You Are Still a Person Outside Your Marriage
I saw a post recently on Facebook about a woman whose friends had gradually stopped visiting her after she got married. She was kinda upset about it and wondered why her friends no longer came around like they used to. Then one of them explained to her that whenever they visited, her husband was always there. Not just there in the sense of greeting them, asking how work was going and disappearing to do his own thing but presently there and actively contributing to their conversations which is odd to me and any sane person.
So at some point, the friends stopped coming. I honestly don’t blame them because I would too.
I have pictured myself visiting a friend and trying to have a conversation with her while her husband sat three feet away, collecting information like an intelligence officer and even chipping in opinions. I can’t even sugarcoat it, I would be aggravated because there are some conversations I want to have with my married friend that simply don’t need an audience or a third party. Not because what I have to say is scandalous or we are plotting anything. Women just want to talk.
I want to complain about my life, our lives, laugh at something stupid, discuss someone’s ridiculous behaviour, talk about relationships, family, money, work, our bodies, our fears, our mothers, our men. Sometimes the whole point is to sit together and say absolutely nothing of consequence. That is what friendship is and I know there’s this kind of freedom that comes from being around people who knew you before you became someone’s wife. Marriage doesn’t erase that girl. She is still there and she still needs her friends no matter how much of a best friend she finds in her husband.
I don’t think there is anything strange about a husband wanting to know his wife’s friends. In fact, I think it’s beautiful when couples’ friends eventually become familiar faces in each other’s lives but familiarity is not the same thing as constant presence.
You can know my friends without needing to attend every meeting of the board. You can be politely friendly with them without becoming a permanent member of our table.
If the wife gets up to serve her friends food, perhaps the husband can remain comfortably seated somewhere else and allow the women to talk. It’s not a big deal. There is no prize for being the husband who attends every single conversation, claiming that you and the wife are one therefore you shouldn’t be left out in whatever the friends have to say to her.
What really caught my attention in the story was that the friends eventually asked their friend(the wife) if she was okay with her husband always being around and apparently, the man’s response was “what exactly do you people want to discuss that I can’t be present to listen to?”
That question is interesting because it assumes that privacy must be justified. Why do they need to talk without me, why can’t I hear it? But I don’t think privacy works that way. I don’t need to be hiding something from you to want a conversation you aren’t part of. I simply want to talk to my friend, that’s it and that’s enough reason to stay out.
I have always found it strange how marriage can sometimes make people forget that their partners are still individual human beings. A woman can be deeply in love with her husband and still want to spend an afternoon with her friends without him. She can have a beautiful marriage and still need people who aren’t her husband, she can tell her husband everything and still have conversations with her girlfriends that don’t involve him because she has a life. None of this diminishes marriage. If anything, I think it makes it healthier.
People need different kinds of relationships. Your partner cannot reasonably be your lover, therapist, best friend, sibling, social life, emotional support system, entertainment and entire universe every minute of every day. That is just too much work for one human being.
Let your wife have her girls. Allow her laugh with them in a way that makes absolutely no sense to you. It’s completely normal for them to sit in a corner and whisper about something that would probably bore you to death. It is also normal for her to have a version of herself that exists outside being someone’s wife. And this isn’t even just about women because men need their friends too.
There are conversations men have with their friends that their wives don’t need to be sitting beside them for. Sometimes they need to drink beer and argue about football or talk nonsense for three hours without someone asking them to explain the significance of the conversation. We understand this when it’s men therefore we should understand it for women too.
Of course, there is a difference between being sociable and being intrusive. I don’t know if the man in the story’s intentions are completely innocent or he genuinely enjoys his wife’s friends. I don’t know enough about the marriage to make a diagnosis from a single story on the internet. But if your wife starts losing her friends because they no longer feel comfortable visiting her whenever you’re around, that should at least make you take steps back.
Marriage is not supposed to swallow every other relationship you have. Your spouse should be someone you come home to, not someone who has to be present everywhere you go.
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