, but it was all done with his wife sitting right there, laughing and teasing him. She began telling stories of how flirtatious he gets, things which most people would consider way out of bounds–but it was made very clear that they’re not “swingers” and it’s all just in fun.

SCA people also hug freely. Modern Americans are far more reserved with displays of affection (such as hugging, kissing cheeks, or holding a friend’s hand) than many other cultures, present or past. Other cultures are often freer with flirting and/or shows of affection to family and friends or even strangers, especially the French and Italians. (See here and here.)

I also used to have a friend, Richard, who is a touchy-feely, big teddy-bear kind of guy who will cuddle up to you and fall asleep on your shoulder, or give you long, affectionate hugs–but all platonic, sweet, not at all sexual or romantic.

These people I know who do these things are not cheaters, not adulterers, just people who believe in showing platonic affection to everyone, having fun, and not being afraid to acknowledge that others are attractive.

My own flirting is mostly about eyes (if I feel comfortable enough to look in a guy’s eyes then I feel comfortable enough to flirt with him), laughing at jokes, and the occasional witty comment twisting something you just said into a double entendre. I don’t start hanging all over you or touching your thigh or trying to kiss you or anything like that.

I might get more playful online, such as a time I started spanking a fellow gamer for being cheeky to me in an IRC chatroom (and he enjoyed it). But that’s online, where you can do things like that and it’s just pixels on a screen.

I see nothing wrong with being flattered by flirting, or flattering others by it, as long as it stays at flirting. I also see nothing wrong with having the occasional crush on a friend, as long as you don’t freak out and think it must mean the end of your marriage, or act on that crush. It’s just being human, and being human and an adult also means regulating your behavior instead of acting on every impulse. We are not dogs to try to hump everything in sight, no matter how enticing the object.

I think it’s ridiculous to treat crushes as if they were somehow “inappropriate” behavior. “Inappropriate” is in the eyes of the beholder, and–as a commenter on the online version of the Carolyn Hax advice column once said in early 2011–a word used to control other people, beat them over the head for disagreeing with you.

I’ve read so many crazy things on the Internet–probably by much older people who have nothing to do with geek culture–on what are “signs of cheating,” things which show no understanding of modern culture among Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers, especially computer geeks, things such as late-night conversations must be cheating, going on the Internet late at night must be cheating, etc. When actually, in our crowd, such things are considered perfectly normal to do with friends.

Another sign of cheating I find laughable is, If your spouse keeps shutting down whatever they’re writing/looking at/reading when you come in the room, they must have something to hide, especially if they’re writing an e-mail to an opposite-sex friend!–But I do that all the time, and it has nothing to do with cheating!

It’s a matter of privacy. I’ve always wanted to hide whatever I was writing from onlookers, from my earliest days, which I hear is a common trait of writers. We don’t want you to see the drafts out of context and laugh at them, we want you to see the whole, finished product!

Same for e-mails to friends. Even if it’s an e-mail to a female friend, I’ll probably close it down before Hubby can see it, even if there’s absolutely nothing to do with him or affairs or anything else he might object to. I can tell you that I’m certainly not looking at porn, but still don’t feel like exposing every website to my hubby.

It’s not about hiding things, but about privacy. Especially as an NLDer who often gets into obsessive interests (such as, for example, things you see on this website: abuse, jealousy, Orthodoxy, NLD, fairies), I don’t want to have something open on, say, abuse (research for my website) and have him think it’s about him, or on Orthodoxy or NLD and have him think, “Oh geez, not that again!”

“Emotional Affairs”

I know the term “emotional affair” has been bandied about quite a bit in the last 10 years or so, but I never heard of such a thing before then [this was written in the late 00’s]. It reminds me of the 90s, when “stalking” began applying to all sorts of innocuous actions by harmless people, and little children were accused of sexual harassment.

To me it sounds like a bunch of bunk invented to make people even more paranoid about their relationships, both marital and with friends/coworkers. People used to say that “I’m married, not dead,” and that it’s perfectly normal to notice when somebody else is attractive, that you can look but don’t touch. Nowadays, even the looking without touching has become a reason to cry “betrayal” and want a divorce.

I’ve read bullet points for “how to tell it’s an emotional affair” that sound a lot like friendships I’ve had with women: talking for hours, emotional connection, sharing intimate details about your life. You also have the term “man-crush,” which is not at all sexual because the men involved are straight, but they talk about each other as if they were in love.

The “emotional affair” craze sounds like a way to keep couples so bound up in each other that they get cut off from the world, from the support systems they’ll need when one spouse leaves or dies. It’s healthy to have deep friendships with others and not make your spouse responsible for all your emotional needs, and people often have such friendships with an opposite-sex friend.

Also, having a crush on somebody but minding your boundaries is hardly the same as sleeping with her, yet lately it’s being treated the same as if you’d taken her to a hotel room. While Christ cautioned us against lust, the commandment against adultery refers to extramarital sex, not caring for a friend sans lust.

Now, of course, every once in a while, perhaps a wife will have a relationship with another man which is very much like dating, except without the sex. Maybe they sneak around, talk about how much they want to be with each other, make out, have phone or cyber sex, but never actually sleep together. In such a case, maybe it’s not a physical affair, but they’re taking all the steps that lead to a physical affair, and it’s deliberate. Do we really need to call it an emotional affair to show how wrong it is?

However, that’s hardly the same thing as connecting with and/or simply having a crush on one of your friends. I like this definition on Urban Dictionary:

A pop psychology term which instills a sense of impropriety when describing Platonic and courtly love (and other forms of intimate non-sexual association). Since the relationships it defines are by definition chaste, its use is misleading and is often used manipulatively.
“You call it coffee with a college professor, I call it an emotional affair.”

A supposed “emotional affair” is depicted in George Sand’s Indiana. When this girl wanted to have a purely emotional, non-physical romantic love with a man other than her husband, the man didn’t put up with it for long.

I think that if there truly is anything harmful about your opposite-sex friendship, it soon will show itself when the two of you start getting more and more physical, steal kisses, start putting your hands in the forbidden zones, etc.

Unless you’re contemplating sleeping with or leaving your spouse for this person, unless you’re beginning to hate your spouse and are not willing to keep the fire alive, I wouldn’t call it an affair–no, not even if you have a little crush on each other.

Trust vs. Destructive Jealousy

Let’s calm down and remember our spouses are only human. I believe this can only help our marriages. Now, if your SO really has cheated (and I mean actual affairs here), then jealousy and checking up on him is justified: He has to prove himself worthy of your regained trust, or be kicked to the curb. But if your SO has never cheated, then the following applies.

In doing a little research, I discovered, to my surprise, people all over the Internet excusing and even praising jealous behavior. I found people who thought it perfectly normal and acceptable to be jealous if one’s SO had a good friend of the opposite sex.

I thought we had evolved past this, particularly after feminism brought so many women into the workforce and helped women see they weren’t just possessions of or sex objects for the men. I thought Generation X (my generation) felt jealousy was bad behavior, since Generation X is used to making friends of either sex.

Yet in one blog comment thread I found jealousy of the SO’s platonic friends not only excused, but even lauded–not only in the older generations in which women made friends with women and men made friends with men, but in Generation X and the Millennials! In fact, some of them even criticized the philosophy that we should trust until given a reason not to, calling it naive! One person even referred to the “necessity” of “babysitting” one’s SO!

(Note: For the above paragraph, when I wrote this in probably 2009 or 2010, I linked to blog post Platonic Friendship. However, on reviewing this link, there is nothing there about “babysitting” SOs. I suspect that such comments were once made on the Feminist Gal’s linked blog post, but later removed. Or that I linked to the wrong post. It was too long ago to be sure. In any case, Feminist Gal has a good post on platonic friendships. For example, the below quote:)

Aside from being a heteronormative question, assuming that all men are attracted to women, it is also a question engrossed in strict gender roles and stereotypes. For these two reasons I hoped this would cease to be debated in 2009, when apparently we live in a post feminist society where men and women are equal and free thinking… (that was snark if you couldn’t tell).

