Dear Helat:

Thank you for being interested in my dental-anxiety situation, good to know I have you to talk about it.

Your description of his friend is clear and I trust it to be accurate. Reads like she is a wild woman of sorts: impulsive, unreliable, not-trustworthy.

“She started cheating on her husband without taking any birth control… She was claiming to be afraid of having a baby but refused to take the morning after pill“- claiming is a good choice of word, I think, because what she says is not necessarily true (or it ma be true at one moment, but not in the next moment). Reads like she likes drama, craves excitement.. craves for things to happen so that life is not terribly boring.

“We visited her recently after having the baby and she was rude and ignored me and made a comment fantasizing that our son was hers and my husband’s. My husband thought it was a joke. I didn’t think that it was funny“- clearly inappropriate and disrespectful of you. Not funny.

“She was sulking while he was talking to her husband and only smiled and brightened up when my husband paid her attention“- astute observation.

“(She) was talking to my husband very explicitly about the details of her affair… he didn’t think it was a big deal, I asked him to set boundaries with her about that. He didn’t understand why even after explaining… I then spoke to her and asked her politely to not talk to my husband about her sex life. She apologised. My husband is angry that I spoke to her“- I understand your distress, and I would be distressed about this too, if I was in your place. You mentioned before that he is stoic, and I am guessing that her graphic description neither moved him toward her (attraction), nor away from her (repulsion).

Reads like her behaviors bother you, but they don’t bother him. I feel sad that how you feel about her behaviors don’t bother him enough to assert certain changes in their communication, so that your feelings are taken into serious consideration. I am sorry about this dynamic and hope that somehow he learns to understand better.

anita