How do I approach this lady? Or do we just leave her be?
My super great husband and I have a lovely friend and we adore her. They have known each other for almost 2 decades. Never has he found her attractive, I’ve never felt threatened by her, and she recently came over for dinner and it was such a nice evening. She really is a kind and bubbly person and not at all suspicious.
Maybe it’s her love language even to friends but her hand lingered on my husbands waist twice at a group dinner the other night. I leaned into my husband and said, “Wow, her hand was on your waist for a reeeally long time”. She also rubbed his waist little bit. My husband also told me she put her hand on his thigh for a while.
He said that all these things she had never done before to him and it made him quite uncomfortable. He also told me that she greeted him with a kiss on the cheek earlier that day and also when we said goodbye.
We are both a bit perplexed and we don’t want to hurt her feelings. She is a very loving person but I don’t even touch my husband that way in public nor he me.
We have another group event in two weeks and are kind of waiting it out to see if she does it again. The second time I saw her hand On his waist I was half a second too late to move it away myself! But should we nip this in the bud and chat to her now or wait for two weeks time and see what happened?
We are both perplexed. He is not having an EA.
6 comments
It has to come from him, not you. You will come off as the ‘jealouse wife’ no matter how you approach it.
If she tries any of the same stuff again, all he has to do is take her hand off him. When I was in my early 20s there was a friend that tried to do this same thing. He started touching me more and more, same exact things your friend did.
Any time he put his hand on my thigh, I put my hand on his, and moved it away. Same with when he put his hand on my waist. If he put his arm around me shoulders, I would just move away from him and go stand next to someone else.
He got the point thankfully and stopped. If you friend doesn’t get the point and keeps trying, your husband can than take the super direct route and tell her straight out he doesn’t like all the touching.
People can often touch out if friendship.
Your husband needs to say something not you.
My wife has a friend she went to college with who is… handsy. LOL.
She’s also a kisser – someone who kisses you (cheeks, let’s be fair) when you see her or when she’s leaving.
Last time she was in town, it was a bit over the top, to the point where my eldest daughter (18 at the time) mentioned it afterward. She rubbed my neck muscles while I was sitting, ran her hand down my back when I was washing some dishes, and was just touchy all evening.
My wife was utterly oblivious but my two daughters both joked about it.
She wasn’t flirting or anything like that, she’s just one of those people who touches you.
Next time she visits, I’ll position myself further away from her because while the girls joked about it, clearly it was uncomfortable for them to watch which is fair enough.
I’m not really the type of person to cause that kind of conflict and say something, so discretion will be the better part of valor.
Is there some reason your husband can’t speak up for himself?
Don’t want to hurt her feelings? Really?
I would have told her to remove her hand loudly and publicly, that would have resolved that happy crappy.
It super easy for him to move her hand away and say, “That’s unwelcome.” Why is it so hard for grown people to just address blatant unwelcome advances?
Edit: fixed a word