my boyfriend wants to use hinge to make female friends

[u/Specific_Broccoli]

hi girls. tonight we're having drunken udon noodles with a dirty martini because my original dinner was a single olive in said martini and the mods quite reasonably informed me that this does not constitute food 💛 humiliating. anyway, i've acquired noodles. sadly they have done nothing for the boyfriend situation.

i've been with my boyfriend for about a year. a while ago he told me he was going out for drinks with a female friend i'd never heard of before. slightly odd, but fine. women are allowed to exist and i'm not asking for a register of every woman he's ever met.

then completely randomly i found out they'd actually met on hinge before we got together.

this was information he'd somehow neglected to include when describing her as “a friend”.

when i asked him about it, he insisted they'd never dated and had simply become friends. personally i'd consider “we originally matched on a dating app” fairly relevant supporting documentation when telling your girlfriend you're off for drinks with a woman she's never heard of, but perhaps i'm overly committed to administrative transparency.

also: HE arranged the drinks. and she apparently didn't properly know he had a girlfriend either. he'd vaguely mentioned seeing someone but somehow never managed the enormous linguistic undertaking of saying “i have a girlfriend”.

so: former hinge match, drinks he initiated, girlfriend doesn't know their history, hinge woman doesn't really know about girlfriend. extremely efficient system. nobody has the full information except him.

we obviously had a massive row.

and somehow his takeaway from this was to ask whether i'd be okay with him using hinge to find more female friends in the future.

hinge. for female friends.

apparently we're treating the dating app like a local knitting circle now.

he thinks i'm being controlling because he wouldn't be “looking for dates”. i think if you're opening hinge specifically to meet women, we may simply have reached the limits of the english language.

anyway, we're currently barely speaking and he's annoyed that i'm struggling to move past something he insists was completely innocent.

perhaps tomorrow i'll download deliveroo and use it to find a dentist.

am i being unreasonable or has this entire situation gone completely off the rails?

edit: for context, there was actually a whole period before the “hinge for female friends” suggestion where i just felt completely insane for being upset that he'd gone for drinks with a woman, told me basically nothing about her, and i only found out by accident later that they'd originally met on a dating app. i've had jealousy issues before, so i kept telling myself i was being insecure and needed to trust the man who'd always made me feel incredibly loved and secure. then he suggested using hinge to find more female friends and my remaining brain cell finally clocked in for work. apparently i'd overcorrected from “jealous girlfriend” all the way to unpaid defence counsel 💀

[u/dowagersanddragons]

No, you're not overreacting. That's weird af. Frankly, dunno if this makes me controlling??? but I wouldn't be cool with my hubby just "going out for drinks" with some chick. Is that weird? Like why am I not invited if y'all are just friends? Pretty sure my hubby would find that weird af too

[u/Ready_Scientist1692 → u/dowagersanddragons]

My boyfriend has female friend and grabs drinks with them from time to time, but I know these friends and they know me. There is no “surprise, I’m grabbing drinks with Monica, a woman I only know because we briefly considered dating.”

[u/dowagersanddragons → u/dowagersanddragons]

Would it be alright with him if you wrre out meeting dudes at bars for drinks? I'm confused by this

[u/Ijustwanttosayit → u/dowagersanddragons]

You are entitled to your boundaries. My rule of thumb is don't do anything that other people could perceive as anything more than platonic. And don't do anything that could cause a headache for your S/O, even if what you're doing is innocent and they trust you. ie. you and a coworker of your preferred gender going out for drinks just the two of you. What would your coworkers think and say? If you worry they might see it as something going on between the two of you, don't do it. Does it look like a date? Don't do it.

If my partner wanted to use a hook up app to make friends, I would put my foot down and tell him to go make friends like a normal human being. But realistically I wouldn't believe him and call him out on that. That would be an absolute no for me. And if said friend was someone who met through a dating app and they have no other history other than brief friendship via seeing if they'd make good partners, I still wouldn't be okay with that. I had an ex like that, all of his female friends were chicks he'd met on dating apps. I could tell a number of them just used him as backup and would only hit him up when they were single and desperate.

[u/NotMyFirstRodeo2025 → u/dowagersanddragons]

I have lots of guys friends from different classes I've taken and hobbies I'm a part of. My husband is ALWAYS invited to come, he just doesn't often feel up to it. That said, I will have lunch with a guy friend, but not an only-us dinner/booze situation. (But if a bunch of people are going to the pub after a class, that's fine.)

But also, meeting on a dating app is a big no-no. It means he has a dating profile and is actively looking at it on a regular basis. I'm not saying shut it down, but I am saying that if he's not cool with you putting the boundary in place (of not using a dating app while you're dating), its time to move on.

[u/Expert_Donut9334 → u/dowagersanddragons]

I find weird this idea that straight people can't have opposite gender friends. I'm bi and so is my best friend, can't I hang out with her anymore just because we're both into girls as well? 

I'm always open for introducing my partner to friends of any gender though, but if it's a situation where they can't/don't want to join the plans, why should I refrain from seeing a friend or going for drinks 1:1?