Yet jealousy and possessiveness tear couples apart. When you know you’re innocent of wrongdoing, being suspected by your SO is stressful and causes resentment: Will your SO go through your things while you’re out? Will your SO chew you out if you come home late from work, thinking you were sleeping with your platonic friend?

Jealousy also places stress on your opposite-sex friend or co-worker, who was just being your friend and now is suspected of having designs on you. “Why should I be put under suspicion just because some other women cannot be trusted? I am not them!” she says.

So your friend also feels resentment toward your SO, making it much harder for the two to become friends–which also makes it harder for the jealous spouse to trust the friend, causing a vicious circle. If you’re the jealous one, it causes you stress, because you’re constantly worrying about what your SO is doing when he’s out of your sight.

Jealousy is a destructive passion which leads to all sorts of wickedness, such as murder.

Some people might think they have the right to treat a spouse like property and control the spouse’s thoughts and actions, and feel justified in bullying opposite-sex friends. The spouse might even act flattered, like this must really be love. But it’s never okay to bully, whether for jealousy or whatever reason.

If you feel you have to monitor your spouse’s friendships to keep him/her faithful, if you feel you have to okay the friendships, check up on them, read their online chats and e-mails, etc. etc.–then either you’re an insane control freak or you need to divorce this person for not being trustworthy. Don’t put your spouse and their friends through this hell because of your own insecurity and lack of trust.

This behavior is NOT okay, and don’t expect your spouse to “respect” your feelings when you’re not respecting his ability to choose his own friends and stay faithful.

NEVER let a jealous person define for you what are “proper boundaries” or accuse you of not having them. A jealous person doesn’t know what they are, especially if they are (as is often the case) also abusers. The jealous person needs to accept you as you are, with your own self and your own choice of friends, or they will have to say good-bye to you.

Trusting your SO causes both of you to feel calm and happy. Your SO will be far more likely to live up to that trust, and not want to leave you. Jealousy, on the other hand, causes some people to go out and cheat out of spite: “She thinks I’m cheating anyway, so I might as well do it!”

If you trust your SO and he still cheats on you, that does not mean you were naive. Rather, it means that your SO was not good for you; the fault is his for betraying your trust, not yours for trusting him. You might as well find out sooner rather than later. If the experience causes you to become jealous with your next SO, you’ll probably find yourself alone again very soon, as your SO begins to say, “Why should I be punished because your ex cheated on you? I am not your ex!”

The Bible tells us not to be jealous. Note that when God refers to Himself as a jealous god, this is when the people of Israel are worshipping other gods beside Him. In other words, God is jealous when Israel is really and truly straying from Him. This is compared to adultery.

So why would it be acceptable for us mere humans–who, unlike God, often take jealousy too far and turn it into hatred, obsession or even murder–to be jealous of an SO who is not sleeping with anyone else?

Crimes of Passion

As for murder, I was shocked, dismayed and aghast to hear a Christian friend–who wanted to become a priest–try to justify violence if you discover your SO has been cheating on you. Violence is never justified by jealousy!

Even if you catch your SO on your bed in the very act of adultery, if you beat someone up, throw someone out the window, grab a baseball bat (like the preacher on The Apostle, which sparked that conversation in the first place), or pull out a gun or sword to murder the offending parties, you are NEVER justified. You are now a murderer, which is a far worse crime than adultery.

Soothing your offended ego is nowhere near as important as being an enlightened human being who controls your violent impulses. God demands that His followers learn to control those violent, destructive passions, if they want to be saved, and warns us that indulging them will destroy our souls.

Any preacher or priest who tells you otherwise, is preaching a false Gospel. Those violent passions include anger, jealousy, murder, and all forms of abuse, and controlling them is not just a job for monks shut up in a far-off monastery.

If You Love Someone, Set Them Free

Many years ago, I was heavily influenced by the words of Animotion (“Let Him Go“) when considering how to deal with my boyfriend, now husband. I had no problem with his many female friends; this confirmed my feelings:

You’re holding him so tight that he can’t move.
If you never give him room you’re gonna lose.
He’s feeling like he’s tied up in a knot:
Every time he comes home late he’s on the spot.
Trust him to be the kind of man he wants to be.
You aren’t gonna keep him long if you give him the third degree.
Let him go, let him go, do the things he’s got to do.
Give him the freedom that he needs even though it worries you.
Let him go, let him go, have the faith that he’ll be true.
It’s the only way you can be sure he’ll come back to you.
…
But you poison love when you mix it up with fear.
…
If you both have room to grow, then you’ll live in harmony.
—lyrics

In contrast, many people have the erroneous idea that “Every Breath You Take” by the Police is a love song to be played at weddings, not realizing it’s really about obsession and stalking. Maybe this in part explains why jealous behavior is still so often defended:

Every breath you take
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I’ll be watching you
Every single day
Every word you say
Every game you play
Every night you stay
I’ll be watching you
Oh, can’t you see
You belong to me
How my poor heart aches
With every step you take
—lyrics

(Well, then, won’t it do his heart a lot of good to not watch her do these things with other guys?)

When he was with the Police, Sting sang many songs about obsession. This was not to praise obsession or call it appropriate behavior; not by any means! Here are his true feelings about jealousy and possessiveness:

If you need somebody, call my name
If you want someone, you can do the same
If you want to keep something precious
You got to lock it up and throw away the key
If you want to hold onto your possession
Don’t even think about me
If you love somebody, set them free
…
You can’t control an independent heart
Can’t tear the one you love apart
Forever conditioned to believe that we can’t live
We can’t live here and be happy with less
So many riches, so many souls
Everything we see we want to possess
–From “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free”

Here is a forum from vitalcoaching.com which goes into jealousy in great detail, summing up my own feelings quite nicely about relationships with platonic friends. The site creator, a professional coach (life coaching, not sports), feels such relationships are healthy, even if they involve light flirting or crushes, as long as they do not cross boundaries: see here.

In the opinion of the site creator, Francisco Bujan, who also has these videos, while jealousy may be useful at times, and was necessary in the ancient world, times have changed. Nowadays, jealous behavior and possessiveness is unjustified and inappropriate nearly all the time. According to the website, what we need to do is to learn how to use our jealousy properly and learn to trust our SO not to cheat, whatever the circumstances. As the site creator writes here:

The main problem is that when they are in a relationship, many people assume they own the life of their partner. When you think of it, it does not make sense but that’s how many people behave: being possessive, endlessly demanding and controlling….
Still many women and men totally refuse to change because they are afraid to let go and trust. They believe that setting their partner free will invariably lead to infidelity….
The reason she does not see it as a problem is because her mind set is totally common in society. In fact, many of her friends might be doing exactly the same. They might talk about this and even encourage each other.

There is more good stuff to read on that page, about how such jealous behavior ruins a relationship. Bujan has videos for men here and for women here.

This website makes the excellent point that jealousy has “nothing to do with love; it’s a sign of possessiveness and lack of trust,” while in healthy relationships, two people trust each other until one does something to break that trust.

“Dear Margo” writes to a reader who has innocent friendships and does not cheat on his SO,

Even with her history, knowledge of you should encourage trust. I would strongly recommend that you not let any woman dictate your outside friendships; it is neurotic, a form of control and certainly a sign of insecurity. I would hang tough on this one, reiterate your faithfulness and see if she can manage….
If you are to have any future together, it is important that she get with the program rather than you give up your friends. —How to Smother a Relationship, 4/11/08

“Dear Prudence” writes,

Your wife is one of those people who keeps in touch with former paramours, while you are not. What to her is normal, innocuous contact, to you is a threat to your relationship.
In general, I think it’s unwise and undermining when a jealous spouse tries to force an end to such innocent contact. —Dear Prudence, now written by Emily Yoffe instead of Margo Howard, 12/27/07

Also see Annie’s Mailbox, 12/10/07, about a reader who has been best friends with her male neighbor for many years, but now is facing jealous spouses simply because she lost a lot of weight.

