I just saw this and wanted to say I have a male best friend too. It's a mixed blessing! It never seemed to affect my marriage except for one isolated incident.
NicoleR,
When I met my wife (now XW), she had a guy friend; she may have referred to him as a "best friend," but I don't remember. I didn't have any problem with that because he was never a threat to our marriage and I knew I was my wife's number one guy.
After a decade of marriage, my wife met a guy that had childhood experiences similar to my wife's childhood experiences (they'd both been sexually abused and had difficult parents). I actually liked the guy and I was appreciative that he was someone that could really understand the trauma my wife went through as a child. Unfortunately, that didn't work out so well.
Artista's best friend had been a friend since childhood, and I think that makes a big difference. Regardless, I always felt like I was my wife's best friend until the new guy came along.
Below is and clipping from a Psychology Today article:
Many married women (and married men) insist that having a best friend of the opposite sex is perfectly healthy. In fact, they say that opposite sex friends make better friends because they bring very different perspectives to the relationship. But let's look at a few things here.
First, healthy friendship involves emotional intimacy, as well it should. Deep friendship leads to a level of sharing that is selective and usually confidential. That means, others are excluded from the conversations. When a woman shares intimate feelings with a man who isn't her husband, a wedge forms between her and her husband. He is excluded from the privacy she shares with her male best friend. And when this starts to happen- beware. Husband is on the outside looking inward.
Second, let's be adults. Physical intimacy is the sequel of emotional intimacy in most healthy relationships. That's the way we are wired as humans. Give emotionally intimate heterosexual couples enough time and physical intimacy follows. Or, at least the temptation to be physical emerges. In same sex friendships between heterosexuals, natural boundaries exist preventing sexual intimacy from occurring.
There's another thing. Kids. How would your fifteen year old feel if he walked into a restaurant and saw you, his mother, having dinner with your best friend Sam while dad was at home. Pretty weird. And kids' feelings count. I've listened to too much heartache from kids over the years whose parents have fallen "out of love" with their spouses and "into love" with other people. This really messes up kids' lives.
So the simple answer to the above question is an unabashed "No." Married mothers shouldn't have men as their best friends and vice versa. If not for their kids' sake, do it for the health of their marriages. At a time when the divorce rate is through the roof, families are fractured and ex-wives, ex-husbands and kids are filled with pain, let's begin to put some healthy boundaries around relationships and really care for them. This means, moms, that your best friends should be women.
