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Wednesday, March 19th, 2008
Thanks for all your helpful and wise comments, though I’m still totally conflicted on this issue.
My friend and I were discussing it this morning, and she pointed out the similarities between the Torso Situation and the Motorcycle Situation. I didn’t want Darwin to have a motorcycle. They’re dangerous, and the thought of him driving one frequently really freaks me out. I told him repeatedly - even tearfully - how I felt about him getting a motorcycle, hoping he would snap out of it and realize that it wasn’t worth it to make me live in a state of (perhaps irrational) terror every time he’s out on it.
I wanted to say, “No, you can’t have a motorcycle,” but ultimately I’m not his mother and didn’t want to be the person to tell him his lifelong dream could not come true. Financially, we could afford it, so my last line of defense was gone.
He chose to ignore my feelings on the issue and do what makes him happy. Now at last he has his Harley, and he’s tickled pink. Seeing him so giddy makes me feel a little better about the decision, but I still get a knot in my stomach when I think about him riding it.
In the Torso Situation, Darwin is trying the same tactic - telling me makes him jealous, telling me it makes him uncomfortable. Telling me that even though he knows I’m not going to run off to Germany with this guy, even though he knows I love him, he just doesn’t like it. He wants to say, “Stop talking to him,” but ultimately he knows he’s not my boss. If I choose to continue chatting with Torso, I’m making the same choice he made with the motorcycle … to ignore his feelings and do what pleases me.
So I should just do what I want, right? Weeeeelll … they say two wrongs don’t make a right. Some would probably say a vehicle purchase is nowhere near as important in a marriage as questions of fidelity. I don’t know.
The past few days I’ve been in Vegas with my mother at the Halloween trade show, and in our many phone conversations while I was gone, neither Darwin or I mentioned Torso. We babytalked on the phone in our usual obnoxious fashion, and everything felt completely normal between us. Still, I suspect if I mentioned even the country of Germany, he would start pouting again.
Certainly, if it upsets him that much, it’s not worth it. I just keep hoping it will stop upsetting him. That it will become routine, that Darwin will see he’s still the one I love, and I can be friends with Torso, and maybe Darwin can be too. When Darwin and I go to Europe in May, I would like us to meet up with Torso for drinks one night or maybe detour to his city and have him show us around. I think Torso would be open to that, but at the moment, Darwin is decidedly not. When I mentioned it a few days ago, he said, “I don’t want to meet him because that would mean you seeing him again.”
So I guess I’m just in a holding pattern for now. My plan - if you can call it that - is just to wait and see.
Edited to add:
If anyone is wondering how I would react if the shoe was on the other foot, it has been. A few years ago, Darwin had a close female friend. They worked together, and they chatted on the phone every day. I was jealous and had a bad vibe about her, but I didn’t feel I had the right to tell him to stop being her friend just because she was a woman.
Eventually, several months into the friendship, I did tell him that I wasn’t comfortable with how much he talked to her. I think it was after an evening when she called while we were out to dinner (which she had a knack for doing), and Darwin sat talking to her on the phone instead of to me. Even then - even knowing the woman didn’t like me and strongly suspecting she was interested in Darwin in a more-than-friendly way - all I did was ask him to please not talk to her as much on the phone. I said I trusted him but not her and that I thought it was better if they scaled back their friendship. He instantly agreed and said he wouldn’t call her anymore at all. I insisted it didn’t have to be that strict, but he was almost eager to end it. I think he was getting bad vibes from her at that point, too.
Shortly after he stopped calling her, she went totally psycho and started spreading lies at work about him, including saying he married me for my money (what money?). It was a huge fiasco, and all the things she said made me even doubt Darwin’s side of the story, but eventually I realized she was just nuts.
So anyway, I feel my little friendship with a man across the pond is minor in comparison. And having gone through that ordeal before, I’m not going to make the same mistake Darwin made - being completely oblivious to the opposite sex friend’s more-than-friendly feelings. I’m completely confident that Thorsten is not going to hop a plane and try to come steal me away. He’s not going to go psycho and try to break up our marriage with lies. He’s a grown man and knows exactly what this is - a friendship that can only ever be that.
