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/Specific_Broccoli]

unfortunately this may be the most compelling argument i've received so far 😭 i've had jealousy issues in past relationships, so i've become genuinely terrible at distinguishing between “this is actually weird” and “you're just being insecure, calm down”. apparently i've overcorrected so spectacularly that i ended up trying to convince myself hinge was a perfectly reasonable place for a man in a relationship to build his little friendship circle.

[u/klv3vb → u/Specific_Broccoli]

Your “jealousy” issue is just your intuition screaming for you to address the elephant in the room.

Trust yourself and get out of this polyamorous asshole relationshit. He’s not choosing you. He’s choosing to see other people and he’s lying to your face about it.

[u/TrelanaSakuyo → u/klv3vb]

It's not even poly. It's just someone wanting the thrill of cheating.

[u/rratmannnn → u/klv3vb]

This is so important for more people to realize. Obviously, sometimes it really is an issue, but even then I feel like half the time it’s a holdover from having your trust and self esteem screwed with in the past.

When I was with a piece of shit who regularly cheated on me, I was so jealous and unhinged and stressed out and emotional that I qualified for a BPD dx. With my wife, I hardly ever experience or exhibit anything that could be described as a BPD symptom. When I get jealous it’s because I want to spend more time with her, not because I think she’s going to step out on me with the people she’s out with. When people are into her, I get salty at them, not at her.

(Obviously I’m not saying all bpd or mental health anything is purely circumstantial, but the impact of how safe your partner actually is has a TON of impact)

[u/ConfidentHope → u/Specific_Broccoli]

Also, I’d be asking why he’s specifically seeking out FEMALE friends. My boyfriend has women who are friends, but if he was looking for more friends he’d at the very least be looking for friends of all genders, not just women. Very sus.

[u/Liljensoe → u/ConfidentHope]

https://giphy.com/gifs/U56VoSyFD8MFcie2k8

[u/sipstea84 → u/Specific_Broccoli]

Maybe I'm damaged, but I don't understand a man in a relationship going out of his way to cultivate female friendships. I'm not talking about existing friendships, it's psycho shit to expect a man to cut off female friends, but trying to gain new ones? Why? I don't get it. I can understand realizing you have no friends or not enough friends, so go join pickleball and befriend whoever. But to be specifically looking for female friends is weird and gross

[u/Beebeemp → u/sipstea84]

I don't even specifically look for new women to befriend lol. It's weird for a guy to do that. Especially on hinge. Where he's apparently not even telling people he has a gf.

[u/Salty__Bear → u/Beebeemp]

Yeah looking for new friends is one thing. Requiring those friends to be (presumably) straight women as a (presumably) straight man is another. Do they also happen to coincidentally fit his idea of physical attractiveness? Bruh. Even if this is just genuine single brain cell activity I don’t need a partner who selects their friends solely on ‘will they won’t they’ energy.

[u/nelamaze → u/Specific_Broccoli]

I like to think that you could raise any issue to a good partner and they would explain. And if you're not okay with it, they should not do it! My point is, a good partner will not want you to feel jealous.

[u/Sweet_Future → u/Specific_Broccoli]

Did you actually have jealousy issues, or did a man convince you that you did so he can treat you however he wanted?

[u/madame-maitre-d → u/[deleted]]

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[u/Curious_Bicycle_ → u/Specific_Broccoli]

I was with someone who said that they keep their friend group separate from their relationship with their partner and that they were more of a one on one type of socializer. It really messed me up in the head. My self esteem plummeted and I was told I was controlling. In the end I found out that I wasn’t crazy. They were constantly lying about who, where, when etc completely gaslit the whole way through until I finally busted them and got a look at all the horrendous things that they had been going around and saying about me and our relationship. That was why I wasn’t allowed to associate with her friends. She didn’t want them to meet me and see that all of their bs was just bs crazy. Good riddance, I’m finally getting back to me and the drama they brought to my life and my family’s lives are gone and I just wish I had listened to my gut instinct and given them the boot sooner.
And I concur, you have great writing skills!

[u/Curious_Bicycle_ → u/Curious_Bicycle_]

And don’t let him play stupid!! That’s a tactic to get around all dthe shit storms he creates. Mine told me that I had never “specifically asked them to call me if they were going to be late” after they went out to dinner around 5-6 pm with a new friend who I had never met and didn’t get home until 1-2 am!!! (it was actually the 2nd or 3rd time that my partner had gone to hang out with them. I didn’t question anything at first.
But my radar went up that day when my partner came up with the same sad excuse used a few days earlier;
that the friend was having a bad day and needed some support.
When it was all said and done I discovered lie after lie after lie. The friend was having a bad day because they were struggling with what kind of kitchen faucet fixtures they should buy.

[u/ResidentDiscussion59 → u/Specific_Broccoli]

The mental gymnastics you must have gone through...

Please just leave him before he manages to drain you of all your dignity. He's taking you for a fool.

[u/hotlibramess → u/Specific_Broccoli]

No girl he’s openly dating other women and thinks you’re too dumb to realize it.

[u/QueenJillybean → u/Specific_Broccoli]

“Jealousy issues.” Girl, this man has intentionally gaslit you to not trust your instincts. He made you insecure in this relationship on purpose and then told you that you were the problem. He’s a parasite. Run.

[u/Typical-Respond9102 → u/Specific_Broccoli]

I mean, unless you're settling to have just about anyone to make sure youre in a relationship, does it matter whether it's actually weird or not? If you can't live with the behavior, you can't live with the behavior. It might be someone else's cup of tea, but that doesnt mandate it to be yours. 

Technically biting your toenails off isnt doing anything wrong, but could you kiss a man whose lips have been on his own feet? 

Figure out what you want and pursue it confidently. It's easier to say fuck no to bad behavior when you know definitively it's not what you want.