Yeah I didn’t know about the divorce for the first friend. My wife had seen no pictures of the husband on Instagram (I’m not on Instagram) for awhile though. But I reached out saying “I was remembering some of her quoted wisdom with my wife and hope she is well and the kids are well”. She mentioned she had divorced. There was no flirting intended and I would be amazed if my messages were interpreted as such.
The second friend is someone I know because our wives are best friends and we visited them fairly frequently. The friend’s wife visited us and told us details about their relationship difficulties to vent. I messaged the husband offering an ear whenever needed. He took it poorly and felt (possibly) ashamed about “not having his house in order”. He asked his wife not to talk about relationship issues to anyone (didn’t work, my wife is first to hear all the details of things happening between them) and asked her to say that he doesn’t want to talk about it. Since the wives are besties, the message came back through my wife. I thought it was even more sad that the wife had emotional support, and the husband just balled up everything inside and felt like sharing difficulties was somehow a sign of weakness. Seemed like some shitty idea of masculinity to me. I wished him the best and left it at that. Since then, the wife has left him with their son, moved out to a flat that she uses for hooking up, kept promising this is for getting some space to get her thoughts straight with the promise of reconciliation, continually cheated with a coworker he always expressed concerns about her becoming too intimate with (coworker also married with a newborn baby at home). Complete shitshow. Now he’s blocked all of us in an attempt to break ties with the wife’s side of the social group.
I honestly don’t see an issue with the first one. She may just not have been in a good place mentally to respond. But I also don’t feel like your message absolutely warranted a response. It would have been the polite thing for her to do but if she’s struggling then I think it’d reasonable to be content that you shared some positivity / support, which she likely read and appreciated. Is this friend closer to you or your wife?
The second situation sounds like an absolute shit show and its probably to your benefit he didn’t engage lol. Honestly I get where he’s coming from though. You’re absolutely right about our broken concept of masculinity. Ever since humans moved from hunter gatherers (mobile) to agrarian and industrial (sedentary) with the ability to produce surplus, masculinity has been defined by productivity and controlling capital with emotional labor seen as a distraction or weakness. I despise the dominant worldview towards masculinity.
But, you basically made it obvious to him that their ‘dirty laundry’ was being aired out. That’s bound to not be received well.
Yeah I didn’t know about the divorce for the first friend. My wife had seen no pictures of the husband on Instagram (I’m not on Instagram) for awhile though. But I reached out saying “I was remembering some of her quoted wisdom with my wife and hope she is well and the kids are well”. She mentioned she had divorced. There was no flirting intended and I would be amazed if my messages were interpreted as such.
The second friend is someone I know because our wives are best friends and we visited them fairly frequently. The friend’s wife visited us and told us details about their relationship difficulties to vent. I messaged the husband offering an ear whenever needed. He took it poorly and felt (possibly) ashamed about “not having his house in order”. He asked his wife not to talk about relationship issues to anyone (didn’t work, my wife is first to hear all the details of things happening between them) and asked her to say that he doesn’t want to talk about it. Since the wives are besties, the message came back through my wife. I thought it was even more sad that the wife had emotional support, and the husband just balled up everything inside and felt like sharing difficulties was somehow a sign of weakness. Seemed like some shitty idea of masculinity to me. I wished him the best and left it at that. Since then, the wife has left him with their son, moved out to a flat that she uses for hooking up, kept promising this is for getting some space to get her thoughts straight with the promise of reconciliation, continually cheated with a coworker he always expressed concerns about her becoming too intimate with (coworker also married with a newborn baby at home). Complete shitshow. Now he’s blocked all of us in an attempt to break ties with the wife’s side of the social group.
I honestly don’t see an issue with the first one. She may just not have been in a good place mentally to respond. But I also don’t feel like your message absolutely warranted a response. It would have been the polite thing for her to do but if she’s struggling then I think it’d reasonable to be content that you shared some positivity / support, which she likely read and appreciated. Is this friend closer to you or your wife?
The second situation sounds like an absolute shit show and its probably to your benefit he didn’t engage lol. Honestly I get where he’s coming from though. You’re absolutely right about our broken concept of masculinity. Ever since humans moved from hunter gatherers (mobile) to agrarian and industrial (sedentary) with the ability to produce surplus, masculinity has been defined by productivity and controlling capital with emotional labor seen as a distraction or weakness. I despise the dominant worldview towards masculinity.
But, you basically made it obvious to him that their ‘dirty laundry’ was being aired out. That’s bound to not be received well.