This Dear Prudence column, 1/1/09, is about a girlfriend who obsesses over the letter writer’s friend, whom he used to date and is still close to; Prudie sides with the letter writer, saying he’s given his girlfriend no reason not to trust him, and her jealous behavior shows they may be headed toward a breakup.

In the advice column “Ask Me Anything” in Redbook, October 1996, a reader asks if she needs to tell her husband about letters she has begun exchanging with an old high school classmate. The letters are platonic; the guy knows she’s happily married. The columnist, Ellen Welty, writes, “[T]here’s no marital law against having friends of the opposite sex; everyone does. Besides, renewing a long-lost friendship is a pleasure none of us should be denied.”

However, she recommends the reader tell her husband about the letters, so he won’t come across them one day and wonder why he never heard about her correspondence with this man–because this would give him reason to be suspicious. If the husband demands that she end it, however,

you can kindly defend your right to pursue it. (In a way, that proves its innocence.) Make it clear that the guy is in no way a threat. Tell your husband you understand why he’s not happy, that you’d have to work at accepting a female pen pal of his. But you would, if he gave you his word she was no rival.
You know, jealousy is a constant in marriage. But if we acknowledge the green monster, most of the time it’s content to ride in the backseat.

Of course, to me it’s strange to think of saying, “I’d have to work at accepting a female pen pal of yours.” At least one of my past boyfriends had a female pen pal, with whom I believe he went to high school, and I thought it was great. She sounded like a sweet person. My boyfriends also told me about past crushes or girlfriends; if one sounded like a nice person, I’d think highly of her.

When I first met my husband, he had a female pen pal as well, a friend he’d made who now lived in Tennessee. I never had a problem with her, either. And nowadays, my husband often exchanges e-mails with women he meets in the SCA, but when I find out about it, I just think, “Oh, good, he’s made a friend.”

Also, I’ve always e-mailed new and old guy friends, sent them letters, or chatted with them on BBS’s or forums, but my husband has never acted jealous. I just can’t imagine getting jealous over such things. It seems nonsensical to me.

In the December 1998 Redbook article The other woman in his life, Miranda Davis writes about her own experience being jealous over her husband’s “office wife.” He met her four years before in physical therapy school, and they ended up working in the same place, so they liked to talk over lunch or a beer about the stresses of the job.

They were just friends, but Davis still struggled with jealousy. She writes, “As broad-minded, secure women of the nineties, of course we’re not supposed to feel insecure or threatened by this sort of thing.” But it can happen anyway, since co-workers spend lots of time together and have their work life in common.

Part of the problem, according to Davis, is society’s double standard: It’s accepted and even expected for women to “have intimate friendships with a wide range of people,” but a “man is instantly suspect for nurturing intimacy with members of the opposite sex: ‘He gave you a book? He probably wants to have an affair!'”

But when a wife becomes jealous and possessive, this can backfire. Davis writes about a colleague who “made myself a third wheel. I forced invitations. I showed up for their lunch dates. I even called her….Although they tolerated me honing in, they resented it. And I felt humiliated.”

She now realized that she could very well have pushed her husband and his friend into each other’s arms through her behavior, but fortunately for her, her husband let the friendship die out instead.

Davis writes that the key to resisting obsessive, possessive and obnoxious behavior is communication.

When we are living up to our responsibility as one half of a dynamic, nurturing relationship, then there is room for other relationships without concern. Let’s be honest: Nobody leaves a fabulous relationship for no reason.

She also recommends trying to fill the need that friend is filling; this is where Davis and I differ in opinion. See “Am I supposed to spend most of my free time at home with my spouse/kids now that I’m married? Will that strengthen my marriage–or weaken it?,” for a full treatment of my views on this.

But in sum, it’s impossible to be all things to your spouse, because that will overstretch you and the relationship. Having friends outside the marriage will strengthen it and fight off the loneliness that even married people suffer without outside friends.

Wisdom from around the Web

As Samantha Field writes,

If every person on the planet exists in a default state of consent– which purity culture subtly and overtly teaches– and if it’s impossible for men and women to “just be friends” (as argued in a recent Relevant article), then of course bi people will be promiscuous. Duh.
According to many Christians, the only real way to ensure that you don’t have an affair is to avoid deep, meaningful connections to people you might be sexually attracted to (which, for them, is always someone of the “opposite sex,” which erases bi people and non-binary people). To them, men can’t be good friends with women and vice versa, and everyone needs to take super-duper-extra-careful precautions to make darn-tootin’ sure you don’t develop pants-feelings for people. Because, as we all know, once you have pants-feelings for someone you will have sex with them, because consent isn’t a thing.
But, for bi people, the “obvious” precautions in this context don’t make sense. What are we supposed to do– have no close friends? Ever? Never be alone with any person? Lock ourselves in our bedroom, Elsa-style? So, they don’t advocate that. Instead, they either a) refuse to acknowledge our existence or b) call us all sluts.

She also writes in Why No One Should Talk About Emotional Adultery Ever Again,

And, as a bi Christian, I need to ask all of us to stop talking about emotional adultery.
I ran into it yesterday when I was reading Real Marriage, as Grace and Mark reiterate several times how important it is for men and women to only have friendships with people of the [same] sex because the risk of “emotional adultery” is so great, and it makes me feel both anger and despair, because I’ve heard the same message preached from the pulpit less than six months ago, at a church that prides itself on its open-mindedness. It bothers me, deeply, how casual it’s usually presented, too– it’s just assumed by most Christians that this is just common sense. They say things like “be careful not to become close friends with a lady, guys,” as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and every time I hear it I want to cry because what they’re saying is:
Samantha, you cannot have any friends.
…If I can be just friends with women, then all ya’ll need to STFU about how guys and girls can’t be friends, and how risky close friendships are between people of the opposite sex. And I’ve been really close friends with some of the most amazing and beautiful women I’ve ever known, and yeah, on occasion wow she is so hot has interrupted my train of thought, but guess what? I’m a mature adult who values my relationships, and so far I’m the only woman in any of my communities who’s been out as queer. I respect my friends and their boundaries and the fact that they’re straight, and they will never be interested in me that way, which is fine.
It’s the same with all the guy friends I’ve had, too– and I’ve had a few really close friendships with guys. I don’t know what I would have done without those friendships, as they were the people who kept me going when I just wanted to give up, who showed me what love and acceptance looked like. But, even though we’ve spent a lot of time together– even alone– and even though they’ve been my emotional rocks through some pretty wild life seasons, it doesn’t mean that I was doing something “risky.” I was just being a friend.

Also in the comments, readers call it controlling and isolating believers and separating them from their support group, which also is a red flag for abusive relationships and cults. Maracae Grizzley wrote,

I can still remember the day I remember I first heard about the very *concept* of “Emotional Adultery” and I thought it was absurd even then. I was sitting next to my husband at his office because he couldn’t go to work unless I was there to drive him to work and back home again and he couldn’t stand to be in the office without me beside him.
The very idea that I would have to eliminate all *friendships* other than him, that I would be instructed to give him my passwords to all my accounts for “accountability monitoring” or what the hell ever just made me feel even more depressed and hemmed in.

Here you will find a forum thread in which a group of women say, Why should you have to ask permission to go out to lunch with an opposite-sex friend? And why should you have to bring along your husband or a girlfriend? You should be just as free to go out with your guy friend as you would be with a girlfriend. I have always had the same attitude. [Update: Link no longer works. Years ago, it went to the site Wismoms.]

