Generally, I think people accept the idea that the friendships we had before entering into a romantic relationships shouldn’t be affected by the whims of a new partner.
That said, what happens when something about the friendship makes your partner uncomfortable?
One of OP’s best friends had a rough time recently.
My best friend lost a parent a year and a half ago which led him to a mental health crisis. Our friend group has been picking up the pieces ever since.
He’s doing much better now that he’s in therapy, but he’s definitely gone through it.
What has complicated matters worse is my fiancée. It goes without saying that I love her, but she is the definition of a busybody sometimes.
OP and his friend don’t think the details are any of his girlfriend’s business.
My best friend is a very private person. She knows something happened with him, but she doesn’t know the details of what that something is.
She probably never will.
But because she’s around me and my friends often as my fiancée and I live in the same house, she hears bits and pieces of the story and presses for more information.
I try to circumvent this as best as I can – for example, I step out of the room for specific phone conversations. But still, it’s hard to limit the discussion about it sometimes.
If it’s necessary we bring it up and she’s around in person, we’ll refer to the ‘Nolan situation’ without giving specifics.
She would tend to disagree.
Nolan will also stop by my place at night when he can’t sleep.
This doesn’t happen all that often – maybe twice a month. He’ll text me or call me saying he’s outside, I’ll go sit with him and maybe smoke a little bit, then he’ll head home.
I’ll wait up until I know he got home safely, then I go back to sleep.
My fiancée hates this.
She claims the phone calls always wake her up – they don’t, she just sometimes happen to wake up for the bathroom while I’m outside – and that me not being in bed is alarming.
This brings us to last night.
Nolan stopped by and when I came back inside, my fiancée said she was ‘putting a stop to it.’
She said all the sneaking around is making her paranoid, she doesn’t feel like she can properly trust me or be a part of my friend group without knowing the details, and that Nolan needs to stop relying on me so much.
They had an argument over it that resulted in hurt feelings.
I told her that no matter whether we’re married, dating, whatever, she will never have any ownership over my friend’s trauma, and that she was never going to be able to order me around in regards to it.
I also said her comfort was less important than someone’s actual physical well-being. She was obviously hurt by this and went to stay with her mom after work today.
Are OP’s allegiances off? You know Reddit will tell him!
The top comment says OP isn’t being fair to his partner.
This person says the relationship is doomed if this keeps up.
They have some harsh truths about codependent relationships.
Honestly, they feel like he can’t be this clueless.
Everyone would be surprised if she comes back at all.
This is a weird one, for sure.
OP needs to wake up and smell the coffee.
Now that you’ve read that story, check out this one about a delivery driver who took a $400 grocery order back because she wasn’t given a tip.