Alessa:

Thank you for your honest and balanced response. Your advice is pragmatic and it’s been helpful for me to understand the cultural differences you have shared.

It is his first relationship, so there is an element of naivety and inexperience at play for him… He seems to genuinely not understand why he should be doing some of these things.

This feels true to me. I really believe that he does not see any issues here. He is an honest person by nature and has always been forthcoming with me. I trust him, and I don’t think he’s trying to hide anything. The only conclusion I can come to is that he genuinely doesn’t see why his behavior could be harmful to our relationship, and gets stuck defending his perspective. I think you are right that he has a somewhat immature/naive view of friends that are like childhood best friends, and views having a girlfriend as a completely separate affair.

That is a pretty harsh label for him to suggest that your relationship with him is codependent. Why would he suggest that?

I meant that if I were to label his friendship as enmeshment, he’d label mine with him as codependent. He hasn’t actually said this, but I know how he thinks well enough that these labels seems representative of our opposing perspectives. He thinks that his level of emotional intimacy with his friend is normal and healthy, and that it would be good for me to be just as emotionally intimate with my friends.

He’s cited the cultural differences you’ve touched on as reasons why our idea of “normal” and “healthy” are different, that it’s much more common in Europe for men and women to have close, emotionally-intimate friendships. As you’ve confirmed, I think that probably contributes to some of our disagreement but not all. While the cultural differences may be an explanation, they can’t be a justification. We both have to agree and respect each others’ boundaries, regardless of what upbringings we had.

I would be okay with him maintaining his friendship with Sarah if we came to a shared understanding of boundaries. I would not want to enforce boundaries for him that he does not agree with. While I know he would do it for me, he’d be doing it for me. I think we get stuck arguing around each other on who’s “right”, but as you said, if I’m “uncomfortable with the level of contact they used to have, it was emotional cheating”. I do not want him to lose a meaningful friendship, but some boundaries (like the sexual details) are hard lines for me, so at the very least I would want to be understood on those. I think as long as I feel understood on why those things are upsetting to me, I would be able to move past this.

Outside of this, our relationship has gone fairly well. We have many shared interests and values, and we’ve been able to resolve other conflicts with mutual respect and understanding, through communication. While he’s not as emotional as me, he usually understands my emotions, even if I’m being overly moody or dramatic. This issue has been especially complicated because I value our relationship and want to see a future together.

Ada

Tee,

Your perspective here is one that I instinctively tend to agree with. It’s the voice of my anger, but with reason. My self-doubt, however, asks me if it’s just the one that I want to hear.

I’ve read about “enmeshment” before and it’s also a term that has come to my mind when I think about Sam’s friendship with Sarah. I agree that Sarah has some deep issues that she has continually not been able to resolve, and while Sam’s shoulder to cry on may be comforting to her, clearly it has not encouraged her to grow in a meaningful way. He has told me that he does encourage her to stop engaging in self-destructive behaviors, but she doesn’t listen and falls back into the same patterns. This is understandable, I think personal change like that is really hard. Still, how involved should Sam be in her problems? Sam would say that cutting her off and not listening to her would be cold and not what a good friend would do.

Do you know if he feels comfortable hearing such things, or only listens out of politeness?

He genuinely does not think it is strange to be hearing about her sexual conquests or whatnot. At least in instances he’s shared with me, these intimate details seem to have been shared because they were funny, and maybe that’s why Sam doesn’t find it uncomfortable. And to be fair, it’s not like she is asking him for sex advice, she’s just telling him what happened. However, I wouldn’t want to hear about explicit details (I’m talking about sexual acts, details at the level of genitalia) from even a close female friend, no matter how funny, and I honestly find Sarah’s behavior disgusting on many levels. Sam also finds her promiscuity a bit gross, but seems to have accepted that that’s just who she is (she’s emotionally damaged after all), and views her stories as funny things that happened to her, where the sexual bits are just objective details.

I try not to concern myself with Sarah and all the ways I find her behavior unhealthy and morally objectionable, because ultimately I do not know her, and I am not in a relationship with her. So from the standpoint of my relationship with Sam, I can only understand this as his lack of appropriate boundaries interfering with our relationship. And I tend to want to agree with you that Sam “having emotional intimacy with multiple other people – the kind of intimacy that is usually reserved for a romantic relationship – is probably fueled by an unmet emotional need” and one that needs to be healed.

But Sam would say that the level of intimacy he has with Sarah is healthy, and even desirable, in a best friend, and that I’m the one who needs to be healed, because I’m the one who is too reserved with my emotions outside of romantic relationships. And while I have two long-time friends I’d consider close, I definitely do not talk to them as much as we used to, and at the level Sam does with Sarah, but this is normal for us because they have their own husbands/families at this point. Sam would say this isn’t ideal, wouldn’t I want to be able to share all the details about my daily life to other people and not just him? I understand where he is coming from, but I suppose I just don’t feel much of that need.

In a sense, while I’d label his behavior as enmeshment with a friend, he’d label mine as codependency with him. Of course, these are just labels and exaggerated, and a healthy relationship is somewhere in the middle. But the point still stands that we have two different perspectives that are both valid, and finding middle ground in the gray areas is challenging. This seems to be a place where I cannot “reason” my way to some kind of objective clarity, because reason applies either way.