The old saying goes “What is good for the goose is good for the gander.” This could come back and bite you some day.
As for the bike. The rider is not generally the one at fault when there is an accident. It is car drivers that don’t pay proper attention that cause bikers to have accidents. I think you may find that more people die each year in hospitals due to negligence than do in motor cycle accidents.
Oh it’s definitely the car drivers I’m worried about! I think Darwin will be careful, but it makes me nervous having him so vulnerable out on the road with all these people text messaging and putting on their makeup in the car (both of which I’m ashamed to admit I do).
First up - I have to ask….are you in the Halloween industry? My wife and I love Halloween!!
Second…I can see both sides of the ‘Germany thing’. I use to travel a lot and now the wife does. It can be touch and go - but it boils down to trust.
Larry, my parents have owned a costume and party store for several years. Now I design and manage their website for them, candyapplecostumes.com. We love Halloween, too!
Yikes Kristin - you have got a tough situation - definitely one you have to be careful with. I understand a bit because I have a couple really good guy friends from my swing dancing days, that were my husband more of the jealous type, they could be bad situations also. It probably helps that those guys now have wives… My advice, for what it’s worth, is to try and let the Torso relationship fizzle out, or what seems like a silly & inconvenient problem could become much bigger.
I came across your site a while back - don’t remember exactly how, but I love reading your house story, and it inspired me to start writing about mine too.
Hey Kristin in Alabama!
I just came across your blog - it’s so fun! You have the coolest house!
I have some advice that you can take or leave. I was once Torso in this situation, only difference, I had been friends with this guy since before he even met his wife. Well, she didn’t like me from the get-go and it was hurting all relationships, mine and his, his and hers. As much as I cared for my friend, I knew his marriage was a bond between them and God. I truly only liked him as a friend, but I hated the idea of hurting anyone’s marriage. Nothing is worth that! Friendships come and go, but your marriage should last forever.
As sad and silly as it may sound, I personally believe men and women (who are married to other people) just can’t be friends. It’s not healthy and it’s not right to put your spouse through that kind of agony. It causes problems that just aren’t worth it. I’m sure not everyone would agree with me, but it’s an adage I follow. Good luck! I’m sure your situation will resolve itself and you’ll feel less conflicted.
Thanks for the cool blog posts, Molly in Texas
“As sad and silly as it may sound, I personally believe men and women (who are married to other people) just can’t be friends. It’s not healthy and it’s not right to put your spouse through that kind of agony.”
Wow. Really? Unhealthy?? I couldn’t agree less with that statement. Friendship is friendship, full stop. I believe it is an unhealthy marriage which can’t cope with the spouses having friendships with the opposite gender. I’ve been married for over 16 years and both my husband and I have had completely platonic friendships with the opposite gender without the least bit of trouble. It would never occur to me to worry about my husband’s friendship with a woman anymore than it would occur to him to cheat on me and the same applies to him regarding me. We’ve never given one another any reason to mistrust and therefore, we have the right to respect each other’s trust. If your spouse is friends with someone you can’t stand, it might cause problems in the marriage if your spouse spends too much time with that person, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the gender of that friend. That has to do with not liking your spouse’s friend enough to want to be around when s/he is around. I’ve seen this happen often enough.
In any case, we are talking, in a practical sense, about pen friends here. I honestly think that someone who gets his knickers in bunch over his spouse having a pen friend of the opposite sex has some issues he needs to sort. Kristin hasn’t done anything wrong and isn’t doing anything wrong if she continues to correspond with her new friend. Why is it alright for Darwin to put her through agony of worry over his safety just so he can have his motor bike but it’s “not right to put your spouse through that kind of agony” regarding a correspondence/friendship with a friend of the opposite sex?
As Larry above says, “it boils down to trust”. And that’s pretty much it, in a nutshell.