Anu, Request you to keep my identity anonymous.
I am a 40 years old guy, happily married with two kids. I have a lot of friends and I have invariably introduced most of them to my wife.
While with a previous organisation that I worked for, I met this girl (say M) and we became very good friends. M is 2½ years younger to me, is married and has kids. Much like with my other friends, I introduced M to my wife. M has also been home a couple of times during festive occasions.
While so, during a family day event at office almost 5 years back, during an apparent conversation between M and me, we were engrossed in the conversation and my wife was standing right next to me. My wife thought that she was deliberately being snubbed/ignored and got offended with M's behaviour.
Since then my wife developed some sort of a hatred towards M. Many a times I tried explaining to my wife that M's behaviour was not offensive and even if it was, was unintentional.
It's been nearly six years since this happened, but that animosity still continues.
The more I try to explain to her, the angrier she gets.
We have had a lot of fights whenever this topic arises. I am scared to even pick M's calls when my wife is around.
What this has done is that I started speaking to M discreetly.
I had to delete all photos that I had with her. I constantly keep deleting all WhatsApp conversations and call logs that I have with her.
I do not want to do all these secret things especially when I am not doing anything wrong.
I want my wife to give M one more chance. My wife does not think I have a relationship with M. Her point is that I should not talk to someone who has insulted her (my wife). I think that it would not be fair for me to stop talking to M.
My question is how do I instill sense into my wife?
How do I convince her to give M one more chance? I don’t want to lose a good friend.
Ans: Dear K,
If your wife has felt snubbed and you feel that she is being unreasonable, what can you do if you wife isn’t willing to befriend M?
The more you fight this, the more your wife feels that there is something going on.
Doubts in the mind spread like slow fire consuming the mind and you are adding fuel to the fire by being adamant on maintaining the connection with M.
Now you wife is convinced that she must not have anything to do with her and you should not as well.
What do you want to do? Spoil the peace at home because of an external connection?
It may not seem fair to you, but there is a reason why your wife felt snubbed by M at that time.
She is unrelenting and does not want M in the equation. Why are you fighting this?
I am asking you choose between the peace within the marriage and an external connection.
There will be a point in time when your wife will be willing to look at this objectively and that is the time to talk to her about it.
Right now, it will be like forcing her, having fights over this and maintaining a connection with M within all of this/ Do you really feel that a connection is made suppressing another one?
Connections are made in complete peace and harmony with existing connections growing because of the new one.
What you have is the existing connection being threatened because of the other.
Be patient and reasonable and wait for the time to emerge for connections to co-exist and in the meantime, reassure your wife that your marriage means a lot to you.
May not sound fair, but it’s the only way to honour the marriage.
All the best!