In her article How to Keep the Peace Between Opposite Sex Friends and Significant Others/Jealous Mates and Platonic Friends: Who Do You Choose?, Shamontiel writes:

Being around parents who have a mutual understanding that they can have friends of the opposite sex, it floored me to date a guy who pretty much wanted me to abandon the few male friends that I have….
If Significant Other wants you to give up your friends now that he or she is in the picture, personally I don’t feel this is justifiable….
To give up a true friendship for someone else’s insecurities is not only unfair to that Friend, but it’s not fair to yourself. Friendships are few and far between, and if you luck out enough to find a genuine friend, don’t let that person go.
If you are faced with an ultimatum like this, ask your Significant Other if they like you for you. If they do, then they should be able to accept the package that comes with you, friends included. And if they don’t, then Significant Other needs to be with someone just like him/her.
There are those who enjoy Significant Others who should have side jobs as police officers, and then there are those like me who don’t have the time nor patience to humor someone else’s jealousy and insecurities. Walk to your door, open it, and kindly let Significant Other walk out. After all that explaining, it’s really not worth the trouble….
If you’re lucky, Friend will introduce you to someone less psychotic…
Don’t let your significant other control your friendships….
I’m just not a jealous person. I understand how some people may feel insecure, but my whole attitude is that if I have to babysit a man to get him to act right, I don’t want him. If he’s going to cheat, he’s going to cheat regardless and me playing FBI agent isn’t going to change his actions, only slow him down.

More quotes:

6. Have friendships with both sexes. “If you depend on one person in one house to sustain you until death do you part, that’s a ticket to divorce,” says [Iris] Krasnow [professor of communications at American University and author of the new book The Secret Lives of Wives: Women Share What It Really Takes to Stay Married], whose research found that women in the happiest marriages had a wide circle of friendships with men and women.
Close friendships with the opposite sex aren’t necessarily a sign your marriage is troubled: “Platonic friendships are a sexy pick-me-up without the complications of adultery.” —“The seven secrets of lasting love” by Madonna Behen, USA Weekend, April 27-29, 2012

One of the major signs of a controlling person is jealousy. While some jealousy is not a bad thing, it becomes out of control if someone accuses you of things that you haven’t done. For example….
Making eye contact with someone of the opposite sex, exchanging a few words with strangers, or even close friends…even if you didn’t initiate a conversation, working with co-workers if your job involves team work, etc.
Some or all of these things can set a controlling person off, causing them to abuse you either verbally, physically, sexually, or any combination of abuse. No one is entitled to have that kind of say over another persons personal experiences.
Cut this kind of behavior off right away. Show that you will not allow someone to abuse you in this manner.
Some of the other things such an abuser might try to control, is who you see, and when. They may not allow you to visit friends, or relatives, or have anyone come over, especially if they are not present. —Recognizing the Warning Signs of a Controlling Relationship

You may be more reasonable to be jealous if she has had history of being unfaithful, but, if not, you may only be creating your own jealous thoughts. —How to Avoid Being a Jealous Boyfriend

First, you must realize that you are being jealous and that it is causing a problem. This may seem easy, but many jealous people have a different idea about what is acceptable behavior when it comes to the opposite sex.
While one person might think that having lunch with a coworker of the opposite sex is fine, a jealous person would think it was inappropriate. The biggest hurdle is coming to the conclusion that what your partner did was not necessarily wrong, just different from your standards. —Green With Envy? Learn How to Control Your Jealousy

When you begin taking steps to creating a happy and fulfilling life for yourself, you will find the anger, the jealousy and the fear will disappear. Don’t listen to people who make you jealous.
Jealousy is not the same thing as love. Sometimes, people think that by feeling jealous about someone, they are loving them.
Jealousy is not love, it’s the fear and anger of losing love. Jealousy disappears when you are truly loving yourself and others for whatever experience you’re having. —How to Handle Jealousy

People find it difficult to dissociate love from sex. If two people express love and affection for each other it is assumed that they are lovers. The truth is fairly simple: two people like each other, are comfortable together and a special bond of friendship develops between them. —Can a Male and Female be JUST Friends?

To me, jealousy is to the relationship what the iceberg was to the Titanic. It has the ability to do great harm and totally destroy a loving relationship between two people.
At the heart of jealousy, however, is mistrust. Jealousy often arises out of one’s inability to trust another and its roots can be found in feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt, low self-esteem, and fear.
It also often leads to verbal and physical abuse, and is the leading cause of crimes of passion. In short, jealousy is a dangerous emotion if gone unchecked. Just like the iceberg, it can sink your relationship and create havoc in your world. —The Consequences of Jealousy

Going out to dinner with my friends (daughter, son, mother, father, brother, sister) is something I like to do and I sometimes like to do it alone.
You are perfectly capable of understanding that having other important relationships does not mean I am rejecting you. Healthy adults can keep many relationships going at the same time. Why don’t you try it sometime?
To the non-jealous: Have compassion on the jealousy-doer, who may be suffering deeply! But be honest, and don’t pander to his or her problem, or you will be helping to keep it burning. —Things to say, in your own words, to a jealous person

To be free, and if the individuals and the relationship are to survive, the virus has to be named, exposed, expelled, and then consistently resisted. The victim must learn to refuse to obey its demands and must remain out of control.
The perpetrator must learn that the behavior he or she believed would sustain the relationship will rip it to irreparable shreds. —Addressing jealousy

Placated (or appeased, or entertained) jealousy won’t dissipate. It will grow, yes grow, and become increasingly demanding. A woman who allows a lover’s jealousy to “work,” will discover the virus is never satisfied, will discover it only becomes more restrictive, more ridiculous. —Women and jealous men

Jealousy–In the beginning of a relationship, jealousy may seem like an expression of love or concern. As time passes, however, jealousy turns to entitlement and possession.
This can include falsely accusing you of having sex with others. Jealous behavior begins to isolate the victim, who may stop seeing friends, family, and spiritual advisers in order to please the jealous partner. —What are the warning signs (of abuse)?

BELIEVE JEALOUSY EQUALS LOVE
A common sign of domestic abuse is jealousy. The abuser doesn’t want his partner to speak with or form relationships with other men and women. This jealousy usually leads to the isolation of the victim from her friends. The victim of abuse frequently defends their partner’s jealousy and confuses it with love. —Know the Signs of Domestic Abuse

1.Jealousy: At the beginning of a relationship, an abuser will always say that jealousy is a sign of love: jealousy has nothing to do with love, it is a sign of insecurity and possessiveness. The abuser will question her about who she talks to, accuse her of flirting, or be jealous of time she spends with family, friends, or children.
As the jealousy progresses, the abuser may call her repeatedly at work (or home) or drop by unexpectedly. The abuser may refuse to let her work for fear she will meet someone else, or exhibit other strange behaviors (like checking her car mileage or asking friends to watch her).
4.Unrealistic Expectations: The abuser becomes dependent on the woman for all needs. He expects her to be the perfect wife, mother, lover, and friend. The abuser will say things like “If you love me, I am all you need, you are all I need.” The woman is automatically expected to know each emotional and physical need of the abuser.
5.Isolation: The abuser attempts to isolate the woman from all personal and social resources. If she has men friends, she is a “whore”; if she has women friends, she is a lesbian; if she is close to family, she is tied to apron strings.
The abuser claims that people who are supportive of her are troublemakers and may want to live in the country without a phone, or may not let her use the car, or try to keep her from working or going to school. —Signs to Look for in an Abusive Personality

Isolation
The abuser will control whom the victim sees, where she goes, whom she speaks to and what she does.
This can take the form of simply not allowing her to use the phone, have her friends round or visit her family, or ensuring it simply isn’t worth it by being in a bad mood because she left some housework undone, making her feel guilty that she was out enjoying herself while he worked, or even encouraging her – theoretically – to make friends, and then discounting them or complaining that she cares more for her friends/family/hobby than she does him or is neglecting him. Some abusers may move home frequently to prevent their victim from building a social support network.
Many abusers justify their control over their victim by stating that it is proof of their love, or that they worry about their safety when out, etc.
In reality however, the abuser needs to isolate his victim to feel secure themselves, they feel as though any relationship, be it family, friend or colleague, will undermine their authority over and take their partner away from them, i.e. poses a threat.
The effect of this isolation is that the victim feels very alone in her struggle, doesn’t have anyone with whom to do a ‘reality check’, and is ultimately more dependent on the abuser for all her social needs.
Forms of Isolation include:
* checking up on you
* accusing you of unfaithfulness
* moving to an isolated area
* ensuring you lack transport or a telephone
* making your friends or family feel uncomfortable when visiting so that they cease
* punishing you for being 10 minutes late home from work by complaining, bad moods, criticism or physical abuse
* not allowing you to leave the house on your own or taking away your passport
* demanding a report on your actions and conversations
* preventing you from working
* not allowing any activity which excludes him
* finding fault with your friends/family
* insisting on taking you to and collecting you from work —Types of Abuse

