Dear Life Kit: My boyfriend’s female friendships stress me out

0:00Amy Chan:This message comes from Mattress Firm. If mornings hurt, your mattress might be why. Mattress Firm's sleep experts can match you with a Tempur-Pedic Adapt. Its unique material absorbs motion and delivers pressure-relieving support. Upgrade to a Tempur-Pedic and get next-day delivery. For the great sleep you deserve, visit Mattress Firm and learn how to get 3 % back with special financing. They make sleep easy. Restrictions apply. Next-day delivery available on select mattresses and subject to location. See store for details. You're listening to Life Kit from NPR. Hey, it's Mariel. Happy almost Valentine's Day, you friggin' cuties.

0:41Amy Chan:Question, what do you think about dating people you're friends with? Terrible idea? Best idea you ever had? I mean, I think it's a really great formula to have a best friend that you want to make out with. Amy Chan is a relationship expert and a previous guest of Life Kit. She helped us with getting over breakups a while back. Her upcoming book is called Un-Single, How to Date Smarter and Create Love That Lasts.

1:07Emily Nagoski:Speaking of... The couples who sustain strong sexual connections over the long term, the first characteristic they all share, regardless of gender or sexual orientation or anything else, they like each other.

1:20Amy Chan:This is fellow Life Kit alum Emily Nagoski. Emily is a sex educator, a researcher, and the author of the wildly popular books, Come As You Are and Come Together. So yes, Emily and Amy agree that relationships can and should be built on a foundation of friendship. But they also acknowledge that when you mix friendship and romance, things can get sticky. For example, being friends with your ex. Highly polarizing topic. I'm betting just the mention of it brings up feelings for you. Our experts say it is possible, but you've got to give yourself a transition period because maybe your brain has decided to not be in a relationship with this person.

2:01Amy Chan:But your body doesn't get the memo. And so if you keep seeing each other and sharing good news with each other and having sex, your body doesn't understand that there's been a breakup.

2:11Emily Nagoski:One of the barometers I suggest to people is if this is the first person you want to tell really big news to, especially bad news, like if they're your person you go to, you're not ready to be friends yet.

2:25Amy Chan:On this edition of Dear Life Kit, the advice series from Life Kit reporter Andy Tegel, Emily and Amy are here to offer advice for lovers and friends on all the messiness that can happen when two become one. They'll talk about what to do when friends become lovers, become just roommates, what to do when you're jealous of your partner's friends, what to do when you're thinking about meddling in a friend's relationship, and more. That's after the break.

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4:32Amy Chan:all right question number one dear life kit my girlfriend and i started dating a little over a year ago after crushing on each other for years from afar. At first, she was very loving and affectionate. She'd leave me little love notes and we had sex often. Then, a few months in, she had surgery to insert an IUD and we haven't had sex since. She tells me she's bled constantly since the IUD and it affects her hormones, so she simply has no sexual appetite. But she also abstains from nearly any affectionate gesture, romantic moment, or expression of shared feeling. Now it feels like we're roommates.

5:07Amy Chan:I don't want to pressure her, but I want my girlfriend back. Is it wrong for me to ask her to consider my feelings about sex and affection? Signed, starved for affection. We only know one side of the story here, of course, but it sounds to me like there's a lot going on with a girlfriend, right? Is that what you were hearing too, Emily?

5:23Emily Nagoski:Yeah, no change in hormones causes a person to stop writing little love notes. I think we might not know everything that happened with the IUD placement. one of my thoughts was there's a significant proportion of people who have very intense, unpleasant, painful experiences with IUD placement. And especially if she's been bleeding constantly, like there might have been a painful experience that she has not felt comfortable sharing. Of course, it's absolutely valid to want your needs met and to have a conversation about it and have that conversation in a way that doesn't activate the dreaded chasing dynamic.

6:03Emily Nagoski:If you go in and say, hey, I'm entitled to the sex and the love that you were giving me before, not going to work out well. I think what I'm hearing him say is, I miss my girlfriend. And if the conversation begins at the place of, I really miss you. I miss the sense of feeling emotionally connected and loved and loving. and without going to the sexual conversation, are there things we can do that feel loving?

6:38Amy Chan:I mean, that was my next question is like, what is the absolute wrong way to go about this? What are some ways more broadly that people might be pushing their partners without knowing it in these types of situations? When we're about to have a high stakes conversation and this would be one, we can go in with either boxing gloves or a handshake. And boxing gloves is like, you know, you're not doing this anymore and I want this and my needs aren't getting met. There's a lot of accusatory language. And then there's a handshake method, which is coming in with care and compassion and using I statements, right?

