Can My BF Be Friends With Women?

Hi, guys. Matthew here. I'm back again with a subject that I think is really going to touch a nerve for a lot of people, and that is, what do I do if my partner is really good friends with people from the opposite sex? You may even be saying, my partner's only friends are from the opposite sex. How do I deal with this? Or you may be in the situation where you say, my partner's best friend is of the opposite sex. I want to deal with this today because I know how tricky it can be to navigate and I know how. How sensitive it can be when you're the person whose partner is really good friends with that other person and you're feeling vulnerable and threatened and left out of that situation. So let's discuss this today. By the way, if it gets a little noisy outside during this video, it's because this is the week of my cousin's wedding and I have family flying in from all over the world right now. So it's getting a little noisy downstairs. But I'll never miss the opportunity to make a video for you. I'm never gonna let you down. So let's jump right in. The first part of this is accepting that there is a difference in friendships between different sexes within the context of a relationship than your partner, who's a guy, having guy friends, right? There is a difference. Now, people would say, no, there's no difference because my friendship with this person is completely platonic. There isn't any sexual attraction. So it's no different from me being friends with my. My girlfriends to be friends with this guy. A guy might argue the same, she's like one of my guy friends. But the reality is there is a difference. There's a difference because there is possibility. And that possibility, whether it's a real threat or not, creates a threat in our minds. So understanding that there is a difference is what allows us to solve the problem effectively. Let's say you're a woman and your guy has a good friend who is a woman. It's incumbent on him to make you feel comfortable and to protect your ego. Protecting your ego is a big thing in relationships, and especially in a situation like that where it has the potential to make us insecure. If your partner wants that friendship to continue, they have to respect you enough not just to behave, because that's a given, right? The fact that your partner needs to behave in that relationship and not cross a boundary is a given, but they need to respect you enough to protect you in the situation and to make you feel comfortable. There are Two ways that this person can do this, transparency and involvement. If your guy wants to be more transparent, it's about actually letting you know what he's doing. If he is seeing her, going out to lunch with her or something like that, he needs to tell you that if he's having texting conversations with her, being open about it, being, being honest about the fact that he's texting this person right now. The moment things start to become hidden, that's where problems arise. Because you know when something's hidden, you start to worry, is there something he's not telling me? Is there something that he doesn't want me to find out? So transparency is really important, but involvement is also really important. It's no good him just being transparent about when he's seeing her or when he's on the phone to her and things like that. He also has to make an effort to involve you. Again, what creates problems is when someone tries to separate you, when they try and keep that part of their life clean from you being involved in it, or vice versa. And that's not always physically, you know, by making sure that you all go out together. But if he gets a text from her, it's about saying, oh, you know, Sarah just texted me this, this idea on blah, blah, blah, and actually involving you in the conversation there. So that it's not like you, you're on the outside looking in, but you're in it with him. That's the responsibility of him in this situation. What you have to take on for yourself is this idea that whatever boundaries you create, whatever rules you create for what he can and cannot do, have to be able to endure over the long term, take a long term mindset. Because there are always rules that we can create that feel good in the moment for us. If we say, you can't see that person, you can't talk to that person, you can't do this, you can't do that. When we set up rules like that, they may calm our own insecurities in the moment, but what they don't do is create a tenable situation for the future. And if you create a situation that isn't sustainable, rules that he can't stick to for a lifetime, you may feel okay now, but you're always going to be policing the borders of those rules. You're always going to be trying to make sure that he's not breaking them, you're micromanaging and he's going to feel the need to rebel at some stage. And when someone feels the need to rebel, because they have rules that are unsustainable. That's when they begin lying to you. That's when they begin breaking them behind your back. And look, who knows? You may have people you want to be friends with in the future, and you don't want them to have the same rules with you that you would have had for them in the past. So you have to think about that, too. It's respecting your partner enough to say, okay, I'm okay with you being friends with this person. And maybe I'm even okay with you seeing this person or going out with this person. But there are certain lines. I can't tell you what those boundaries should be because they're individual. Even then, we might create a rule which we break ourselves. For example, I was talking to a couple, two friends of mine recently, and the woman in the relationship was saying, you know what? It's funny. One of my rules was he can be friends with someone as long as there's no history, as long as he's never hooked up with this person, she said. But then we go to a festival and I end up meeting the friend, and I find out after having the most amazing day with her and realizing, oh, my God, we could be the best of friends, she said. I found out later that they had actually hooked up, she said. But what happened was I was so comfortable with her and I become such great friends with her and had the potential to become even greater friends that it didn't bother me. It wasn't like they were going out on dates on their own. She said. I was always involved. When we went out, we all went out together. And she said, because of that, even though I know they have history, he makes me feel comfortable by protecting me and making sure that I don't have anything to worry about. And she's so close to me and we have such a great friendship that I just don't feel threatened by this. I like having this person in my life. So you can see how she had a rule, but it was overruled by the fact that there were special circumstances. So I don't want to create rules for you here about what's right and wrong. Where should your boundary be? You have to come at it from the perspective of respecting your partner, trusting them, because if you're with them, you have to trust them. Otherwise, don't be with them and giving them the treatment that you yourself would like in the situation. You'll be insecure from time to time. But again, that's where it goes back to the other side which is your partner protecting your ego and looking after you. And if right now, by the way, you're watching this video thinking, well, the problem is that my partner doesn't protect my ego. The problem is that my partner doesn't comfort me. They don't involve me, they're not transparent, then that's a conversation you have to have with your partner to say, look, sometimes you've got to be honest with your partner. Sometimes this isn't about going some roundabout way with them. I know I have plenty of lines for you to use to discreetly put ideas in your partner's head and make sure that you communicate well. But sometimes communicating well is just being direct and saying to your partner, look, your job is to protect me. Your job is to be kind to me. And protecting me and making me feel good is making sure that I'm involved with this person. In the same way that if I had a guy in my life that was just a friend, I would absolutely involve you. I would absolutely inform you in everything that was going on because I'd have nothing to hide. And I'd never, ever want you to feel like you were on the outside looking in. And I don't want you to make me feel like I'm on the outside looking in. I know you wouldn't want to make me feel like that. You know, I know that you wouldn't intentionally make me feel this way, But I'm just telling you, this is how it's making me feel. And I don't want to come along and tell you can't be friends with someone. I don't want to be that woman. But at the same time, I want to respect myself. And I feel like me respecting myself isn't allowing this situation to happen without me feeling like I'm a part of it and that I'm as important and it's as important to you to involve me as it is to remain friends or with her. So there are some nice ways to come at it directly, but at the end of the day, again, I'll boil it down to two things. Them, your partner protecting your ego by making you feel involved and being transparent. And you creating a set of boundaries and rules that are sustainable in the relationship and are kind to your partner. Not just rules that are there to eliminate your insecurity, but. Or dare I say it, neurosis in certain cases. So that's it. Tough topic right there. But I think it's important. I know they're difficult waters to navigate, but if we talk about them and we're open about them and we discuss these ideas, we might get a little closer to getting what we want from our relationships and being comfortable and not feeling under the constant threat of someone else coming in. Have an amazing week, guys. Lovely to be back with you again. I'll see you in the next video.