Boyfriend doesn't understand boundaries with female friends? (dates, guy, partner)
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Maybe they'll pick up in my late 30s and early 40s, when there's a higher propensity for women to just seek companionship as they've had a better chance of being married/divorced and not wanting to go down that path again?
Correct. Especially 40's. You can almost set your watch by it, in my experience.
A lot less drama and much more laid back, if you will.....
So my boyfriend (28M) is the kind of guy that has multiple female friends that he hangs out with casually, maybe once or twice a month and texts often. In the beginning of our relationship I (22F) was very insecure and suspicious of his friendships with women but he's never given me a reason not to trust him and he's very transparent with me about them and when he's hanging out with him.
We've had small arguments in the past about this issue but we've worked out our differences for the most part. I'm not 100% thrilled that he has female friends but I'm completely rational and understand that he's an adult and can go/do whatever he wants with whomever and I do not want to control him in anyway. It's more that I don't trust them than I don't trust him because I've only met 1 out of 5-6 of them. I also don't have any platonic male friends and my girlfriends have said that that might also be part of my insecurity.
However, I still feel like sometimes he doesn't use the best judgement when it comes to this situation and it upsets me. For example, today he told me that he asked his female friends if they wanted to watch the meteor shower with him tonight. (I'm visiting grandparents in another state). On our first date, we watched stars/meteors together so this kind of struck a cord if you know what I mean. I just feel like that is something that can be seen as romantic or "date like" and I wish he understood that I find it inappropriate to ask another girl to do that with him.
I don't know what to do. I know he's not trying to be sneaky or malicious towards me but I feel like we've had the same conversation multiple times and he's just not understanding where I'm coming from at all. I don't want the only difference between me and his female friends to be that him and I have sex. In a way his relationships with these other girls makes me feel...not as special.
Does anyone have advice on how I can not be as insecure or fix this problem?
I know what you mean. You want something special that is reserved for just for the two of you.
My ex is like that. One time, he told me we were going to go on a date. We'll go ice skating. We didn't end up doing it because of our conflicting schedule. Next thing, I found out that he offered to take his friend ice skating, just the two of them, so she can get her mind off of things.
He doesn't know boundaries. I mean, that was the problem, to me, some of the things he did was crossing the line. To him, it's not. I always thought he was being selfish, insensitive, trying to have the best of both worlds (having the 'freedom' and no restrictions as if he was still single, while having me at the same time). We always fought about it. He'd say sorry that I got upset, but he still didn't think what he did was wrong. It was what we always fought about. Four years later, I eventually broke up with him because I felt like he was a walking time bomb. What will he do next that'll upset me? He sincerely thought what he was doing is not wrong.
After some time of being broken up, I came to a realization that I was the stupid one. I was stupid to think that he's being a selfish, insensitive jerk lol. He genuinely cared for me, but...but but...we just see boundaries differently. He is not wrong in what he did, because to him, there are no boundaries. Cheating only meant making out or having sex with another person. I now understand his point of view and I'm so happy I ended it because it was something we could never "fix". I just wish I did sooner lol.
Fast forward to now, I've married the guy perfect for me. He sees relationship like me. We are on the same page when it comes to relationship boundaries. I'm not saying we don't have friends of the opposite sex, but we know our limits to what is casual vs. going too far.
My point is, there are tons of guys out there. Everyone has a different take on what is right or wrong when it comes to a relationship. This thread alone is a testament on how people sees things differently. My say is, life is SO much better when you're with someone who is on the same page when it comes to things like this. You either learn to get over your insecurities by accepting the fact that he's not cheating on you with all those girls or you move on to someone else.
It's called being In a relationship. You don't get to choose the issues you get to deal with, you have purposefully involved another person in your life and by proxy invited in outside sources of conflict.
Choosing to ignore the problems you face within that relationship is choosing your own side instead of breeding discussion and bonding with your partner in other ways that don't only involve your own interests.
If you want to ignore people who may have conflicts with the dynamic you create together, don't commit yourself to them.
Be a vagabond to relationships and only take what makes you happy from the sources willing to give it to you. In the end if you are only ever willing to accept your way of being, that's all you are seeking out of involving others anyways.
