You did the right thing. You don’t have to be a signficant other in order to care whether someone is OK or not.
Ignore her.
You are not an asshole. I think you did the right thing.
I will NEVER understand why women react this way. I swear the only non jealous women I’ve ever met are my mother, maternal aunts, and my maternal grandmother.
[quote]Kailash wrote:
I think you shouldn’t have called your wife in advance. To call ahead basically said that you needed her permission. Which you really didn’t, because what you did for this woman was the normal and right thing to do.
[/quote]
Some of the married guys here are making marriage look like something that needs to be avoided AT ALL COSTS.
No, you’re not an asshole, if the story is 100% legit, I’d say you’re a better husband than at least half of the guys out there.
Frankly, I wouldn’t have called ahead of time to see if it was okay.I would have just went. Then again, that’s with everything being on the up and up. Is there a reason for your wife to worry? After all, why does this gym vixen have your cell #?
I guess it’s up to you. Only you know if this was a stand up act of a T-Man or a guy playing the hero to impress some hot little piece of tight assed poon tang. Act accordingly with your wife once you figure that part out.
Kubo
[quote]EmperialChina wrote:
Is this life-long friend a female?
Do you think your wife would’ve cared if your client was a guy?
Do you want to bang your client?
I think it was probably coming from her fluctuating emotional level which is normal for women, and add to that a painful surgery and stress. Women tend to do this to men they think it helps but it actually drives men away.
[/quote]
No, he was my best MAN at my wedding!
I asked he if it would’ve been different if she was a man. The answer is YES.
Not bang her. She’s attractive and funny but not my type. She has nothing
but respect for my wife. If our conversations ever venture into the relationship/sex domain, she ALWAYS says “You’re wife’d kill you and if she doesn’t, I’ll kill you”. It’s very clear there is no sexual tension between us.
[quote]MikeKubo wrote:
No, you’re not an asshole, if the story is 100% legit, I’d say you’re a better husband than at least half of the guys out there.
Frankly, I wouldn’t have called ahead of time to see if it was okay.I would have just went. Then again, that’s with everything being on the up and up. Is there a reason for your wife to worry? After all, why does this gym vixen have your cell #?
I guess it’s up to you. Only you know if this was a stand up act of a T-Man or a guy playing the hero to impress some hot little piece of tight assed poon tang. Act accordingly with your wife once you figure that part out.
Kubo[/quote]
Totally legit. This whole week, I’ve been Mr. Mom. I LOVE my two kids more than anything but it’s a different story when you have to bathe, feed, dress, change (I do that anyway) diapers, cook, do dishes, laundry, drive to pre-school, sitters etc. while working.
This “gym vixen” has been training with me for over two years. All my clients have my cell number. She didn’t actually call me over. I was returning a previous scheduling call and caught her in this bad state and immediately reacted.
Well, you guys are making me feel better. I don’t dare share this with her… that’d be BAD! I kinda knew the answer and have always been one to follow my instincts with these types of ramifications far from my mind.
I like to think I act fast and decisive and without getting “permission”. It gets me in trouble now and then but I wont EVER let a scared, alone hysterical woman whom I’ve known for over 2 years sit home alone crying(even if it’s just showing up for 5 minutes).
No. You did the right, compassionate thing for a person in need. You wife is a lucky woman.
I am absolutely NOT discounting your wife’s opinion, but: what if your client had been perhaps some fightened gay male friend instead of a single mom friend? Would your wife still have been mad that you helped? Security is a wonderful thing. Talk to her about it- make sure she knows where you are coming from and that you didn’t rush to be you client’s “burly protector” like a scene from some 2-bit porno.
(“What seems to be the trouble, m’am??”)
You would hope someone would do the same for your wife, right? If she’s sensible, which I’m sure she is, she’ll understand.
[quote]TheSicilian wrote:
You are not an asshole. I think you did the right thing.
I will NEVER understand why women react this way. I swear the only non jealous women I’ve ever met are my mother, maternal aunts, and my maternal grandmother.
[/quote]
REAL women don’t act jealous.
[quote]yellowcap wrote:
I am absolutely NOT discounting your wife’s opinion, but: what if your client had been perhaps some fightened gay male friend instead of a single mom friend? Would your wife still have been mad that you helped? [/quote]
Funny you should ask! That is a likely scenario, actually.
Derek, you sound like a good guy and I’m sure your client appreciated what you did for her. Your wife has a new baby and toddler at home and just dealt with kidney stone surgery?! She’s probably FRIED and doesn’t know which end is up.
I don’t think many of you really understand what it’s like to be as drained as she is probably feeling right now and she probably isn’t acting or feeling like her normal self. Just try being extra nice and gentle with her for a couple of weeks so she can build up her energy and start feeling better again.