As is probably evident in this thread, I have gone in circles trying to justify both sides of this messy, complicated situation. At some point, I realize that this is futile and the question is really what I can accept in a relationship, and what growth for me looks like. I said at the beginning of this that your message says what I wanted to hear, but I think it’s also what I needed to hear. I needed to know that, at the very least, I am not being unreasonable, and that someone in a similar situation could come to the same conclusions. I think that validation alone will help me in whatever direction this situation resolves in. Thank you.

Ada

Anita,

I’ve struggled with this too. I’m emotionally conservative and traditional. Sharing someone I care deeply for—whether emotionally or otherwise—still hurts. Even in love, I find myself wishing I could be someone’s only emotional home.

But life keeps showing me: you can’t stamp your name on someone’s heart and expect exclusivity in every emotional corner. We’re all messy, layered beings. No one belongs entirely to another.

I read from this that there is a lesson to be learned in letting go of certain things that I cannot control. I know that’s true in one way or another. I would not want someone I love to “belong” exclusively to me. We are all messy and human and the boundaries here are blurry because of that.

To me, the emotional boundaries in a romantic relationship are just as, if not more important, than physical ones. Knowing where to draw these lines, what to let go of, is, as you say “about how wide your definition of love can stretch without losing you in the process”. And ultimately, that is something only I can decide.

Thank you for sharing the wisdom from your own experiences.

Ada

Tee and Anita:

I feel validated by both of your responses in my discomfort with this situation.

I’m grateful for these discussions which have helped me validate and hear my own concerns, but I am still trying to figure out how to best proceed. As Sam and I have argued over this several times, I feel I can imagine how any future conversation will go. Ideally I’d like for us to, as Anita mentioned, reach a compromise together that feels like growth for both of us. But I think I must be emotionally prepared to defend my own boundaries, and be willing to walk away if we can’t reach a shared understanding.

I wonder if anyone has advice on how to better approach a conversation with Sam in a way that doesn’t devolve into both of us defending our views and not feeling heard. If I simulate the conversation in my head, it might go something along these lines:
—
Me: Your relationship with Sarah continues to be an issue for me. I know that your friendship with her has deteriorated due to me. For this I feel guilty but also resentful that we can’t agree on this.
Him: My friendship with Sarah is important to me, but not as important as ours. I stopped talking to her to make you more comfortable, and I think you’re being unreasonable. I have absolutely no romantic or sexual interest in her, she feels like a sister to me.
Me: I haven’t seen your sister talk to you about her sexual relationships, nor are you constantly comforting her about her emotional problems. The tone of your voice with Sarah is non-familial to me. I think you’re not aware of her role in your life.
Him: That’s ridiculous, Sarah might tell me about her relationships with other men, but it’s all in good humor. That’s just who she is, and I’ve never talked about our relationship to her. You’re fixating on these details, when the bond we have is really just that of a close friend.
Me: I believe that you view her as a close friend, but the amount of emotional intimacy you have shared with her and want to share with her feels like a violation of our relationship. I feel like you don’t respect me or our relationship in the same way I do.
Him: I don’t feel respected either. I care about Sarah like a sister, it’s not fair to me it has to be like this. A close friendship should be emotionally intimate. Why does that have to take away from the intimacy of our relationship?
Me: There is a lot of me I reserve for our relationship and I don’t feel you do the same. I feel like my boundaries are being violated.
Him: I also reserve a lot for our relationship. I feel so much deeper for you, I prioritize you. These boundaries feel arbitrary to me when emotionally I am certain that I do not have feelings for Sarah and our relationship is more important.
—
I imagine this is a best case for such a conversation, where anger doesn’t get the best of either of us, but still we’re unable to make any progress. I’ve never had success arguing for the role that I think Sarah actually plays in his life, because ultimately only he can know this. How can I be communicating better, or should I accept that we have different core values/beliefs about relationships that simply make us incompatible?

Ada

Anita,

Your insight here that an emotional framework is missing feels accurate and validating. And I think the questions you’ve posed (“What does emotional closeness mean to each of you? When does friendship become emotionally intimate, and how is that different from romantic intimacy?”) are helpful in putting these emotions to words. I think Sam and I will have very different answers to these, but I will reflect on my own answers before navigating them together.

But I wonder—what if you gave your outrage space to breathe?

Thank you for extending that space to me. I think my outrage is mostly centered around not feeling understood, and not feeling respected. Sam only views my discomfort through the lens of jealousy, and while I’m sure jealousy plays a role here, it’s not the full story. He thinks I am jealous that he wants to pursue emotionally intimate relationships with his friends, and to be fair, he has repeatedly tried to reassure me of how much he cares about me separate from Sarah or other people. But he cannot understand how I view his actions with Sarah as a violation of the sanctity of our relationship, and the incidences that I’ve mentioned that I view as blatant violations are definitely triggers for me.

