Examples of successfully navigating/maintaining friendships w/ the opposite sex?

[rocketpj]

I've been close friends with some women for decades.  One of my closest female friends was one of my 'groomspersons' at my wedding.

It comes down to you.  Are you prone to 'cheating' physically or emotionally with someone other than your partner?  I learned 25 years ago that such things are pointless and only lead to needless suffering for all or most people involved.  So I don't do it, that door doesn't even exist in my mind, and my wife knows it.  She also knows that I lack the bandwidth to navigate the emotional landscape of more than one other person (and barely that much).

It makes it easy to just not engage with emotional connection if you have already decided you don't want it.  Friends can be friends.

[mm1970]

But what @Dee18 said rang true with me. If I was single and my friend was single, yes I would want to date her. I think realizing that is the main reason I want to tread appropriately here. On one hand I feel it's weird, like, "Sorry, you are too awesome to be my friend, I might not be able to handle it, and I am awesome too, and you might not be able to handle it. If you were less clever, less attractive, then sure we could hang no problem, but that's not the case."  I mean, it does seem weird when you phrase it like that, but ultimately I guess that's what it is.

With this, I can understand your concern.

Back in the dark ages, my best friend (when I was in the Navy), was a guy.  Of course it was, my workplace was mostly men.  We just clicked, had a ton of fun - worked out, cracked jokes, played sports, went out for beers.  He was married.  He told me once "you know if I weren't married, I'd ask you out".  Which, you'd think would feel weird but it didn't - I had no romantic interest in him that way.  Many years later he was my groomsman in my wedding, and after he divorced and remarried I flew out to attend his wedding.

My in laws are divorced, and it started with a friendship that FIL was having with a woman who he sorta worked with and knew through other groups.  MIL said "at one point, I had to make the conscious choice to trust him or not."  She did, it was the wrong choice. 

[Hula Hoop]

I have a few straight male friends but they're not my closest friends.  One is work colleague who I click with.  We have lunch sometimes and talk about work, kids etc but that's pretty much it.  The other two I've known for years.  One of them I dated when I was 18 briefly but it didn't work out.  The main thing is that there is absolutely zero attraction there now in either case from either side.  And I'm also friends with their significant others and they with my husband.  But there are very distinct boundaries.  I most definitely would not message them multiple times a day or even multiple times a week.  Maybe once every couple of months we message each other and maybe meet up for a coffee or lunch. 

IMO if there is any discomfort there or anything you wouldn't tell your spouse about then you need to cut things off.

[getsorted]

I know that I sincerely wish my ex-husband had had close friends that he spoke to often, of any gender. His isolation was a major factor in our divorce and I think still a very tragic strain on his mental health. For the record, infidelity or outside friendships were not, to the best of my knowledge, a factor in our marriage ending. On the contrary, I think friendships like that were a big part of why we lasted fifteen years together.

I find the idea that men and women in committed relationships shouldn't ever grow close frankly terrifying. Being the sole confidant and emotional support to each other is too much weight for a relationship to carry. Who do you turn to when you are both under a strain together? Who shares your shared joys?

I think from time to time, in any committed relationship, some sexual, romantic, or emotional attraction to someone else will arise, and if you can non-judgementally inquire into it, it will pass. For me, over the course of my fifteen-year marriage, sometimes it was about something that I wanted to be or express that wasn't currently part of my life. Very rarely it was about something that wasn't a part of my relationship, that I tried to address without bringing the other person into it, i.e., you never hold the car door for me like my buddy Alan does.

But sometimes it was just that one of us had met a cool person that one or the other of us wanted to be friends with. I can think of one woman my ex was warm friends with with and I while I did occasionally feel some jealousy, I also remember thinking how great it was that he had this friendship, and seeing how edifying it was for him to have it. If you can talk about jealousy or ask for reassurance without getting into a lot of how-dare-you-not-trust-me, that's a good thing to do.

A key ingredient was that I felt confident in my ability to exercise sexual self-control, as well in as my now-ex-husband's. Neither of us were the type of person who referred to hookups ''just happening'' or felt that feelings we might feel meant we were bound to act on them. Risks exist, but like in everything else in life, risks are sometimes necessary and worthwhile.

It's also important to keep a bead on the outside friend's feelings, for their sake and yours.