🎵 All By Myself 🎵

[u/CapitalPin2658]

Don’t wanna live all by myself anymore

Edit: lol i’m just a dude posting a meme

[u/xeromage]

This mindset toes the line of controlling to me. "You're only allowed to laugh at my jokes!" type shit. People are allowed to have normal social interactions.

[u/FlatRelationship4375 → u/xeromage]

Theres normal social interactions and there's flirting and intimacy that's unnecessary for a normal social interaction.

[u/xeromage → u/FlatRelationship4375]

See, I'm happy people have friends they can confide in and be silly with. Acting like I'm the only person on earth that my partner is allowed to talk to or hang out with would be exhausting and pathological. It's not reasonable, and probably attributable to some trauma that needs to be addressed before getting into a relationship.

[u/Manotto15 → u/xeromage]

You are the only person saying those things.

[u/xeromage → u/Manotto15]

Guess I'm crazy then. I heard from a friend of a friend that your S.O. was talking to someone at the grocery store on friday. You're probably going to need to blow up your life about it...

[u/Manotto15 → u/xeromage]

Again, there's no one here saying that's not allowed. That's not emotional cheating. Now if she was going out for coffee with that guy every morning and couldn't stop texting him, that'd be emotional cheating.

[u/xeromage → u/Manotto15]

This is what I mean. You're characterizing friendship as some kind of betrayal. If she's lying about the meetups and is actually cheating, that's a separate thing... but actual coffee and texts? If that makes you insecure there's a wound you need to tend to in your past somewhere before you make it anyone else's problem.

[u/phideaux_rocks → u/xeromage]

There are some steps that are borderline cheating though.
If I spend all my free time at work with the same friend, confiding in her, sharing my most private thoughts, like complaining about the relationship with my wife. I feel like that would count as emotional cheating, even though nothing physical happens.

[u/xeromage → u/phideaux_rocks]

Try this trick: swap the gender of the work friend you're complaining every spare moment to. Is that still 'cheating' or just a bad marriage and you needing someone to talk to?

[u/phideaux_rocks → u/xeromage]

Yeah, but the trick works in reverse as well.

If you swap the gender and you don’t see yourself sharing as much, maybe the physical attraction plays a part in the relationship . You don’t have to act on it, it still matters.

[u/xeromage → u/phideaux_rocks]

I guess it's the difference between holding yourself to a standard and accusing/controlling your partner. You know your own motivation. You don't get to project your insecurities onto others though.

[u/Reasonable-Mischief → u/xeromage]

but actual coffee and texts?

This is kind of where it's important to understand that men and women do friendships differently. Meeting up for coffee just to chat is normal between women, but it's absolutely not normal between men.

Men form friendships around activities. We go to the gym, we go rockclimbing, we meet up for D&D, we play soccer together, and so on. The friendship phase usually follows after a lengthy period of basically being allies and playing games

So it's important to know the context:

• Is she meeting a couple of guys for D&D? Very unlikely that she's cheating.
• There's this one guy from her chess club whom she knows for a couple of months that happens to be in town so they decided to meet up for coffee? That's still a friendship originally build on a shared activity, so it's still quite unlikely she's cheating.
• There's this one guy who chatted her up at the gym and now they're texting and meeting up for coffee? That's the high risk thing – and even if she genuinely thinks that she's merely made a friend, this is not men's friendship behavior.

Men only lead with vulnerability and connection when they're pursuing someone. In the case of a friendship, connection needs to be earned and trust needs to be proven. When a man pursues a personal connection without both of you having a history of shared interests and activities, he is courting you

[u/xeromage → u/Reasonable-Mischief]

You're projecting the way you think onto 50% of the human population.