Girlfriend insists on no longer meeting any other females. Is this right?
I happen to be a girl whose friends are almost all male, in which case I’m the “other girl,” the one who’s supposedly working hard to steal the boys away. This jealous and insecure mentality in girls does not seem uncommon, unfortunately, so you may wonder if it’s you…however, it is definitely her. She is insecure in her own skin, about someone loving her, etc. Rather than confronting that fear, by giving you and herself the freedom to try to make good, logical decisions over time, she’s trying to control the freedom that she fears. Two of my male friends have had exes who have checked their text messages and emails, given them curfews, and more besides. It’s horrible. You didn’t state that your girlfriend has done any of these things (yet), but these are future possibilities. Very rarely do I advocate quick breakups, as I believe many relationships often just need a little tweaking, but you don’t want to be with someone like this. If you really care for this girl, I suggest telling
She’s being controlling and creepy. You need to have a very serious talk with her about this, and – this is critical – be kind but don’t back down about it. It’s rare that everyone on here agrees about something, and you need to carry that confidence into this discussion with your girlfriend, because it sounds like she’s very emotional and manipulative about the topic. It sends up all kinds of red flags to me about bigger issues, too. It’s really about more than just denying yourself half (!) of the potential friendships out there, as well as preventing you from getting female input in your life from anyone but her; it’s really about how much control she’s allowed to have over your mind and emotions. Don’t set a completely unreasonable precedent if you want this relationship to end up healthy. It sounds like she has some pretty serious issues surrounding either trust or control, as people have said here, and spiderskull is right about it being something she needs to work out herself if
I’m going to go against the grain here and argue from her point of view. Try to follow it and let me know that you’re wrong. We don’t know your culture, your background, or even what country you’re from so I’m going to argue this from a US perspective. Based on this sentence “(she is my first and only good female relationship atm)”, I’m going to take it that you don’t have any female friends. In fact, I’ll go so far as saying that you’re probably pretty unsocial in general. You don’t have many friendships and you tend not to seek others for friendship. You’ve been together for 4 years with your current girlfriend. She’s never seen you seek friendship or intimacy with another girl. In fact, your bit about giving up female friendship for all time probably shows that you’ve never been friends with a girl before. And your relationship with your girlfriend isn’t great (you don’t mention you love her once – just that you’ve been faithful to her for 4 years). There’s no real mention of long t
OK, I mostly agree that she shouldn’t be doing this, but I’m going to play devil’s advocate a little here. But, first, I don’t think this girl should be acting like this for her own sake. It doesn’t sound to me like the OP is about to cheat on his girlfriend, and particularly not with this other woman. She can’t be 100% sure about it, it’s true. Everyone’s a bit jealous, a bit insecure. But the way to deal with that is not to say “I forbid you from seeing other women!” cos it’s counter-productive. If a guy was thinking of cheating he’ll still find a way to cheat. If it hadn’t occurred to him to cheat, it might well do all of a sudden given the combination of controlling girlfriend, who suddenly seems a lot less attractive, and the “forbidden friend”. Cleverest and most attractive way to deal with jealousy is to hide it, be all easygoing, assume the best, don’t waste time obsessing over potential cheating, but strictly and mercilessly DTMFA if cheating ever occurs, never looking back. B
I’m dubious about men and women being in successful friendships when either one is in a relationship. I am so far from understanding the whole “men and women can’t be friends” meme that when I read a comment like this, it feels like I am reading a communique from another planet. Go figure–big world, lots of different ways to live in it. On the other hand, I think Styxno makes a good point here: You’re a guy without female friends who, after over 4 years, decides to befriend a new girl and get her phone number. There’s nothing wrong with this but you didn’t bring this up to your girlfriend. In fact, your girlfriend probably sees it as if you went behind her back and got a number from a girl without her knowing. This is an element that I hadn’t considered, and yes, it can be surprising when people suddenly break longtime patterns. And “surprising” can be scary in relationships. So I think it might be a really good move to invite your new girl friend to have a drink or lunch or whatever