7:13Amy Chan:And when you have the boxing gloves, the person has their defenses up. They're already in their survival state. So you've already lost a conversation before it's begun. part of communication isn't just, okay, what words am I going to use and what's the goal of it? But how am I going to approach it? And having a handshake means even the timing of the conversations. I used to love having my deep conversations, high stakes conversations right before my partners went to go to bed. Bad timing, right? Boxing gloves. I've now learned, okay, afternoons are better. Yeah. I think what's extra tricky in this specific situation is the freshness of this relationship, right?

7:53Amy Chan:The relationship itself is about a year old. It sounds like their sexual relationship was just ramping up before it completely shut down. What if that conversation is opened up very lovingly and the answer is, I'm not interested in the sexual relationship?

8:07Emily Nagoski:Yeah, because this relationship is comparatively new, this is the kind of conversation that can really be like break the relationship or build a deeper, more profound connection so that they begin sort of tossing aside all the scripts we have in our minds about how sex is supposed to work in a relationship and begin co-creating a connection that's really customized to who they are in this season of their lives, which is different from what the first year of their life was like.

8:38Amy Chan:Yeah, and I think it's also important when these conversations happen is to see if both partners are willing to come to the table to grow. And are they invested in building the relationship? Because right now, this is a topic around physical intimacy. Guess what? In five years or three years, there will be another big topic where one partner will say, this need isn't being met or I have this love language and you don't. And it's not really about what is the conflict of the moment. It is our two people both willing to come together as a team to hear each other out, to grow together and figure out solutions so that it's working for the both of them and not just one of them.

9:20Amy Chan:Absolutely. They're going to be fine. We're rooting for you. We're rooting for you. Start for affection. All right. Moving on to question number two. Dear Life Kid, my boyfriend and I have been in a loving, long distance relationship for just over two years. We like to joke that we'll never leave the honeymoon stage because we only get to see each other every few months, usually for a week at a time while traveling somewhere exciting. We're both looking forward to moving in together in the future. My issue is he has a lot of close female friends. It makes me really uncomfortable. When I met his female friends from college, for example, one of the first things they brought up was how they'd all seen him naked because that's, quote, just what he did at parties.

10:04Amy Chan:He'd never mention that to me. Another time, he got too drunk at a party and slept on the couch at his female friend's house. Just him and her. No one else. Recently, he was invited to a music festival by another female friend, and he was very short on details. Like who's going, what the sleeping arrangements would be. I don't think he would cheat on me, but I can't stop feeling uneasy and even a little jealous. I've never had many guy friends, so it's hard for me to accept all these platonic female friendships. Do I have to? Signed? Long distance? Sorry. And left out. Okay, Emily. Yes, you did.

10:39Amy Chan:Hot off the gates. Okay.

10:41Emily Nagoski:So short answer, yes. Longer answer has to be, oh, so how do I do that? This is a question about trust, right?

10:50Amy Chan:Yeah.

10:50Emily Nagoski:And either your partner is not worthy of your trust, and she says, I don't think he would cheat on me, so partner is worthy of trust. Okay, so that means the lack of trust is happening on your end. you are slow to trust. There are so many reasons a person can be slow to trust. Maybe they have had their trust betrayed in the past, and so they're reluctant to trust again. Maybe they just grew up in a family where trust was betrayed often or slow to be given. Some people just temperamentally are slower to trust. A lot of the times, especially when it's a jealousy version of trust. It's about being worried that who you are is not enough to keep your partner with you when your partner is going to look around and see all these other women that they're friends with and feel like, oh, I could really do so much better because of these other people.

11:49Emily Nagoski:So ultimately, this sounds to me like, is this person sure that they deserve this partner?

11:57Amy Chan:Okay. All right. Amy, are you in agreement? Yes. It's totally okay for your partner to have friends of the opposite sex. So in this case, it sounds like there's kind of two issues going on. One is, can he have friends? Yes. The other part is maybe when this guy was single, he was running around naked and having sleeping arrangements that were fine when he's a bachelor. But now that he's in a relationship, I think it's also important that they have a conversation of, okay, what are the boundaries around this? Like totally going to support that you have these friends and what is reasonable that now that you're in a relationship that we can both feel comfortable with it.