Best wishes to you both!
I just want to interject a female’s way of seeing things (I know some guys will bah-hah this, but I’m trying to help him see the thinking so that he can successfully get out of the doghouse.)
What if an attractive, single male friend of your wife, whom your wife spends a lot of time with at her job accidentally ripped a large hole in the pants of the one and only business suit he owns, three hours before the most important presentation of his entire career. He calls up your wife very frantic, and she drives her car to his house, where she repairs his pants and saves the day for him. Would you feel comfortable with this?
My other point. When I was single, I had both single and married male friends. When I had a car issue or needed “guy” help, I’d call my single guy friends for help. Never ever ever would I EVER call any of my married male friends to help me.
Why? Out of respect for their wives, their children and for their marriages. Because I respect my guy friends and their wives and their marriages, I would never want to put my guy friends into any kind of ackward or questionable-seeming scenario.
I myself would have no problem with my guy helping out one of his women friends, and I trust him. But at the same time, I can see your wife’s point and why she feels disrespected and taken for granted.
Sometimes, before you do something you’re not sure will hurt your partner, it helps to put yourself in their shoes and think about how they’d feel first. Seems like a little bit of trouble but marriage is a partnership of mutual care, love and respect and so you consider the other person as well.
I would guess, in my female mind, that she’s mostly upset because you didn’t put her feelings first in that scenario.
Anyway, good luck getting yourself out of the doghouse. Flowers and being sincere helps.
Sounds like your a stand up guy. I would have called my wife also, just as a courtesy so she knows whats going on. I agree that she’s probably burnt out & looking to be mad about something because she feels like dogshit. Good lick w/ the whole thing.
Its not so much why she is upset. It could be anything that the above posters said.
Whats important is you relax, keep your cool, don’t turn it into an arguement and make your wife feel that you understand (even if you don’t) that she is valid in her opinion (i know i know) and that its nothing. Then just tack on, “i guess sometimes iam too much of a good guy for my own good” 
I try to deal with women issues roughly the same way every time… cause it works…
I think you went out of your way by doing this. You helped another human being and that makes you a good guy. However, your wife doesn’t see it the same way. For her it looks more like you went out of your way for a hot girl that didn’t even ask you to come see her. And that doesn’t go well with most women and their insecurities.
So… women say they want good guys. Yeah, as long as you’re only good to them and a total di** to everyone else.
also…
[quote]derek wrote:
… Well, you guys are making me feel better. I don’t dare share this with her… that’d be BAD! …[/quote]
Since when do married men have to fear what their wives will say(kind of)/do to them?
[quote]Professor X wrote:
Some of the married guys here are making marriage look like something that needs to be avoided AT ALL COSTS.[/quote]
For real. “The grass is always greener on the other side.”
[quote]China Doll:
What if an attractive, single male friend of your wife, whom your wife spends a lot of time with at her job accidentally ripped a large hole in the pants of the one and only business suit he owns, three hours before the most important presentation of his entire career. He calls up your wife very frantic, and she drives her car to his house, where she repairs his pants and saves the day for him. Would you feel comfortable with this?[/quote]
The difference is that, in your example, the guy has 3 hours in which to have his pants fixed. Here, the need was urgent. In your example, the guy called the wife specifically for this situation. Here, he was returning a phone call and happened to catch the woman in this bad situation.
Also, in your example, the wife drives out to his house. Here, he was driving right past her block, on the way home.
So you’re looking at it the wrong way. Maybe derek’s wife is too.
[quote]Kailash wrote:
Professor X wrote:
Some of the married guys here are making marriage look like something that needs to be avoided AT ALL COSTS.
For real. “The grass is always greener on the other side.”
China Doll:
What if an attractive, single male friend of your wife, whom your wife spends a lot of time with at her job accidentally ripped a large hole in the pants of the one and only business suit he owns, three hours before the most important presentation of his entire career. He calls up your wife very frantic, and she drives her car to his house, where she repairs his pants and saves the day for him. Would you feel comfortable with this?
The difference is that, in your example, the guy has 3 hours in which to have his pants fixed. Here, the need was urgent. In your example, the guy called the wife specifically for this situation. Here, he was returning a phone call and happened to catch the woman in this bad situation.
Also, in your example, the wife drives out to his house. Here, he was driving right past her block, on the way home.
So you’re looking at it the wrong way. Maybe derek’s wife is too.[/quote]
I thank the girls for offering up thier opinions. However, this post I quoted is right on!
Good gravy! Reading stuff like this makes me appreciate my marriage all the more. What I find a little shocking is that so many people on this board actually think his wife has a justification for acting this way.
