My husband and I have been married for five years. I have a close group of female friends and previously we have got along with them and their husbands. However, recently, the other husbands have excluded my husband from social gatherings. I feel that one of them, let’s call him Roger, purposely excludes him and I don’t know why. I’ve also seen Roger being rude to my husband.
I’ve asked him if he could think of anything he’d done to annoy Roger, and he said he couldn’t. I suggested he reach out to Roger to talk it out, which he did. However, Roger’s response was: “Let the women folk plan out the activities.” To me that seems he’s saying: “I don’t want to hang out with you on your own.” My husband is hurt by this.
When Roger’s wife has me over for dinner, Roger is there but my husband is not invited. I’ve also noticed one of the other husbands doesn’t ask him to hang out any more either. I don’t want my friendship with my girlfriends to suffer. What should I do?
I’m all for couples being able to socialise as the individuals they are, but I was trying to imagine how the conversation went when Roger’s wife invites you over, but not your husband. Does she specifically extend the invitation to just you?
If you’ve been friends for quite a long time then perhaps your husband has said or done something, which he either doesn’t realise or isn’t telling you. Maybe something about your husband threatens Roger and he’s being very playground about it.
If you’ve not been friends for very long, perhaps they’ve just decided over time that they like you but not your husband.
This is not uncommon. It’s not a given that we’ll get on with our friends’ partners – it doesn’t sound as if you like Roger much either? Were you friends with them first or did you make friends with them once married?
I went to UKCP- and BACP-registered psychotherapist Stephen Westcott, who feels the way to find answers is through your friend, Roger’s wife. “What would happen,” Westcott says, “if you asked her what was going on here? Is anyone else in the group noticing what’s going on?”
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We often know something isn’t right but run away from finding out exactly what it is, but this sounds like a less-than-ideal situation. I doubt it will just sort itself out.
“The unknown,” says Westcott “is far worse because you feel your husband is left out, and you’re left with all these feelings. You’ve really got two options: you ignore it or you try to resolve it.”
Asking what’s going on is a brave thing to do but it will be clarifying. Socially it can often be the case that everyone knows what’s going on but no one calls it out. Remember to ask what the problem is in a curious, rather than accusing, way.
“The language of conflict resolution,” says Westcott “is to avoid blame but try to find out the facts. Sometimes, what you are describing is to do with clashes in personalities, and some people really don’t know how to resolve such differences.”
Longstanding friendships are often built on learning to tolerate those differences, rather than everyone agreeing, and maybe this is the first big hiccup your friendship circle has encountered together. But to resolve them, you really need to find out what those differences are.
Every week, Annalisa Barbieri addresses a personal problem sent in by a reader. If you would like advice from Annalisa, please send your problem to [email protected]. Annalisa regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions.
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