Do you think Jealousy means he loves you? Think about this….
Think it’s cute when he gets jealous when your talking to someone else of the opposite sex? Think about it going on until death do you part. After years it becomes accusing.
When he constantly questions if your sleeping with who ever is on his hit list at the moment something serious happens to your Spirit. You learn to stop talking to other men when he’s around because you know your going home to a fight. Jealousy means he is insecure…
it does not mean he loves you OH SO MUCH! If his jealousy makes you feel uncomfortable and changes your behavior or makes you walk on eggshells with other people when he is around…you are being mentally abused and controlled….
Does he need to know everywhere you are going and with who even though it would anger him to have you do the same to him? Does he pick and choose your friends and let you know by his attitude and/or actions? Does he enforce his choices with a fight or mental punishment if you do not follow his verbal or non-verbal recommendation? —Gentle Spirits of the Net, Are You Being abused?

While When Harry Met Sally is a fine movie, the ending feels to me like a Hollywood cop-out. I would have liked to see Harry and Sally show that a man and woman can be just friends. Instead, the movie has been accused of setting back by decades advancement in attitudes toward platonic friendships: Psychology Today: Can Men and Women Be Friends? TIME: We’re Just Friends. Really!

Also see: Just Good Friends

Trust

My husband and I have built our marriage on trust. Platonic friendships have never even been an issue. We can have whatever friends we like, and see them whenever we like. The only thing we cannot do is cheat. We’ve grown up around people who considered platonic friendships to be normal and natural, and jealousy to be intolerable.

I only objected to a boyfriend leering at other women or telling me he wanted to sleep with someone else (and for that he called me possessive); I would never think of forbidding platonic friendships or just looking at other women, because this was considered jealousy and possessiveness, and my boyfriend would quickly dump me.

So my husband and I were shocked to discover that so many people still think that jealousy is somehow okay.

Over the years, we both have had many friends of the opposite sex. Sometimes we both know them; often, only one of us does. Sometimes they are “couple friends”; sometimes they are single.

If we introduce a friend to our spouse, or if we don’t, it makes no difference. It never even occurred to either of us to require such things. We were surprised to find that some people do.

In fact, I LOVE that my husband makes so many female friends: It’s a sign of sensitivity and respect for women. (Think of Lloyd Dobler of Say Anything, who preferred to hang out with female friends.)

If we restricted ourselves to our own genders, we would cut off quite a lot of potential friendships. It’s hard enough finding good friends, especially in this day and age.

After 18 years of marriage, we have not cheated on each other, and are very happy with each other.

In the same manner as a woman is far more likely to submit to her husband if she feels she has a choice whether to do so or not, and it is not “forced” (and a man is far more likely to go along with his wife’s wishes if she is not a scold), a person is far more likely to be trustworthy when he is trusted and has been given the freedom to use his own judgment. If he doesn’t, then he has a character failing which would make it hard for him to be faithful to any SO, so it’s better to find this out before marrying him.

From The Psychology of Romantic Love by Nathaniel Branden:

Obviously jealousy can be damaging to romantic love. What is needed to counter this danger is the art of managing jealousy when it arises.
Typically, when people are jealous they respond with anger, accusations, tears, and character assassination of their partner. All of this tends to provoke defensiveness and counterattack on the part of the accused party. Screams, denials, lies, or angry silence take the place of authentic communication….
Sometimes, when we honestly admit our feelings of jealousy, when we move from talking about jealousy to the deeper level of talking about anxiety, fantasies of abandonment, and so forth, our painful feelings become less intense or vanish altogether.
Each partner needs to learn the art of leaving the surface and going to the root, to feelings of fear, of helplessness, perhaps to memories of past abandonment. (p. 199-200)

Jealousy also happens with same-sex friends

Jealousy can also strike with same-sex friendships; I have read various accounts on forums about a spouse who is jealous of one’s same-sex friend. Sometimes this jealousy leads to forbidding one to have that friend anymore.

My own ex-fiancé Phil, who was very controlling and emotionally abusive, did not like my friends. Those friends, by the way, were mostly women. (College is probably the one time in my life when my female friends outnumbered my male friends.)

If we ate a meal in the cafeteria with my friends, he would get upset if I wanted to sit and chat for long afterwards. He kept finding things wrong with my friends, whose only “fault” was that they saw how he treated me, didn’t like it, and therefore didn’t like him. He accused them of treating him badly.

Once we all had a birthday party; he started acting drunk, people got annoyed, and he left. Shortly after, he called me from my dorm (though I was still at the party), and got me to come to the dorm, making me leave the party. I had no idea until much later that another friend saw him there, and that he said to her, “She’ll come here, if she knows what’s good for her.” This majorly ticked her off.

After he broke up with me, a friend of his even told me that–if I wanted him back–I should distance myself from my friends. You know what? He’s gone, and I still have my friends. They were there before he came, and stuck with me and supported me after he left. They helped me to see just how badly he’d been treating me, so I wouldn’t want him back anymore.

My ex’s behavior is one of the symptoms of a controlling, abusive relationship, because it cuts you off from your support system. So I am always leery if I hear of a spouse or other romantic partner restricting friendships for any reason (except when the friends are clearly sleeping together). Could they be restricting those friendships out of a false sense of jealousy or because they fear the friend recognizes their behavior for what it is?

When I was first dating my husband Cugan, he often took me with him to visit friends. I didn’t especially care for some of them, who were a mixed bag.

There was one in particular who I was sure didn’t like me, a cute little blonde with a cute little blonde 2-year-old. The little girl loved Cugan, and he and the cute blonde mother were good friends, and she was single, so there was no reason for them not to get together if they wanted to.

I was almost certain that he was confiding in her about the problems we were having; I saw them go off alone together and chat (this was out in the country so they could wander nearby fields).

One evening, I was in the living room with her and somehow ended up chattering away to her, something I don’t do often but I do if I feel I click with a person. But I guess I was mistaken about clicking with her, because she abruptly got up and left the room. I eventually found her chatting with Cugan in the sitting room.

Now, if I were the jealous type–or even if it weren’t about feeling threatened so much as just wanting his friends to like me, and him to ditch them if they didn’t–I might have said something. I could have acted jealous, demanded that he not go off alone with her, demand that he not tell her about our problems, demanded that any female friend of his must first be a friend of me. But I didn’t. I kept my mouth shut.

This was not at all about lack of assertiveness, but about respect for his right to choose his own friends and how to conduct himself with those friends, as long as they’re not engaging in grope fests, tonsil hockey or the double-backed beast.

After we got engaged and then married, I still said nothing against this person. Because of people moving around, in time she passed out of our life; if she ever comes back, there will be absolutely no animosity between us.

In fact, except for a few exes (and that’s a lapse I’ve since regretted), I have never spoken against his friends or demanded that they be friends with me as well, even though on occasion they rubbed me the wrong way. (If I had, he probably would have broken up with or divorced me years ago.) I was so respectful of his rights that until recently, he had no clue that I ever had a problem with any of his friends.

He has also been quite reasonable about my friends as well, not even caring that I occasionally e-mail exes or spend long hours chatting with guy friends on Facebook or ICQ or BBS’s or IRC or whatever.

And our life regarding opposite-sex friends, colleagues and bosses has been uneventful, lacking suspicion or jealousy or bitter feelings or drama, except for the previously mentioned issue of the exes, which has long since been repented of and put to rest. That’s 18 years of marriage with no sign of ending.

