My fiance has a new female friend

[mml]

Ok- so they have been friends for a while, but since we have been having more problems, they have become much much closer. He knows this woman from work, so they see each other there sometimes, but now they text each other over 100 times per day, they talk on the phone several times per day, and occasionally meet for lunch even when they aren't both working. I want to respect his freedom to have friends, but this relationship drives me insane. I feel so unimportant and insecure when he interrupts our time together to text her. I don't think he is trying to cheat on me physically, but it still hurts as if he is cheating emotionally. One of his many defenses is "she's married." I just don't understand how her husband can be handling this without a problem. Am I overreacting? Or is the level of his friendship inappropriate?

We are in our 30's and have been together for 5 years.

[lahnnabell]

Woah. That much contact each and every day of the week is too much. I would have issues too. He is not prioritizing correctly. You are his fiancee and should come first. I think I agree with you, it sounds like emotional cheating. I think you need to sit down with him and get this handled.

What kind of issues are you having as a couple?

[mml]

Thanks for responding. To be fair, I am a teacher and I work a lot. When I am home I often have to grade papers, so he feels that I am not there emotionally for him. There is always a new challenge with my job (moving to a new school, earning a master's degree, teaching new classes) that keeps me busy.

Other than that, we are having major issues with communicating difficult feelings. We don't listen to each other and respect each other's feelings very well. Any complaint we have about each other can fairly be said both ways. But generally I feel like he doesn't listen to me or care about my feelings. He refuses to acknowledge or apologize for the fact that that his relationship is hurting me. In fact, I feel like he never apologizes for anything.

[lahnnabell]

Well, you both sound as though you have some heavy resentment toward the other person. He resents you for not being able to prioritize work and home lives more effectively, and you resent him for seeking out the emotional support of a more available woman. Am I right?

Is marriage still something you BOTH want? I think you guys need to ask yourselves some questions. You, for example... In what ways can you start prioritizing so that your fiancee (a man who should be a priority) can feel supported and loved? My ex and I broke up earlier this year because he was married to work. I respected this, but continuously had to have talks with him about his very obvious avoidance of our relationship and its responsibilities. Eventually I had to end it because I was suffering too much.

Life is a series of new challenges. If you guys can't handle it now, together, then what is going to happen when you are legally bound to one another? It'll only get messier. You need to ask him what he wants out of life. Is he prepared to deal with you constantly having new goals and being on the move? Sounds like he's hating it so far. And if you cannot be there for him in the ways that he needs you, then he will seek out someone who can. This other woman "being married" is an incredibly weak defense and doesn't justify anything. She should have other priorities herself, being a married woman.

It may come down to the fact that your lives are not compatible right now. Maybe they never will be. If you want to spend most of your time with work, that is totally fine, but you can't expect him to sit on the sidelines, waiting for you to come home. And he can't be the one to constantly sacrifice time for you to spend together.

How do you divide your time?

[TheWizard]

As a guy I would only spend that much time with a women if I was interested in getting somewhere with her, friend or not. Girls know better than guys that at least in the beginning, they don't want to be your friend... they want something else.

My follow up question is how is your sex life with him? If it's rocky or non existent his biology is kicking in probably. How long has this situation been going on now?

[mml]

Hmmm... too difficult to explain all of the details, but we do a lot of things together. Of course everyone has their issues, but he has a lot of childhood abuse issues. At the beginning of our relationship, he needed to be together every free moment. I thought it was overbearing at first, but I cared about him and really wanted to make him happy, so I changed my life for him. I quit one of my bands for him, and I quit my volleyball team so that we could play together once per week. I stopped going out without him. So now we do a lot of things together regularly. We go mountain biking together at least once a week (weather permitting) and we practice martial arts together and with his daughters several times per week. We go out and sing karaoke every Saturday night. Not to mention we live together and sleep together. I think we would both prefer to have more downtime together, but we both like to keep active.