Going back to the questions you posed, Sam would say that close friendships should have emotional value, and you should be able to rely emotionally on your friends. I suppose we differ drastically on the degree of this reliance. I have a few friends I’ve known a long time, and we’ll chat every other week or so, or when there’s updates in each others lives. They’re both more reserved like me, but we’ve helped each other through breakups, family troubles. We know we can call if we need each other, but we don’t talk every day. Since being in a relationship the frequency I talk to my friends has decreased, but my friends have also gotten married, settled down, etc. with their own lives in the past few years, so this seems sort of natural to me.

Sam, on the other hand, is much more keen on keeping in close contact with his friends. He has two male friends that he constantly messages on a daily basis, usually about funny things that happened during the day or video games/politics. So when he says he just values more intimacy in friendships, I think that’s true to an extent. His friendship with Sarah is definitely unique and much more emotionally involved than his close male friends, but Sam says he would do this with his male friends too, they’re just less emotionally vulnerable with him.

Sam has said that perhaps there is a cultural difference at play here. He moved to the US when he was 10 years old from Europe (France, specifically), and he has suggested that European culture is more accepting of opposite-sex friendships, whereas American culture is suspicious of them. This stereotype seems to exist in my mind as well, but how true it is in reality I’m not sure.

In any case, I think I must be prepared to accept that we may just have different values on this.

Ada

Anita,

Your responses have given me another perspective to view this from, and the anger and empathy you feel for me is palpable. From a stranger on the internet, I am truly and deeply touched. Thank you.

I feel validated in my anger when you say there is something off, as that is my gut reaction. But I do have my own insecurities, and it’s hard for me to know which direction points to growth. Do I want to move towards relationships that are more open and intimate with friends? Or do I want to embrace my instinctive desires of comfort and safety? I suspect the answer is in balance, but I’m not sure where to draw the lines here.

I’ve expressed all of these perceived boundary violations to my boyfriend (I’ll call him Sam for simplicity’s sake), though always through anger and outrage, and not as level-headed as I have here. Sam responds defensively, but truthfully.

Sam would say that there may have been sexual tension when he first met the friend (I’ll call her Sarah), but it was short-lived, and while it’s the reason they started talking, it’s not the reason he and Sarah became and have remained close friends for so long.

Most of that I think is true. But I also know I’m the first truly serious partner Sam has had, and before we met he rarely dated, and didn’t seem to actively seek out romantic relationships. I think that’s because Sarah filled this role for him. But he’s not consciously aware of it, and now that we’re in a serious relationship, he doesn’t see anything wrong with the relationships he naturally built before I came along.

I believe that he’s not sexually attracted to her, and I don’t think he’s ever felt anything like that with his real sister (though I agree it wouldn’t be unheard of, and I don’t take any offense at the idea). The emotional intimacy he shares with Sarah is different than the intimacy he shares with his close male friends and his real sisters — this I am quite certain of.

The core of our misalignment seems to be this question of how much of that emotional intimacy should be reserved for a partner. What constitutes a “romantic” relationship? And our answers to that are quite far from each other.

I think your perception of what each relationship means to Sam is accurate. Sarah is a source of comfort and validation to him in her familiarity, fun, and lightness, and this is a close friendship to him. She adds some value to his life that I don’t. If I really take a step back, I ask myself who am I to take that away from him? I don’t want him to break up a friendship to make his girlfriend feel comfortable.

He’s taken Sarah to meet his family several times. She’s experienced similar dysfunctional family dynamics in her upbringing and Sam bonded with her over that. I’ve heard his family ask about Sarah when we’re there, which leads to an awkward situation for Sam, and to me feeling horrible.

I want to be fair to Sam here, as I think only honesty can help me untangle the complexity of this situation. I would never give him an ultimatum, but I’m sure that if I did he would choose me. He would do it for me, though, at his expense. It’s hard for me to accept the end of a meaningful relationship because we both just can’t change our views.

Over several years and several arguments, Sam has been less and less involved in Sarah’s life to the point where they only exchange a few greetings here and there now. I guess “best friend” isn’t a fair label anymore, but they have the sort of relationship where years can pass and they can pick right back up where they left off.

I also can’t blame Sam for why I haven’t met Sarah yet. Shortly after we started dating, we took advantage of the pandemic and remote work, and decided on a bit of a nomadic lifestyle, living in many cities across the US for a few years. Prior to that, he had arranged for me to meet her and it felt important to him, but plans fell through. He was nervous about introducing us because he was afraid I might not view their relationship as platonic as he did. It didn’t seem like he was trying to hide anything, more that he was trying not to lose anything.

A few months ago, we moved back to our home city, and recently he said he wanted me to meet Sarah. This has brought back all the past arguments and harbored resentment. It feels wrong for me to say that I don’t want to meet her at this point, but honestly, I don’t. I feel like I know enough already, and meeting her without some internal clarity of my own would only make things worse.

You’re right that I need resolution here. I want mental and emotional clarity before I talk to Sam about it again, else we will have the same fight where one of us must lose. I feel like we’re both just waiting for the other person to come around to the other’s point of view, but it’s only made us fight harder for our own.

I’m sure that I need to let go of something to get past this — but is it him or my own convictions?

Ada