Now that I’ve told you how we really feel about date night, you should know something else: Even though you’re our best friend, the mother of our wonderful children, and the love of our lives, this Friday night we’d really like to hang out with our buddies….
Please don’t make us feel even more guilty about it….But as much as we love you, you’re, well, not a guy. And now that we’re dads, what we need is to blow off some steam with our buddies….
You know the phrase that inside every man there’s a little boy? Actually, he’s a big dumb teenager, and if you let him go hang out with his friends every now and then, he’ll come home a better man….
So how about we call that expensive but totally trustworthy new babysitter with an MA in creative arts therapy and, as crazy as it sounds, go on separate date nights?
Maybe that’s not technically date night, but you can go hang out with your book club and discuss the revelations and disappointments in that new novel by the guy who wrote The Kite Runner, and we’ll check in on our “loser” best friend who’s “still single and always will be because he’s a total slimeball.” Later on, I bet we’ll both be really glad to see each other again. —What Your Husband Wants You to Know (But Isn’t Telling You)

Here’s the thing: You have every right not to like this guy or want him around, but your husband has every right to have a pal. Plenty of us have friends our men don’t care for, but woe to him who’s crazy enough to try to keep us apart.
So what right have we to tell our husbands they can’t have the same kind of companionship we want? —When You Don’t Like Your Spouse’s Friend

But let me tell you that if Mr Hickman, after marriage, should pretend to dispute with me my friendships, as I hope I am not quite a fool, I should let him know how far his own quiet was concerned in such an impertinence; especially if they were such friendships as were contracted before I knew him. –Anna Howe, spunky feminist character in the 1740s novel Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

Jealousy undermines your relationship

Jealousy has no place in a marriage (or any relationship, for that matter). It undermines the essential values that comprise a healthy marriage and makes it impossible for partners to relax and be themselves . It is a dangerous manifestation of selfishness that tears at the very fabric of a relationship.
When we exhibit jealousy, we are telling our partner that we don’t believe in them, don’t trust them, and care more for ourselves than we do for them. It shows that we are fearful, self-serving, and is at its core, simply a reflection of our own insecurity.
It unmasks an ugly truth about us, is an indication of our immaturity, demonstrates a lack of self-confidence and is counter-productive to developing an adult, loving, relationship that will stand the test of time….
Jealousy makes you do things that you later regret and brings no good and no joy to you, your partner, or your family. Many a murder has been committed because of jealousy. Many a relationship and family has been destroyed.
It creates drama and chaos and robs you both of any chance for a peaceful existence together. Jealousy leaves a path of pain and devastation whenever it gains a foothold in people’s lives….
If you suffer from jealousy or envy towards anyone, bear in mind that the problem lies with YOU, not with them. And in order to eliminate it from your life, you have a bit of work to do. —Love is Never Jealous or Envious

People tend to let the green monster get the best of them when their significant other wants to meet with an old friend of the opposite sex for dinner or other outing that only includes the two of them. Some partners get so obsessed that they demand their wife/husband only see friends when he/she is present or not at all.
Is this fair? Of course not. You are entitled to have friends and should not have to dissolve the friendships because of a partner’s insecurity. Should you worry about your partner having opposite sex friends? Not unless there is reason to worry.
Some spouses get upset because they fear their husband/wife will end up having an affair with one of their “friends.” While it’s not likely to happen in a happy, well-adjusted marriage it is possible. Oftentimes lovers start out as friends. In fact most people start out as friends before they end up committing themselves to a relationship.
But it certainly does not mean that people of the opposite sex can’t be just friends. Some of the closest, most long-lasting relationships are between people of the opposite sex. Jealousy is not an attractive quality. When a person is overly jealous or even downright possessive he/she risks pushing the person away that he/she is trying so hard to hold onto.
People don’t like being told what to do, not even by those they love the most. Demands and orders only make people more determined to do the opposite of what they’re demanded or ordered to do.
Holding on too tight can actually push your loved one away. Unfortunately they can end up being pushed right into the person’s arms that you wanted to keep them away from. Get your relationship on solid ground and tread lightly where friendships are concerned….
Healthy friendships with people of both sexes are a natural and important part of life. A healthy trusting relationship is even more important. There is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to have both. —It’s Okay to Have Opposite-Sex Friends

Contrary to what you seem to think, your average, sane guy won’t be jealous of his girlfriend’s friends. He may not like all of them, but if he values your relationship, he’ll at least be civil.
Not only that, but men who try to isolate the women in their lives often wind up beating the crap out of them once they’ve successfully driven away friends and family….
Lest you think that could never happen to you, if you look at any study of domestic violence, you’ll see that jealousy is the No. 1 predictor of domestic abuse.
Some other adjectives used to describe a typical abuser include controlling, overly critical, hypersensitive, and isolating. Sound familiar? —He’s Such a Jealous Guy!

“A loving relationship is one in which the loved one is free to be himself–to laugh with me, but never at me; to cry with me, but never because of me; to love life, to love himself, to love being loved. Such a relationship is based upon freedom and can never grow in a jealous heart.” ~ Leo F. Buscaglia

Keep your trust in your guy. It’s normal to have friends of the opposite gender, just because they go for coffee or lunch together doesn’t mean they are having an affair.
Build your own self confidence and respect yourself. Someone with a low self-esteem is more likely to get jealous compared to someone confident. Be optimistic and stop worrying about something that hasn’t happened yet, or might not happen at all it’s a complete waste of time and energy….
Always remember that no amount of nagging, monitoring, accusing, snooping, or guarding will prevent your partner from cheating or from you being hurt. —Jealousy is not Love

A general dislike of Jacob would be understood. But taking steps to prevent your partner from spending time with someone that you dislike is abuse, plain and simple….
Moreover, a part of this isolation is fully and unarguably intentional. When Edward leaves Bella, he flat-out forbids Alice, Bella’s best friend at the time, from seeing her. His motivation? To ensure a “clean break.”
But it is Bella’s right to decide when and how she wants to forget about their relationship. Presuming to dictate her healing process for her is the height of control — it is assuming that you have the right to a person’s thoughts. —Edward Cullen–Abusive Boyfriend

I also recommend the movie Wife Vs. Secretary (also here, here and here) as an example of how jealousy can ruin a perfectly good relationship.

(I’m especially interested in this movie because I was a secretary before I became a stay-at-home mother. The wives of my two bosses never showed any sign of worry, even though I was young, slim, etc. Apparently times have changed. But imagine if they’d been jealous of me–that would’ve caused a lot of trouble, and potentially jeopardized a job I needed!)

The secretary is attracted to Gable’s character, and if he never noticed his secretary’s charms (since she is, after all, played by Jean Harlow), you’d have to check his pulse. But their relationship is strictly business, never once becoming improper: Gable’s character loves his wife passionately, and his secretary–who has brains, not just beauty–also has good character.

Yet people begin talking. Though Myrna Loy’s character is initially very modern-thinking, all this talk makes her suspicious. One character says, “There’s an old Chinese proverb that says if you want to keep a man honest, never call him a liar.”

As Jimmy Stewart’s character says at the end of the movie,

Gosh, all the fighting and worrying people do, it always seems to be about one thing: They don’t seem to trust each other. Well, I’ve found this out: Don’t look for trouble where there isn’t any, because if you don’t find it, you’ll make it. Just believe in someone.

Here is an awesome little forum thread on jealousy. My favorite message is #35, in which a woman who has been cheated on before, says that she doesn’t have to trust any woman, but she does have to trust her husband to stay out of another woman’s pants even if she were to strip naked in front of him.

If she can’t, and has to “stand guard” over him or “mark her territory,” then the marriage is over anyway. She rejects the kind of marriage in which you have to do everything together and can’t even talk to another person of the opposite sex without your spouse being around or giving permission. [Update 11/15/14: Link no longer works.]

