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housewifehobbyist
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Helping Husband Deal
My husband is coming to terms with the loss of a friendship, and I'm unsure of how to help him. The abbreviated version of the very, very long story is that this friend of his, Tom, is a very right wing, christian, bigot. He was also the father figure that swooped in when my husband was a teenager (Tom is more than ten years older) and took him under his wing when DH's mentally ill father died from a prolonged illness. Fast forward another decade and hubby and I are still dating, and I try to ignore things Tom says about wasting money on college when I'm probably going to end up staying home with the kids by 30, or making rude comments about my being an atheist. Tom keeps poking at me, until one night he goes too far and calls me stupid because I "didn't get" his misogynistic joke. Then he goes on a rant about me not taking my husband's name. I decided then to cut Tom out of my life permanently- not socializing with him, no visits to my home, etc- as my husband and I were having serious marriage problems because of Tom's behavior and my husband not defending me. This improved things drastically. Until this past weekend.
DH was at a sporting event with Tom and Tom's group of friends, and that f*cker went off on DH so hard about me ignoring him that he had my husband in tears. After 15 years of friendship DH has had enough, and he knows the friendship is over. Maybe not completely cutting him off today over, but it won't be able to continue like nothing has happened. I feel torn. On one hand, I'm glad he sees Tom for who he is and that he'll be out of our lives soon, but I also feel for my husband losing a father figure, again, and losing this whole group of friends along with it. He doesn't really have many good friends as it is. It's hard to sound honestly sympathetic when he knows how much I hate Tom, but I know losing friends is hard. I'm trying to figure out how to support him without pointing out that Tom is no big loss, when I know it's a loss to him.
Words of advice?
DH was at a sporting event with Tom and Tom's group of friends, and that f*cker went off on DH so hard about me ignoring him that he had my husband in tears. After 15 years of friendship DH has had enough, and he knows the friendship is over. Maybe not completely cutting him off today over, but it won't be able to continue like nothing has happened. I feel torn. On one hand, I'm glad he sees Tom for who he is and that he'll be out of our lives soon, but I also feel for my husband losing a father figure, again, and losing this whole group of friends along with it. He doesn't really have many good friends as it is. It's hard to sound honestly sympathetic when he knows how much I hate Tom, but I know losing friends is hard. I'm trying to figure out how to support him without pointing out that Tom is no big loss, when I know it's a loss to him.
Words of advice?
Re: Helping Husband Deal
I see nothing in here where Tom is completely history -- and even if Tom is?
You have an H problem.
He never came to your defense and wow, he wasn't man enough to tell TOm to get lost, long before you entered the picture.
I don't know what you want to do about your H ---- y0u have an inherantly flawed marriage because Tom came between you and your H -- and the vow is "forsaking all others". He sure forsook you and big time.
Plus I cannot see how anybody intelligent would even tolerate a guy like this; why was it okay with you to have Tom in YOUR life???
Tom should have been history ages ago, like I said, long before you even were a glean in your H's eye.
Ten years older is not a father figure.
And your H can do with some therapy --- there are plenty of places he can go where there are activities where he will meet decent guys to be friends with. Volunteer, take lessons in something, join a coed sports team/lessons, to name a few.
I think a big part of it came from Tom being a very controlling person, and being able to control DH (he's really easy to manipulate, sorry) and then I came in all sassy bitches and ruined things. I like to think DH being in a fairly healthy relationship with me and being around my parent's healthy relationship has opened his eyes to how people should treat each other. He's a good person with issues, and I've seen so much improvement in him since we first met. I have no interest in controlling other adults, just myself and I'm the ONLY one who gets final say over me, so I said I'd had enough. Turns out Tom's been digging his own grave all along. Sunday DH came home very upset after this big fight and said he's had enough dealing with Tom's issues and he realizes the friendship is irreparably damaged. So I had to walk the line between celebrating and supporting his mourning.
Therapy is not a bad idea, I'm trying to encourage him to do some solo and then together, but I'm a huge therapy advocate in general. We're both pretty introverted, so making new friends is not easy, but it's doable. I don't think he's ever had real friends the way I think of them, to be honest.
Also just a small P.S- but "he wasn't man enough" is such a problematic phrase to me. Masculinity has nothing to do with bravery or loyalty. I felt the same way when he complained about feeling like "a little bitch" crying at a football game. Expressing emotions is not a solely feminine trait. Not a comment on you Tarpon, I know it's common phrasing, I'm just hyper aware to gender specific insults and they really get my goat.