Gal pals- when to share couple trouble

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-19-2007
Gal pals- when to share couple trouble
3
Thu, 07-19-2007 - 2:16am

My boyfriend of a little over a year is a wonderful man but we are having this major disagreement that I need some advice on. He is very vocal about his feelings and any problems he is having with me and the relationship. I, on the other hand, spend most of my time running "damage control" on his emotional stuff and have a hard time bringing up my own feelings. In the past, I used to talk to my girl friends to sort out any feelings I was having and then communicate with him about it. Yet, he hated the fact I was talking to my girl friends about "us".
So, for the last six months, I've tried to respect his wishes and not speak to my friends about our relationship. Unfortunately, this has left me feeling suffocated, lonely and LESS able to communicate with him. Before, when I was talking to my friends about our relationship, they helped me spend a little time to clarify my thoughts and sort through my emotions and then I was able to come back to him and communicate with him. The problem with that was, he would get upset/hurt that he was not able to be part of the entire process I went through to work out my feelings so that I could come back to him and have a real discussion about our relationship.

So, now I feel trapped. He says he does not want me to talk to my friends and I feel like I cannot be an effective partner unless I can vent and clarify my thoughts and emotions with my girlfriends.

What should I do? Is it okay to talk to girl friends about my relationship?

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-13-2004
Thu, 07-19-2007 - 3:49am

I believe that if one partner does not want relationship problems discussed with friends, then this wish should be honoured. Not everyone is comfortable having their dirty linen aired in public. But by the same token, if you want to discuss relationships with friends, you are free to find someone who doesn't object. It's not really a matter of right or wrong, just a difference of opinion.

What I am concerned about is that you NEED the support of friends to make this relationship work. This shows big problems either in the relationship and/or in your own self analysis skills. Enjoying discussing problems with friends is one thing, but NEEDING friend's input is not healthy.

I think you could benefit from a individual counselling. Find someone who can give you some concrete strategies to help you analyse your own thoughts. Someone who can give you the confidence to trust your instincts and make wise decisions on your own. And you may want to re-think a relationship which leaves you in so much turmoil in the first place.

I'm not going to suggest relationship counselling to take the place of your friends. This is because I don't believe in pre-maritial counselling. I believe that if a relationship has sufficient problems before marriage to warrant counselling, then it should never progress to marriage.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 09-30-2005
Thu, 07-19-2007 - 3:01pm

Welcome to the board misssarah701,


If you feel as strongly about needing to talk to someone to help you figure things out, consider going to individual therapy. Do you think your bf would have a problem with you going?

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iVillage Member
Registered: 10-15-2006
Thu, 07-19-2007 - 3:28pm
Maybe I missed something in your post, but why is it that you are unable to include your bf in the whole prosses of working through the issue? Can you communicate to him the things that you might otherwise be talking to your friends about? By requesting you not speak to your friends about the issue I would hope that he would be willing to listen. Personally I don't think it's reasonable to never seek an outside opinion on a situation -with your bf's discomfort in this perhaps it needs to be presented as a generalized version of whatever you are needing input on rather than including all the details - would he be comfortable with this? If that too is unacceptable then, as the other posters recommended, perhaps individual counseling would be helpfull.
Good Luck!
E.