The Advice Goddess writes on October 6, 2009, to a woman whose boyfriend wants her to feel free to have single male friends, that:

Unless he’s a German shepherd or an unruly 3-year-old, you don’t get to keep him on a leash. If you’re insecure, work on getting more secure. If you don’t trust him, don’t be with him.
But, any grown man who isn’t doing time should be allowed to meet, unsupervised, with any person of his choosing. You can’t fulfill your boyfriend’s every need, and he’s going to relate differently one on one than he does three on one.
The couple that shares everything and everyone…bores each other unconscious. You’ll know you’re in trouble when you feel dumb saying “Guess what, honey!” knowing there’s no guessing needed by a man who’s spent three years bolted to your side–not just trying to keep from finishing your sentences, but trying to keep from starting them, too.

Do note that this boyfriend is fine with his girlfriend having single male friends. If he wanted to have single female friends but tried to restrict his girlfriend’s friendships, then we’d have a different issue entirely.

I thought of another jealous characteristic based on the behavior of the wife of one of my friends. She is not just jealous of women – she is jealous of ANYONE who her husband is friends with. So she acts up and creates issues in order to drive people away … and she is successful with that.
I mean – I am his best friend, and she’s gotten me to the point that I won’t go over to his house if she is there. She has also alienated my friend’s father … meaning that she makes it very uncomfortable for him to go over there. It is all so ridiculous. But she is hot, and my friend just doesn’t see things for what they really are!
So what she does is “acts up and creates issues in order to drive people away” because she is jealous overall … that is the point of this response in answer to the “what kinds of crazy things has a jealous girlfriend done” question. —Post on a thread about jealousy

It’s a danged shame when an SO’s jealousy drives close friends apart. It should be criminal. Friendship–true, lasting friendship–is hard to find and should be nurtured, never deliberately harmed.

Never assume that a wife’s jealousy is justified: If you investigate further, you could find a wife who is reasonably suspicious of a manstealer, but it’s also quite likely you’ll find someone who is insecure in herself and tries to control her husband by controlling who can be his friends.

From Carolyn Hax on September 26, 2010:

If the deepest scrutiny of your soul turns up no ulterior motives in these friendships, then your answer is simple: Announce your intention to do so, then live your life on your terms. Explain to your girlfriend, once (in your words):
“I have no secret love for these women, and I will keep the friendships out in the open. I love you, and I hope you will accept me, friendships and all — but if you can’t, then I will understand, and miss you. What I won’t do is end friendships that are valuable to me and based on good intentions. I can’t make you trust me, but I also can’t stay with you if you don’t.”
This isn’t just about you, or opposite-sex friends, or saving relationships. It applies to all of us, and it’s about not losing ourselves.

(Also read the reader comments. They are full of awesomeness about how we shouldn’t be jealous of our spouse’s friends, shouldn’t pick and choose their friends, shouldn’t let them pick and choose our friends.)

From Carolyn Hax on September 23, 2011:

Open your mind to every reason your husband’s warmth toward his ex-wife is actually very good for you. Here are some:
1. It makes sense on a purely practical level. If he does have some ulterior motive for the hugs and the Facebook friending, then your insisting he de-friend and de-hug her will do absolutely nothing to stop him. Going the short-leash route actually gives people compelling new reasons to seek emotional gratification elsewhere, from someone who doesn’t leash them.
2. It’s a gift you can give to your husband, to say you trust both him and your love. This is as close as earthbound creatures can get to magic. If he goes on to betray that trust, it won’t be your fault for giving trust; it will be his for abusing your gift.
3. It’s a gift you give to yourself. It’s so easy to be lulled into believing you are good and the ex is evil and that’s that. Think again: Since you married the same guy, you and the ex have more in common than distinguishes you. You have a vested interest in disposing him kindly toward the people he marries, even (especially?) after he divorces them.
4. It’s good for your soul, and when your soul is brimming, your marriage (and so much else) benefits.

A lot of wisdom about marriage is in this forum thread, which includes that spouses should give each other space.

More wisdom is on this page, which includes these and other bits about jealousy:

Someone said that it is possible to be together so much that we suffocate each other. Perhaps. I do not allow this to happen in my love relationship. I believe that love includes letting go when my partner needs freedom; holding her close when she needs care. I am committed to creating space in my relationship when needed….
* LoveNote. . . Don’t smother each other. No one can grow in the shade. ~ Leo Buscaglia….
At the heart of love, there is a simple secret: the lover lets the beloved be free. My love partner and I require different mixes of independence and mutuality, and the mix is freely discussed and renegotiated from time to time when necessary…..
When two people in a love relationship are complete within themselves they do not experience the love they have for others as diminishing, detracting, or threatening to the love they share. They are secure within the relationship….
Insecurities bring forth jealousy, which, in effect, is a cry for more love. It is within your rights to ask for more affection when self-doubts surface, however, the indirect way that jealousy asks for it is counterproductive. Excessive possessiveness is inappropriate. Jealousy is the surest way to drive away the very person you may fear losing….
It is an irony that the more possessive I am, the more love I demand, the less I receive; while the more freedom I give, the less I demand, the more love I receive. I take great pleasure in watching my love partner be fully free and fully alive!…
* LoveNote. . . Love is not possessive. ~ I Corinthians 13:4…
Trust is forever present in our love relationship; trust and deep commitment to each other, and loyalty and devotion. This allows us the freedom to care about people of the opposite sex and to enjoy friendships with them, and when we sit down together in the evening to share the events of the day, we do not have to ask if our love partner has been faithful.

More wisdom on jealousy is on this page, from the same website, including:

Emma Goldman once said, “All lovers do well to leave the doors of their love wide open. When love can go and come without fear of meeting a watch-dog, jealousy will rarely take root because it will soon learn that where there are no locks and keys, there is no place for suspicion and distrust, two elements upon which jealousy thrives and prospers.”

And from here:

Mature love partners permit each other the freedom to pursue their individual interests and friends without restriction. This is when trust presents itself. Mature love allows this level of separateness to bring lovers closer together. In this scenario separateness is perceived as a bond, not a wedge. It encourages love partners to celebrate their own uniqueness.

A list of sites on jealousy, platonic friendships and possessiveness

Psycho or Jealous?

Articles promoting platonic friendships, and showing why this modern concept is still so misunderstood

Overcome Jealousy in your Marriage

Signs he may be possessive

What does the Bible say about jealousy?

10/15/10 Carolyn Hax live chat with part about jealous girlfriend cussing out a friend

Handling His Jealousy

Some sites which state that “jealousy is not love”:

Google Search

Some articles from Dr.Phil.com:

Controlling Jealousy

Dealing with a jealous spouse

Affair-Proof your marriage

Let’s be free and open with our friends–leaving sex out of it

Here is an Annie’s Mailbox (Wednesday Feb. 2, 2010) about a wife becoming jealous of a husband’s meetings with an old co-worker. I noticed in the reader comments that a lot of people vehemently disagreed with the Annies, but I agree: The only thing I could see that he actually did wrong was to lie about who he was with.

You can’t base the charge of an affair on the e-mail that was quoted, or on him seeing an old friend who happens to be a woman. There was nothing “inappropriate” about saying same time, same place, or signing it with “love.” Heck, I sign “love” to all my friends, whether they’re male or female! Have I truly been “inappropriate” in all my friendly e-mails all these years? I really don’t think so!

“Love” doesn’t mean “I want to jump your bones,” people! What is that feeling I have for my parents, child, friends–is that merely high esteem? Can you only have close bonds to the person you’re having sex with? I love all my close friends and am not afraid to say it, no matter what their gender.

I’ve been shocked and amazed to read in the comments on the Annie’s column, that some people think it’s somehow “inappropriate” and a sign of adulterous intent to sign e-mails to opposite-sex friends with “love”; that’s ridiculous!

Are they not aware that “love” in English means all different kinds of love, including platonic, familial and brotherly/sisterly? Americans are getting far too uptight, it seems, so that girls can’t even hold hands without people thinking they’re gay. It’s ridiculous.