Isn't that what the OP is doing, though? She wants him to accept her "way of being" by never seeing or talking to his female friends - including not hanging out with them when she is visiting out-of-state relatives and couldn't be with him anyway - because of her insecurity.
I asked this question earlier and never really got an answer: if we think that this relationship is something that can be worked on, what would a fair compromise be? Because I feel like everyone who's saying that he has to compromise is basically saying that he just has to do what she wants. That's not a compromise.
Again, all we have to go by is what the OP told us, and she never said anything about being ditched for her boyfriend to go hang out with his friends or anything. That leads me to believe that he spends most of his time with her and sees his friends every so often, which seems like a pretty fair balance to me.
Because if you follow this logic to the end, what you're saying is that he can't hang out with his friends, not even when his girlfriend is out of town (since that's what's going on with this meteor shower), and he can't text them either...so basically the resolution is to cut his friends out of his life. And if they break up, and he abandoned all of his friends, what then?
edit: I find your handle amusing, because when I read the original post, I pictured her singing a gender-swapped version of "I want a girl who will laugh with no one else..."
Yes, this is true. He spends most, if not all of his free time on weekends etc with me, and always invites me out with these female friends. We've been doing LD on and off so I haven't met many of them, and some of them live out of state. Honestly just poor timing but I want to meet them.
We also don't know how long have they been dating. A couple of months? Or a couple of years? Pretty big difference. After awhile a person would have, or probably should have, met a good chunk of the other's friends in the area. If its a few months, probably not.
We've been dating 11 months. I've met like 90% of the people in his life besides these females. I honestly think it's because he just doesn't see them very frequently, and because he sees them more when I'm not around. I don't mean that in a sketchy way, just that when I am around, he's with me and not them.
For example, I was with my family around Christmas time in a different state and he met with them then but I couldn't go. The timing just never works out.
Any dude that has to constantly text and hang out with other female 'friends,' knowing very well that it makes his actual girlfriend feel uncomfortable, is not suitable relationship material.
Now I'm sure most people on here, reading this, will tell the OP to stop being so insecure, grow up, etc.
Sorry, but as a guy I don't see it that way.
I can tell all of y'all that I wouldn't feel happy having a girlfriend that constantly texted other guys and invited them to hang out with her, among other things, to watch shooting starts at night. WTF? I'm not good enough for her?
Move on girl, you will never be happy in this situation. Not only because of your insecurities, but because you are with a guy that seems to have little respect or concern for issues you have raised in the path.
YOU should be the one that comes first in a relationship, NOT other girls.
I would never put my girlfriend/wife on the spot by constantly texting other girls and wanting to hang out with them.
Listen to this guy. I find this spot on.
This is not to say that it's not okay for your partner to be allowed to have friends of the opposite sex. But there are certain common sense boundaries that I think it's reasonable for people to not be happy with their partner doing with members of the opposite sex. I think there's also certain questions, like does your friendship with certain people of the opposite sex predate the relationship? There's a few factors.
I'd much rather do something like watch a meteor shower with my girl than any other girl, and I know that she would only wanna do that with me.
We've been dating 11 months. I've met like 90% of the people in his life besides these females. I honestly think it's because he just doesn't see them very frequently, and because he sees them more when I'm not around. I don't mean that in a sketchy way, just that when I am around, he's with me and not them.
For example, I was with my family around Christmas time in a different state and he met with them then but I couldn't go. The timing just never works out.
I just think it's unrealistic to expect your boyfriend to sit on his couch doing nothing when you're not in town. It's not healthy for a person's social live to revolve solely around a significant other. It would be one thing if he was just going out with a single female friend alone to places you consider to be "romantic" locations, and doing it on a frequent basis. However, he's not doing that. He's just doing these things because you're not available!
Instead, it sounds like he has a group of female friends he meets with relatively infrequently. He may even do things he normally likes to do with you precisely because you are not there! The reality is that a meteor isn't something that happens THAT often and this year's was supposed to be pretty amazing. He should be able to enjoy it if it's something that interests him. This may come as a shock to you, but even men aren't really bursting with excitement about going into particularly dark areas of town or the middle of nowhere alone in the middle of the night, so it's not surprising that someone would want to actually go with other people.
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