12:43Amy Chan:And I think exactly what Emily said, when people are jealous, we can try to remove all the things that make us jealous. It's like, you can't be friends with this person. You can't go past this time. But it's like whack-a-mole, right? If you don't address a core issue, you're constantly going to be just addressing the symptoms.

13:01Emily Nagoski:I think it's reasonable to, like, sit down with your partner before you move in together and be like, I have a request. How about you not be naked in front of your friends anymore? Yeah.

13:12Amy Chan:So it sounds like there are conversations that this couple need to have. There's an expectation setting that needs to be done. I want to talk a little bit more about jealousy because it's, you know, it's a natural human response that we all deal with now and then. What's the healthy way for long distance and left out to work through these emotions? Therapy.

13:29Emily Nagoski:I don't want to oversimplify, but honestly, especially because it's so early in the relationship, like let's nip this in the bud. You can have all the relationship skills in the world. And if you don't understand the source of your discomfort, you're not going to be able to cope with it.

13:51Amy Chan:Yeah, I also think that what happens a lot of times when people feel jealous is there could be an automatic reaction to blame that feeling on the partner. So I feel this, it's painful, it's your fault, so you do these things. And so before they even think of going to therapy, they're like, well, there's nothing wrong with me. Why would I go to therapy? You go to therapy. And a question that I find very helpful is to ask yourself, is the way that I'm feeling and the way that I'm reacting proportionate to the reality of the situation or the offense at hand? And then that's going to require you to do some digging, hopefully with a therapist, but if not, even on your own at first, so that you can start to piece together the dots and then come to your partner with a conversation where you're more vulnerable.

14:43Amy Chan:Being like, wow, this happened, it triggered me. And that can open up this deep conversation that can actually bring you closer together. More Dear Life Kit after this quick break. This message comes from Grainger. This is the story of The One. As a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility, he knows keeping the line up and running is a top priority. That's why he chooses Grainger. Because when a drive belt gets damaged, Grainger makes it easy to find the exact specs for the replacement product he needs. And next day delivery helps ensure he'll have everything in place and running like clockwork.

15:21Amy Chan:Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done. Support for NPR and the following message come from Edward Jones. A rich life isn't a straight line to a destination on the horizon. Sometimes it takes an unexpected turn with detours, new possibilities, and even another passenger or three. And with a hundred years of navigating ups and downs, you can count on Edward Jones to help guide you through it all. Because life is a winding path made rich by the people you walk it with. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones, member SIPC.

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16:35Amy Chan:Moving on to question three. Dear Life Kit, My partner and I are very close friends with another couple. We've known them for over a decade, and I even officiated their wedding. As their relationship has progressed, we've become increasingly concerned for them. One partner treats the other like a servant, and we feel that the division of labor within their marriage is unfair. These friends individually confide in both me and my spouse about their marital problems. We feel a sense of duty to help them resolve their problems, especially since I administer their vows. but I also wonder if divorce is a better option for them.

17:08Amy Chan:What should I do? Signed, bothered by Sander. Well, I mean, I think that you're a very good friend and you have compassion and you care about your friends deeply. I would be careful to not triangulate. So person A is coming to you and complaining and then person B is coming to you complaining and then they're not having those conversations themselves. So ultimately this is a problem between them and you can't go and fix it. I think if he is going to be supportive, what he can do is ask permission before giving advice. Like I've been noticing some stuff. Do you want any feedback? Because someone's going to be a lot more open to receiving your advice and your feedback if you ask them permission first.

17:49Amy Chan:But ultimately, you can't fix them or, you know, tell them to get a divorce. Yeah, that is a wild to me. I was like, oh my gosh, that is a wild thing to even consider. You know, even as a very, very best friend.

18:04Emily Nagoski:You suggest that they get divorced and then they don't. Right. And forever you're the friend who was like, you thought we should get divorced.

18:11Amy Chan:Yes, or they get divorced and then you were the thing. You were the thing that pushed them down that line. You know, I just, yeah. Yeah, I think that when someone is coming to you and they're constantly just venting or complaining, it might feel for that person who's doing the venting like they're being productive. but they're not, right? And it can actually reinforce a negative feeling. So there's a point where it's just nonproductive and it's actually not helpful for the person and it's not helpful for you as a listener. So I think as the friend, you also have to set some boundaries for yourself as well.