I never, ever allow myself to have sexual fantasies about any of my friends, acquaintances, co-workers or fellow churchgoers, no matter how attractive they are.

I know that Jeff is at least occasionally attracted to his friends; if he wasn’t, I’d have to check his pulse, because some of them are quite pretty and/or flirty. I also know that he flirts on occasion.

But this is all just part of being human. You can’t just turn off that part of yourself when you get married. If you could, then laws or customs against adultery would not be needed.

But we are not animals, and don’t have to act like animals, driven to hump everything in sight. We have intelligent brains and the ability to control ourselves, to banish lust from our thoughts, to see others as attractive–yes–but also as human beings with dignity. We can love without lust; we can have crushes without sexual fantasies.

Refusing to befriend someone of the opposite sex is, to me, a kind of modern chauvinism, refusing to see the other sex as anything but a way to satisfy your lusts, reducing women and their worth to how pretty they are or what they want to do in bed.

So even if I do find a friend attractive, I never, ever cross that boundary, never try to get him into bed, never try to lure him away like some vixen, and always banish sexual thoughts about him from my mind. I look at his face and his mind, not his body.

I know that Jeff also does his best not to look at women in underwear ads or let himself have sexual fantasies about his friends.

It is ludicrous to me to try to control not only what your spouse does, but his thoughts as well; trust makes for a far easier life, without all that drama in it. Controlling, on the other hand, leads to affairs. It seems contradictory, but it’s true, because a decent person will strive to be worthy of your trust.

But if you treat a guy like he’s going to cheat on you if you let down your guard, he’ll probably start thinking, “I’m getting punished anyway for cheating, even though I’m not, so I might as well cheat.”

I thought that such outdated thinking about opposite-sex friends was long past, a relic of the times before feminism. But apparently there are still lots of people who think that men and women can’t really be friends, that if you care deeply for someone it must be romantic love, etc. As if caring deeply for another person is impossible or even “inappropriate” unless you are married to or related to them.

I believe there should be more love in the world, not less, that we should love freely and deeply and openly, that we should not be afraid to express that love because of ridiculous ideas of what’s “appropriate” that change depending on who you’re talking to.

Flirt freely. Keep sexual relations in proper boundaries, but don’t be afraid to love. Don’t be afraid to express to your friends how you really feel. Cuddle up next to your same- or opposite-sex friends on the couch, like a friend of mine does.

Don’t act like modern Americans who think that Frodo and Sam must have been lovers to care about each other and act the way they did, when they were not. Save your friends’ e-mails and letters, chat with them every day if you like, send them cutesy Facebook hearts if you want.

Don’t treat love like it must be kept contained or else you’re a stalker, having an emotional affair, weirding out your friends, or some other such crap. No wonder so many people keep acting violently in our culture!

A friend once explained to me that Americans are far too reserved these days, that it used to be seen as perfectly normal and NOT sexual to hug or hold hands or whatever with friends as well as family members or spouses.

I told him that in the last two books of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Frodo and Sam would hold hands, fall asleep cuddled up with each other, call each other dear, hold each other, and the like, and that’s why I joked about them being lovers.

But he said that the fuss in America over Frodo and Sam’s supposed homosexual relationship was silly, that no one would have dreamed they were homosexuals back when the book was written.

Internet searches showed that other cultures are indeed often freer with flirting and/or shows of affection to family and friends or even strangers, especially the French and Italians. I read about cuddle parties; I read about cultures in which a man would touch another man’s thigh and there was nothing gay or sexual about it.

I read about how the lack of touching among Americans, except with people they’re sleeping with, could lead to a huge disconnect that leads to violence, and–according to one of the commenters on the Slacktivist blog–people craving touch and thinking they have to find a lover to get it, then going from one bad relationship to another, when all they really need are platonic friends to cuddle on the couch with and watch movies.

(I believe this was in the post “Love, Apocalypse Style,” but since the blog moved to Patheos, I don’t know how to access the old comments.)

According to this website:

I believe that touch is an essential need. We know that babies thrive on touch as do cats and dogs, so why not people? Modern society puts severe limitations on touch so that many people feel constrained or avoid it.
Bad idea! Learn to touch those you love in ways that they enjoy. This should be done everyday, all during the day, and be as much a part of life as food or sleep.
In today’s society touch and sex have often become confused. While sex involves touching, touch does not necessarily involve sex. Some people see touching as a violation of their person space. Some groups, cultures touch each other much more than others.
What is acceptable varies considerably within a home and within a culture. And yet the basic need for all of us to be touched is essential and needs to be addressed.

And according to the Cuddle Party website above:

Our society is a little confused (or a lot!) about the nature of touch and sex. All touch, and all cuddling, is not about sex. Sadly, in a society in which they get lumped together, most people have very little opportunity for touch or cuddling that isn’t part of sex. We believe this is a great loss.
Human beings of all ages need touch and affection. We never outgrow it. As we re-discover non-sexual touch and affection, find a spacious and generous opportunity to enjoy and explore kindness and human affection with others. And we have more fun.
Cuddle Party is specifically designed to leave the sexual kinds of touch off the menu, so that the more inclusive, non-sexual kinds of touch have a chance to be found and enjoyed.
Many people find this quite natural. For others, it’s a new experience, or even challenging. Many people are surprised to find such a rich, comforting, playful and fun experience.

There’s a huge gulf between adultery and showing nonsexual affection for a close friend. If we cut ourselves off even from innocuous and nonsexual forms of affection even from close, dear friends just because we’re married, what a sad, lonely life we must lead.

If you’re taller than the person you’re hugging, go ahead and nuzzle the top of her head. Put your hand over the hand of a friend, and grasp it if they need reassurance about something. Let your friend literally cry on your shoulder. Kiss your friend’s cheek. Go up to your friend and, if they’re sitting and you can’t do a full hug, put your arm around them and touch your cheek to the top of their head, or nuzzle their head.

If you’re both in a car, then put your head on their shoulder for a second as a mini-hug. If you’re on a couch watching movies, go ahead, put your feet on their legs, or fall asleep on their shoulder. Massage their neck, pat their shoulder, scratch their back.

Male, female, who cares? Don’t act like we’re diseased and can’t touch each other unless we’re in a romantic relationship with each other! Be free! This isn’t about sexual “free love,” this is about expressing how much you care about your friends and family!

I never would’ve thought of doing these things, with my American and possibly Asperger-ish reserve, if it had not been for Richard mentoring me on how they’re perfectly fine for platonic friends to do. I was never quite as comfortable with it as he was, and wondered what he meant by it at first, but he taught me that there was nothing to worry about, that Americans are too reserved, and made me feel silly for ever thinking he meant anything more than friendship.

Then I became an advocate of such things myself, and discovered the Cuddle Party people online, discovered that other cultures and time periods have been freer than our own with nonsexual touch, discovered that I have SCA friends who are just as free with their friends as Richard is with his friends.

I don’t like being extremely reserved. I want to be like the people in the SCA. I want to follow the philosophies of the Cuddle Party people. I want to teach my son to be open and free, to cuddle with his friends and family, to not be reserved and averse to touch like my own family.

I want to seek out the ones who love freely and want to stamp out all forms of violence, hate and suspicion, since I know they’re out there, finding traces of them on the Internet (such as the Cuddle Party people) and in music by the Beloved, Shamen, and the like. Even if they are New Agers, Buddhists or some other religion than my own, they express the love for mankind that my own religion is supposed to be about.

Also see this post.

And this leads into the topic of…..

Page 3, Abuse in all its forms: My Thoughts, Quotes and Links to help

–First written 2008/2009, and slightly modified in the years since.

Topics on Page 1:

—Technical Virginity–i.e., how far should a Christian single go?

—Are Spiritual Marriages “real”?

—Am I supposed to spend all of my free time at home with my spouse/kids now that I’m married? Will that strengthen my marriage–or weaken it?

Topics on Page 3:

—Abuse in all its forms: Links to help

—My Personal Stories

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