TLDR: My wife, who has previous relationship trauma, has asked me to not recreate with other females.
I am on a search and rescue (SAR) team, it is a volunteer organization as most of them are. After having two children, my fitness has suffered so I started going to the rock climbing gym to get back to a level of fitness I am comfortable with and have a little "me time" once a week. I invited the entire team for several weeks in a row and a few people showed up. As people lost the novelty or had other conflicts come up. The one consistent person is a woman on the team. She [43] is married herself, but her husband doesn't climb. The team members know the day of the week and time and occasionally join.
Typically, my wife goes to her gym a couple nights a week when I watch the kids, and she watches when I go. My wife is always invited to join me at the gym, knows this, and has several times. Obviously someone has to take care of the kids so when she joins we get a babysitter, but that gets too expensive for us if we were to do it every week. We also get a babysitter 1-2 times a month so we can have our own date night.
My wife was cheated on by a long-term boyfriend several times and has even seen a therapist because of those issues before and since we've been married. I don't know the intricate details of the trauma, but have tried to be supportive.
The members of the team, in general, are very close regardless of gender. We are frequently in high-stress situations together involving traumatic events, so much so that many of the team members have been diagnosed with some level of PTSD at one time or another. Many of the topics only others in certain fields would understand the events as we debrief those, so we try not to bring that stress home by debriefing with each other. Side note: we do have a fantastic critical incident stress management team/program available to us as well.
The issue with my relationship with my wife took a step up after I got injured and haven't been able to climb since (upper extremity injury). I was climbing with my wife at the time. I looked to other forms of exercise I enjoy, which turned out to be hiking because it is accessible. I put out the invitation to the entire team but only the woman in question was able to make it. I told the plans to my wife and went on the hike. We hiked a popular trail that we get many of our call-outs on. Out one hour, back one hour, and it was after work so it was a night hike.
A couple of days later my wife approached me and said she didn't like that I was taking another woman on a 'romantic sunset hike' and felt would like me to not continue to do that. So for the next few weeks I went hiking at night by myself. Once snow started to fall, the risk game changed, so now I haven't been exercising for several weeks.
My wife wanted to go skiing a few weeks ago and I offered to watch the kids while she went for the day. Her ski buddy (female) fell through so I offered that she could likely join with my friends (mostly guys) since I wasn't going. Her response was along the lines of 'well I don't want you to hang out with women so I wouldn't want to ski with men'. Truthfully, I don't care who she skis with as long as they are safe. But, this comment made me feel that she is making concessions that I didn't ask for.
I feel that I should be able to have the same relationship that I have with other men (i.e. climbing partners, hiking buddies, ski buddies, etc) with a woman just the same. I believe the opposite should be true for her, and in the past she has had male friends who she would hang out with one-on-one.
I can't ask the entire SAR team to join on hikes or climbs anymore on the chance that the SAR woman would be the only available one. I have been avoiding going to the climbing gym on the excuse that my injury is still an issue when it is probably just a strength issue. I feel resentful that I am unable to have a friend just because of their sex, and nothing else. It is also really hard to find climbing partners who you trust not to accidentally kill you and has a similar schedule. Of course, I've tried to find other partners, but typically their schedules are either inconsistent or don't line up.
So I guess a couple more specific questions are in order:
Is it normal for a wife or husband to avoid independent friendships with people of the opposite sex?
If not, what steps could I/we take to gain a better comfort level with friends of the opposite sex?
Any other words of advice, or ways to think about the situation to understand her perspective?
Submitted December 23, 2019 at 12:03PM by mydownvotedopinion https://ift.tt/2sgwcar
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