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Thursday, March 13th, 2008
There’s been drama in the 1902 Victorian house of late. I came back home from Germany with something that’s made Darwin a bit unhappy - a pen pal of the male persuasion.
We met Thorsten (pronounced Torsten) late on our first night in Germany at the Hard Rock Cafe. He and I hit it off - the kind of instant rapport you don’t find every day - and exchanged contact information. It seemed a shame never to speak again to a person you got along with so well. He knew I was married, so I didn’t see any harm.
Still, I didn’t expect much to come of it. We’d e-mail a couple of times, maybe, and that would be that. I didn’t mention to Darwin that I’d exchanged contact info with a dude - I told him briefly about all the different people we met in Germany, but he wasn’t that interested in hearing about my trip, since he was preoccupied with buying a motorcycle. For a while there, whenever I talked, I could see his eyes glaze over with the daydreaming, and as soon as I’d shut up, he’d say something about the motorcycle.
Meanwhile, Thorsten seemed plenty interested in what I had to say. I found I enjoyed writing to him. It was entertaining to have a pen pal who lived in a different country, spoke three languages, and traveled around hop-hop-hop to Berlin, Hamburg, Heidelberg, Hannover (all in one week!) for his job in a way that was kinda fascinating, since those places are so far away and interesting to me.
I didn’t mention this to Darwin, since there was nothing to say, really. I e-mail with dozens of people every day, both for my job and for fun, most of whom I’ve never met in person and most of whom I never mention to Darwin. Not because I’m keeping secrets but because he understandably doesn’t care much about what’s going on with some random stranger in upstate New York or wherever.
But then Thorsten called me on the phone. I’d invited him to do so because I got the impression he was more comfortable speaking English than writing it. I guess I wasn’t thinking about what Darwin might think of some German guy calling me out of the blue.
On the phone, I acted like a giggly weirdo because it was awkward talking to this person on the phone for the first time and because Darwin was in the other room giving me funny looks. When I got off the brief call, I didn’t hesitate to tell Darwin who it was and fill him in on the situation. I expected him to be mildly jealous and then get over it. Instead, he got increasingly silent and his brow got increasingly furrowed. I kept bugging him, teasing him, telling him the truth - that Thorsten and I are just friends, that I’ve never given Darwin a reason not to trust me, and that this guy lives in Germany for heaven’s sake so what’s the big deal?
That was Sunday, and he’s still not entirely over it. One minute he’ll be fine and the next he’ll be glowering, and I’ll say, “Stop thinking about it,” and he’ll say, “I can’t.” He’s asked me a thousand questions about Thorsten, about the minute details of how we met and how we parted, about the rest of our trip and whether I saw him again (I didn’t). He’s told me it was “bad judgement” to give a guy I’d only known for two hours my contact information, and I’ve told him I have a right to have male friends if I want to and, once again, this guy lives in Germany - what am I gonna do?
I’ve never seen him this jealous. I work mostly with men and have to go on business trips with them at least a few times a year, and now and then I’ll sense Darwin is jealous when I mention individuals. But usually he denies it if confronted - he’s never gone so far as this time.
I’ve come to the conclusion that something about Thorsten (who he calls “Torso”) really threatens him, and some of the comments he made last night indicate it might be language. Darwin knows I’m deeply interested in learning languages and that I’m impressed Thorsten can speak three so well. Meanwhile, poor Darwin is apparently carrying around some hurt feelings at me for correcting his English grammar one too many times. “You say I can’t even speak English right,” he said, and I felt so terrible. I’ve been a grammar hound since elementary school, when I would - very annoyingly, I’m sure - correct my mother’s grammar instead of the other way around.
With time, I’ve gotten used to Darwin’s rather unique way of mangling the English language, and I mostly find it charming now rather than grating. I honestly do try not to correct him, but sometimes I can’t control myself.
Last night we had (another) long talk about the Thorsten Situation. I stupidly thought Darwin was over it and tried to tell him some things about Thorsten - how he plays golf and has a one-eyed cat - and how I sent him a photo of Darwin and me together. I thought that would please him, diffuse him, but it just fired him up again.
He pouted, and I cajoled. I admitted I like having someone to listen to me and pay attention to me, that I like having friends who I can talk to about things Darwin’s not interested in. I reminded him he has friends he can talk to about things I’m utterly bored by - motorcycles, for example.
Eventually, Darwin started acting like himself again. He smiled again, looked me in the eye again, fell asleep on the couch again. By the end of the discussion, he said, “I can’t say I’ll stop feeling jealous,” but in his way, he gave me permission to be friends with Thorsten. Which is good, because I’ve hated seeing him unhappy but I also wasn’t eager to bow down to the will of any testosterone-fueled man telling me who I could and could not talk to.
