My(35f) friend (35f) never makes plans with us.
We always have to work around her husband(35M) social schedule.
Her husband makes plans with his friends all the time, last minute, and brings them over to their house and lets her know “hey, John and Jane are coming over tonight for board games…”
or “hey, Mary and Joe are visiting from out of town at the end of the month.”
If they have guests staying over, she puts her phone away. We won’t hear from her for DAYS. I can only imagine she’s sitting there staring at them 24/7.
And then he himself, will go out clubbing on the weekends, “hey I’m going to a club on Saturday,” …so on *those* nights, she has to stay home and watch the kids and she can’t go out.
So to his credit? He seems to take care of his friendships, and nurtures them.
But she just sits there and waits for him …lives for him and what his plans are.
We have to schedule things Months in advance with her.
If we do something without her, her feelings get hurt. And she’ll get defensive.
Again, to his credit, he’s never shown any resistance to her plans.
If we have movie nights or whatnot, he’s relaxed and is fine with it.
But it’s her.
She doesn’t seem to want to make waves, or make plans that take her away from him ….she seems like she just wants to sit there and wait for him to have time for her.
I don’t know how to mention this to her. I feel like she treats us like an afterthought, she makes no efforts in texting or anything, and making plans is a nightmare.
She’s a stay at home mom, and he works from home, but she hides her cellphone cuz she doesn’t want him to think she’s lazy on her phone all day…. But he chats with his friends all day?
During the beginning of the pandemic he told her she was on her phone too much. And he didn’t want their kids seeing that. We would only hear from her on weekend nights for a year.
Any suggestions…? I feel like we’re just at a loss 🙁
TL;DR! My friend acts like a 50s housewife, her husband is the center of her universe, and she won’t make her own plans with friends…and we feel like she doesn’t care about her friendships with any of us.
5 comments
There’s nothing really to suggest. She is making these choices of her own volition. Have you tried to include her partner and have a catch up all as a group? From there mention a hobby she can commit to.
Is she unhappy? Or are you?
The only issue that concerns you is that your friend is hard to make plans with and gets her feelings hurt when you do stuff without her. The solution is to tell her to be more available or suck it up. Everything after that is not your problem, most particularly the inner workings of her marriage. However fixated she seems to be on her husband, she at least shares a life and children with him. What’s your excuse?
Sounds more like her and her husband spend time with their friends. I highly doubt his wife is excluded from game night or when they have company over, leaving her to just watch them have fun 24/7.
Also never once mentioned about trying to make plans with them, just her.
Sounds more like being jealous of their relationship to me.
This reads bizarre. I can understand your frustration with her being upset you don’t invite her to things, but not the in-depth analyzation of her marriage. As well as the assumption she just “stares” at them rather than is an active participant. Is there a reason you don’t invite them both but only her (when you do invite her)?
You’re all in mid-30’s. FAR too old to be this petty or invested in your friends relationship. What works for her, might not work for you. It’s not for you to decide. It reads as jealousy on your part.
As a side note, just invite her to things. I work a LOT. My friends know there’s only about a 15% chance I can make whatever event. They still invite me to let me know they’re thinking of me. It’s not particularly hard.
It does not sound that u are jealous, in fact it sounds like you despite her 50s housewife lifestyle and are starting to lose respect for her because of it and because you think she is neglecting your friendship because of that.
Since her husband is not manipulating her as you wrote, it just means she everyday chooses to prioritise him and her role has a wife and is not interested in putting effort in nurturing other meaningful relationships, so I’m afraid you have no power in changing what she wants.
I’m assuming she only acts hurt because maybe she does have a little FOMO and she also feels guilty to be the only one stooding you up always, however it looks like she doesn’t care THAT much about being included otherwise she would have already acted on it or at the very least communicated more with you to find a middle ground solution. She has no right to make u feel bad because she feels hurt due to her own choices…
Does she ever invite her friends over?