Uncomfortable with my partner’s opposite sex friends

Some friends are considered by spouses as too close for comfort

The decision to get married or become intimate with someone must be a well thought out and deliberate step in one’s life.

There are quite a lot of things you need to put into consideration. It involves making sacrifices, abandoning selfish tendencies and choosing to take up responsibilities.

Relationships demand that we make sacrifices from time to time. Sometimes we need to sacrifice our happiness, our friends and behaviors just for the sake of making our partners comfortable and keeping our relationships moving.

Almost in every relationship at least one of the partners is required to give up their friends of the opposite sex especially if that is what makes the other partner comfortable.

People are never comfortable seeing their partners too close to their ‘friends’ of the opposite sex.  But in reality, many opposite-sex friendships involve people who, if circumstances were different, might be potential sexual partners.

Indeed, many opposite-sex friendships are maintained because of a simmering attraction. One or both people are keeping their “friend” on the back-burner as a potential mate in the event their current relationship ends.

The spouse begins to leave the room to text his or her opposite-sex friend, leaving the other spouse in a state of anger, anxiety and profound hurt. When asked to end the friendship, the spouse often becomes indignant or outright belligerent, and may try to turn the entire situation around so that his or her spouse must go on the defensive, desperately trying to explain why the opposite-sex friendship is wrong and how it is affecting the marriage.

But the truth remains that most infidelities start with an opposite-sex friendship that quickly becomes intense and emotional due to the false sense of intimacy involved with text-messaging.

They then escalate into a full-blown emotional or sexual affair. If your partner has a friend of the opposite sex, you have got to evaluate whether or not you have the reason to get concerned.

Everyone has the potential to get jealous, and some more than others. Maybe you’ve been cheated on before, or maybe your mom cheated on your dad. Whatever the reason, you can’t help the way you feel.

However, not all feelings are justified. Ask yourself some questions: Has your partner ever given you a reason to think that there is something going on between them and their old friend?

Has she ever lied about hanging out with him? Does she freak out when you look at her phone when she is texting him? Do they have a lot of inside jokes that he doesn’t share with you?  If you are shaking your head no to all of those questions, then you probably don’t have anything to worry about.

They say forewarned is fore armed. Maybe you need to know your partner’s friends better. You can also make them your friends. It can help you get to know if these relationships are healthy.

Otherwise you may wrongly think that there is an affair between your partner and their friends when actually it is plain friendship.

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