Now, to preserve the peace, I won’t be speaking the dreaded T-name in Darwin’s presence again. If he asks, I will tell. If he doesn’t, I’ll assume he doesn’t want to hear anything more about it.
So what do you think, dear readers? Am I being unreasonable? It’s the eternal question, When Harry Met Sally-style - can a woman and a man be “just friends”? I would like to think the answer is yes - especially if they have an entire ocean between them.
Thats a tough one. I know my husband would not be having any of that but that is because I had some “honesty issues” in the beginning of our relationship that made it harder for him to trust me completely. So basically I don’t have male friends but it is more because I value the relationship with my husband more than anything else in the world. However, it doesn’t seem that Darwin has such extreme emotions as my husband does. I guess before you went with the “don’t ask don’t tell” routine you might want to run that past Darwin so he understands that you may still be in contact with “Torso” (sorry, thats just funny there) but that you won’t be “throwing it in his face” by talking about Torso a lot. Just my two cents! P.S. totally jealous of your trip to New Orleans AND Germany!
Josh would probably be jealous also. Maybe his biggest problem is that you didn’t mention it up front, although who knows, these boys can be crazy.
Plus, Darwin has to know that you adore him! Plus this guy is on a different continent, he has nothing to worry about ; )
Oh, and also, that title was too funny. Ha!
I guess my question would be…how would you feel if Darwin was the one who’d struck up a friendship with a woman in Germany, and then didn’t mention anything about her until she called?
Mary above asks a good question.
Bottomline is that opening up intimacy with another many (which is what you are doing by becoming so ‘friendly’ with this fellow) can be dangerous. If Darwin is not interested in a friendship with “Torso”, I say that you need to NIX your relationship with the foreigner just to show your man that you RESPECT HIM. Do it out of respect.
Good luck!
I’ve been married 22 years, have six kids and still get treated like a bride - so take my toughts for what their worth.
You didn’t get married to cut yourself off from other people. However you did (I hope) marry your most important person. How your most important person feels about something should be given great weight. Especially if it seems to really, really bother them.
That said - love your blog - and am old Victorian owner myself.
Deborah
I think you need to be very careful here. You may think he is “just a friend”, but you must be very careful that the person on the other side of the ocean doesn’t read much, much more into it.
I think that if he is just a friend then there’s no reason to worry about it. If there is any type of attraction otherwise though..I wouldnt go for it. I’m on my second marriage. I had guy friends with my first marriage and never ever had a problem until I went to work for a company that my now ex hated because there were so many men working there. When I would go on the weekends bike riding with two of them (I didnt want to go with just one and have some type of impropriety thoughts going on) my ex would freak the heck out. I wish he would of trusted me but he didnt. So instead it led to him thinking I was cheating and then him actually cheating..so there it went…. Nothing else I could do at that point… My new husband just has learned to deal with it
It is absolutely possible to be just friends with someone of the opposite sex; as long as both parties understand that it is just friendship and nothing more.
I know if that was my hubby it would be the same!!!! Men never take a male friend very easily.
As I often tell my hubby–it’s not you that I don’t trust, it’s the single women. It could be that Darwin is not saying that he doesn’t trust you, but that he doesn’t trust Torso, and rightly so. The oceans aren’t that big anymore. If Darwin is uncomfortable with this, trust his instincts–he is a guy, after all, and knows how guys think.
If you’ve never given Darwin reason to mistrust you, you have the right to expect he trust you now. His jealousy is *his* problem, not yours. Yes, it is appropriate to consider his feelings in the matter, if he has strong feelings about it, but choosing to continue a platonic relationship with this man is not evidence that Darwin isn’t the most important man (person) in your life. Your feelings about Darwin getting a motorcycle are every bit as legitimate as his about your friendship with Thorsten but, ultimately, he chose what he wanted. You do not seem to have interpreted this as him caring more about his dream to own a Harley than his marriage to you and neither should he see your choice that way. The fact is, he is afraid of losing you to Thorsten. Well, you are just as afraid of losing Darwin (in a far scarier and more permanent sense) to that motorcycle. Both fears are valid and I don’t see why Darwin’s unreasonable jealousy (and unreasonable it is, if you’ve never given him reason to mistrust you–if you have, that’s another story) should be given more weight in your decision regarding your platonic friendship with Thorsten than he gave your feelings when deciding to buy a Harley. It cuts both ways. It’s lovely when the person you love can feel a bit jealous of others’ attention of you, but Darwin is carrying it a bit too far. IMO, he needs to do a little growing up. If my husband was so mistrustful of my ability to separate platonic friendship from something more, I’d be swinging for him. We have the right to expect our mate’s trust, if we’ve never done anything to harm that trust.
Just my opinion after 16 years of marriage and three kids…
P.S. I hope you had a lovely time in Germany. We had some gorgeous weather up until a couple of weeks ago. I hope you were able to catch some of it during your visit! Liebe Grüße!