Married aspie and opposite-sex friendship

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I'm a 38-year-old married Aspie. I moved to this area from out of state 14 years ago, and immediately got involved with the woman that I, about a year later, married. While she's NT, she's not terribly social herself, and so I went a good dozen years without really making any friends beyond work acquaintances that I might play poker with on occasion or somesuch.

About a year ago, I got involved in an outside hobby (or, to a NT, read: obsession) that finally got me out of the house on a pretty regular basis and meeting new people. I've always had a much easier time making friends with females (not until recently did I read this is typical in AS) and so I've bonded best with a couple of women from my hobby.

Nothing untoward has gone on, but my wife's natural tendencies, and the fact that they're both younger and single, combined with my (again, AS-typical) way of having (NT read: overdoing) friendships has just blossomed into a huge cycle of outrageous jealousy.

If you've been married 13 years and you've done nothing to compromise her trust in you (cheating/flirting), then it's her confidence and insecurity issue and she basically needs to build a bridge and get over it.

I'm sorry, but what exactly do you mean by overdoing? Are you inadvertently flirting? I guess a quick solution would be to go over what you do with these friends and ask if you'd mind if your wife was doing the same thing with her male friends.

STOP RIGHT THERE

You are attracted to the woman.

What if your wife wanted to take up ballroom dancing as a hobby?

She said "Fred is just my dancing partner. There is no need to worry"

Would you worry?
Damned right you would.

Says who? Not everyone's a paranoid jealous insecure freak. Some of us can actually stand on our own two feet and handle our partners being around people like that without acting like some caveman.

True, not everyone's a "paranoid jealous insecure freak," but I don't blame Rorgg's wife for feeling that way. What it could look like to her is that Rorgg enjoys being with these other women more than he enjoys being with her. The question I have is: once Rorgg's obsession with this new hobby dissipates, will any and all desire to be with these women dissipate as well? A lot of these friendships are situational and therefore transitory in nature, but for AS folks they are intense despite their situational nature. There's no way of knowing for sure whether these friendships will be any different, especially based on what little has been provided so far... and of course there's no way of knowing exactly just how intense they will get as well.

What can I say? You are from San Francisco. Global headquarters for perverts and freaks.

Exactly, so who better to call out freaks of all stripes? Though, perverts... I'm afraid we don't have the exclusive rights to those. They are everywhere.

- Bring your wife along with you to your hobby one day; let her meet your friends and realise there's nothing going on (if she's still worried, maybe you should talk it over; it could be that she's worrying unecessarily, or maybe you are flirting by accident).

- Don't talk about your new friends all the time; they may be witty, brilliant people, but your wife won't want to hear that.

- I agree with Greatsharkbite, don't do anything that you wouldn't be comfortable if your wife did the same.

I think her jealousy is perfectly normal in this situation and it is up to you to reassure her. If you can't, you may need to think about moving to a different club.

I wouldn't. I like seeing my boyfriend happy with his friends and trust him enough not to cross the line. There is a difference between close and affectionate with a friend and cheating. Plus expecting that your partner can get everything they need from you is just out and out unreasonable. If you don't like a hobby they are really interested in and they connect well with a friend through that hobby there is nothing wrong with it. If you suck at or just dislike ballroom dancing your partner/spouse/whatever shouldn't have to give it up.

Her jealousy might be from the friendships developing suddenly after not being all that social for so long. My boyfriend does the same thing for a bit when I start hanging out with someone since I normally go for months just staying home. It's a natural reaction for most people. I agree with the suggestions to talk to her. Maybe she's feeling a little left out, especially if time spent with your new friends is taking a dent out of time you used to spend with her. Take into account how her friendships are going too, because that could be magnifying her feelings. Make some special time for just her where you don't bring up your friends or interests or any of that. If she reacts with something like "oh now your just feeling guilty (which is a possiblity) tell her why you are doing it, you thought she was being marginalized or something and wanted to make up for it. And I'd definitely introduce her to your friends.

Last edited by barbedlotus on 18 Aug 2009, 1:19 pm, edited 3 times in total.

I agree with all what Lene said , and of course it will be good if you let your wife to meet your friends so probably she will feel more confortable being able to know what is going on there and of course if not talk is a great solution

I wish we could rep here, because I would absolutely rep this post. Well said.

Harry: You realize of course that we could never be friends.
Sally: Why not?
Harry: What I'm saying is - and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form - is that men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.
Sally: That's not true. I have a number of men friends and there is no sex involved.
Harry: No you don't.
Sally: Yes I do.
Harry: No you don't.
Sally: Yes I do.
Harry: You only think you do.
Sally: You say I'm having sex with these men without my knowledge?
Harry: No, what I'm saying is they all WANT to have sex with you.
Sally: They do not!
Harry: Do too.
Sally: They do not.
Harry: Do too.
Sally: How do you know?
Harry: Because no man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.
Sally: So, you're saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive?
Harry: No, You pretty much want to nail them, too.


True Dat.

Yep.

There's nothing wrong (or unnatural) about being attracted to someone else if you happen to be in a relationship. Acting on that attraction, however, is. (Barring an open relationship situation, of course)

Seems I stirred up a bit of a bees' nest here. I'll try to go in order:

Yeah, no, never any problems there.


Hell, I wouldn't know where to start. I meant that we tend to communicate (largely email) a fair bit back and forth, and just through the normal course of the hobby, see each other a couple times a week, so we're in pretty close contact.


Sorry to cut off your assumptive answer there, but I'll get to that. First, to your first bit on me -- regardless of her attractiveness, I (1) have no interest in going outside my marriage; (2) would consider it a horrendously destructive course of action even if I were inclined to, to the point I would constrain myself; (3) would have no idea how to even go about such a thing; (4) seriously doubt she'd be interested; and (5) see her as more of a kid sister, due to the age differential.

On to the second: No, I don't think I would, absent any other signs. She's had male friends through her own hobbies in the past, and I didn't worry -- maybe in one case where I should have (not that anything came of it).


Heck of a good question, and I don't have an answer. Our friendship has largely been based around the shared activity to this point. I think, that based on generalized common interest and a sort of shared sensibility, we might, but my history would tend to indicate otherwise.


1. She's gotten peripherally involved, and my friend's been over to the house a couple times. Has it helped? Well, I guess it didn't hurt.
2. That's actually excellent advice, and some I wish I'd had before the thing started going pear-shaped. It eventually came out in counselling that she was just tired of hearing of it. I've since made an effort to keep the discussion to a minimum. Of course, now my wife brings her up more than I do.
3. I don't think that's been an issue, with the exception of meeting up at her place to work on a project, with my wife's blessing. In retrospect, even though she put a stamp of approval on it, she didn't really like it, and I missed the "me saying it's fine means I don't think it's fine one bit" subtext. Go figure.
4. I don't think that's a long-term solution -- involved with a different group in the same activity, I could see the start of the same sort of thing popping up, even with someone I wasn't even all that friendly with.

Snipped from a longer, insightful post which I don't have much more to say about than "Yeah, that." I think you're probably on to something here. I've heard more than once, "so, what, you now go hang out with your friends [in a group]?" Well... yes, I didn't really have any before.