A word of advice to all the singles out there: [i]IF YOU DON"T TRUST SOMEONE UNCONDITIONALLY, DO NOT MARRY THEM![/i]
Yes, trust is something earned, but if after X amount of years of faithfulness, devotion to family, etc., one is still ‘guilty until proven innocent’ with even something so miniscule as the OP described, it is, to me, an insult of the worst kind to one’s character. I would never have tolerated this and would have sent any woman packing long before the alter.
To address Chinadoll’s concerns: Even though your analogy was flawed as another poster pointed out, I would have absolutley no problem with my wife in your senario as written. I’ll even up the ante with some real world examples:
Before the baby when we were both working, I worked a swing shift (4p-12a), and she worked mostly a day shift where she got off at either 5 or 9pm. She would, on a weekly basis, go with her coworkers to some watering hole or another and I would oftentimes arrive home well before she did.
I was never even the least bit suspect as to her whereabouts. She would tell me all about what this or that person said or did, and I nodded in the right places and pretended to give a shit in true male fashion. I went along once on a night I had off, found it was not my kind of atmosphere and never went again.
Besides this, I was aware that this was her time with her friends (many of them single males) to decompress from a high-stress job and I would be a total selfish prick if I were to give her a hard time because I was uptight about her being around other men.
Hell, if you get right down to it, the time we spent apart because of our schedules would have allowed both of us to carry on numerous afairs and neither would have been the wiser; why waste time and mental energy worrying about what you have no control over?
If she had been so inclined, would me being a jealous douche and/or getting all Sherlock Holmes on her ass have prevented it? More than likely, such behavior would have been a good shove in the opposite direction; after all, if you’re going to get punished for something…
And, on my side of the coin: I have a female friend who was a massage school classmate of mine last year (we’d seen each other in our BVD’s and I unhooked her bra more times than I can remember during this time).
This very attractive, just-turned-22-year-old, whose boyfriend is spending a year abroad in China, is quite intelligent but nevertheless exhibits some rather quirky behaviors. For example, sitting on the floor next to my chair instead of in any one of several available seats when we were all at my mother’s house a few weeks ago.
And just the other night when she stopped over after work to pick up a documentary I taped for her earlier in the week, she stretched out on the sofa and proceded to stick her toes (she had socks on) into one of my fat love handles while commenting, “I’ve been thinking about doing this all day”.
If you’re thinking “WTF?!”, trust me, you’re not the only one. It may seem like flirting, but the girl is just that fucking weird, as I tell her quite often. Anyway, my wife was sitting on the other side of me and thought it was odd but amusing.
My wife has even commented (while giggling) when we are alone that she thinks my former classmate “likes me more than just a friend” because of her behavior. This is my wife’s little joke at my expense, as I have no doubt that if my friend needed some dick on the side, she could do much better than a 33-year-old, married, fat guy.
The bottom line is, a friend is a friend, and anyone with a spouse worthy of them will acknowledge this. China, your refusal to call any of your married male friends for help on the premise of “respecting their marriage” I find most puzzling.
Unless you are behaving inappropriately, you are not disrespecting anyone by merely asking for a helping hand. Anything else is their spouses’ speculative jealousy at work, and is out of your control. Moreover, do you think a friendship with someone whose wife feels threatened by you simply because you are young and attractive is worth maintaining?
Walking on pins and needles, kowtowing to others’ insecurities is not something I have the inclination or the energy for.
To the OP: I’m sorry, no disrespect intended, but your wife has issues, man. This kind of immature crap should have been left at the high school door, and has no place in a mature adult relationship. I mean, assuming you have been a good, devoted family man for quite awhile as you’ve stated, you wonder whether you deserve to be treated like this? You don’t. Period.
You gave that a lot of thought, Chainsaw. Thanks.
I assure you that this issue is the only one she has. It has been a thorn in my side for quite a while. I however realize that no one is perfect especially myself so I cannot fault her much.
She is a fantastic mother, a great cook, a great source of support even when dealing with my many quirks. She’s great to look at, to spend time with etc. etc. just to get that on record.
I give her no reason to be jealous and perhaps THAT is why it all irks me so much. Her reaction is so unnecessary that it causes me to freak out and I have to resist the desire to get my keys and take a trip up north for the night to cool off.
If it were not for my kids, that’s exactly what I would do. I’d come back of course but at least it’d keep me from saying things that I regret.
We’ve “made up” at this point but I feel like it’s not over (because it’s not).
[quote]BarneyFife wrote:
Congrats. Your wife loves you, and wants to keep you. She shouldn’t have exploded on you, and it was good of you to call your wife and explain. No advice, but just a congratulations that you have a loving woman.[/quote]
You are wise beyond your years Barney.
Good man,
good to see u steped up to the plate when it was required.