I love the life we have together. Our lives don't work without each other. But you are right, we both have this pent up resentment and we can't figure out what to do with it. We can't safely express it. We try, but we rarely feel better for it. It has become unsafe to talk to each other.

[lahnnabell]

How is he managing to spend all this time with you, and yet he's spending so much time on this other woman as well? I feel like a I need a percentage break down.

[TheWizard]

I agree with Lahnna, what qualifies as spending a lot of time with her? If you guys are doing all that together and hang out almost all the time, it puts a new light on it. The smothering can go both ways I wonder if he's using the other lady as a means to escape the norm for a little while - we all need our breathers here and there... though it would be better to communicate tat is what is going on rather than what he's doing if that's the case.

[mml]

As a guy I would only spend that much time with a women if I was interested in getting somewhere with her, friend or not. Girls know better than guys that at least in the beginning, they don't want to be your friend... they want something else.

My follow up question is how is your sex life with him? If it's rocky or non existent his biology is kicking in probably. How long has this situation been going on now?

When we can get it together, we are great. We are both very happy with our sex life. However it is rocky and nearly non-existent because we are arguing so much.

This escalated level of friendship has been going on for about a month.

[mml]

I didn't mean to imply that he is spending a lot of time physically with her. But in a typical day they will exchange between 100-200 text messages, and talk on the phone for a total of 20-40 minutes.

Not sure what kind of percentage you are looking for. He is welcome to go out and do things without me. The problem is that he doesn't make friends with other guys. Only women, so if he goes out with "friends" it is bound to upset me. However, he does enjoy teaching karate, and every night of the week he has an opportunity to go and do that for several hours. He goes on bike rides without me at times too. He used to go out and play basketball- I even tried to convince him to join a league, but he refused.

[TheWizard]

...However it is rocky and nearly non-existent because we are arguing so much.

This escalated level of friendship has been going on for about a month.

2 and 2 makes 4. Sounds like an escape from the fighting since the communication isn't happening. I'd talk to him about you guys, never mind the new girl for now, a month isn't that long but it's escalating fast possibly. He's getting something out of that friendship with this girl he isn't getting in the relationship with you and given enough time and more arguments/distancing it's not going to end in your favor I don't think.

Wish I had first hand advice for you but this is conjecture from my perspective only. If it were me, that's why I would be doing it.

[kms]

Texting and having a relationship with another woman isn't really the problem here. That is all a symptom of something else - your relationship issues / lack of communication. You all need to be talking to each other when something isn't right, not escaping to someone (like another woman)/something else (like burying yourself in your work). Your relationship will never get better when you both are constantly escaping your problems - it'll only get worse.

You have to sit down and TALK to him about what's going on the relationship - the real problem. If you do that, and he still doesn't want to participate and work toward a solution, then you really need to rethink marrying someone like that as this is what you have to look forward to for the rest of your life.

[IndiReloaded]

He's on the slippery slope to 'more than friends'. You are right to be concerned. He needs to cut it out with this other woman. She sucks too; she must know he is married.

You avoided the sex question. I assume b/c it hit a nerve. If you have been neglecting this and you care about your marriage, you better start giving it up more.

[mml]

I thought I answered the sex question. We enjoy sex a lot, but aren't getting to it much because we are too busy fighting.

We are fighting all of the time, because we attempt to talk about our problems all the time. We go through it nearly every day. We have been in therapy for a year learning to talk to each other better, but when we try it on our own it rarely ends up working out. Or if it does it takes 5 hours and we are both up until 3am and miserable the next day, and then nothing really changes anyways.

I realize that our main problem is the communication thing. But this other woman has made it 100 times worse in my opinion. His relationship with her has added feelings of insecurity and jealousy to our communication problems.

[Gigabitch]

At the beginning of our relationship, he needed to be together every free moment.

And now he needs to be in contact with her every moment. he is really needy, mml, and it sounds to me like you're not meeting all of his needs.

Don't get me wrong, I think his needs are pathetic and excessive, but if you want to keep him, you need to give more. If you can't give more, you're probably going to lose him.