Can men and women ever really be just friends?
It’s the age-old question and a dynamic that can cause issues in a relationship. Is your partner and their bff really platonic? Or, given the chance, do they want to be something more?
Dylan*, 30, thought he had the ideal arrangement. His wife, Emily* had always been totally fine about his female best-friend, Angie*. In fact, she was the ‘grooms woman’ at their wedding, and even introduced Dylan and Emily nine years ago.
But this all changed when Dylan announced his plans to take Angie on a special trip to her ‘favourite’ F1 race, splashing out on expensive tickets and flights, while leaving, Emily* at home alone.
Dylan said: ‘I’ve been friends with Angie since we were 15 years old. When we were still teenagers, she picked up smoking from her friends, but she didn’t do it much and said she knew the risks and wanted to stop.
‘As an encouragement to get her to quit I made a deal with her. We both share a love of cars and motorsports, so the deal was that if she never picked up a cigarette again, I would fly us out to and get grandstand tickets for her favourite F1 race.’
He added that his wife has always known about this pact and even said it was ‘wholesome’.
So, in September, 15 years on from their original deal, Dylan finally had the ‘money and time’ to book the trip.
‘I had always thought it was known that the trip was going to be just me and Angie as per the deal we made ages ago,’ he explained on Reddit. ‘I mentioned [it] and my wife had zero problems with it.
‘Then a couple days ago my wife mentions how she’s so excited for the trip and I gently let her know that I have only booked two tickets for the race and flights.
‘She was upset about this and I was really confused because I thought I had made it clear that this trip was for Angie and it would just be us two.’
While the race tickets are sold out, Emily asked if her husband could at least buy a third plane ticket.
‘I’m not inclined to do that as, and I know this sounds childish, but this was a me and Angie thing since we made the deal,’ said Dylan.
‘My wife seems really upset about this and is barely talking to me. The one time we have seen Angie since then she was very cold towards her. I don’t know if she doesn’t trust me or if it’s because of some insecurity.’
Despite Dylan being upset by his wife’s reactions, Redditors weren’t impressed with his behaviour, branding him an ‘idiot’ and claiming his actions were ‘inappropriate’.
Relationship and dating coach Hayley Quinn, agrees, and told Metro that Dylan is showing a blatant lack of concern for his wife’s feelings.
Hayley tells Metro: ‘Even if he made a genuine error by assuming Emily would be totally okay with the trip, once he realised that she was anything but okay, he needed to empathise with her feelings.
‘The fact he can’t see that anything’s amiss here is concerning.’
She adds that Dylan’s ‘cavalier actions’ shows he’s far from a team player and that he’s now ‘gaslighting’ his wife.
‘For him to have made such elaborate plans without his wife’s consent, understandably blindsided her; and broke her trust,’ Hayley explains. ‘To simply label her as insecure, dismisses her very legitimate feelings!
‘He also made a unilateral decision about how he was spending their money, and turned down a reasonable compromise for Emily to join them for the trip.’
When it comes to Dylan and Angie’s friendship, Hayley believes that while it’s possible for men and women to be ‘just good friends’, the success of this depends on the boundaries they set for their relationship.
She says: ‘Dylan broke his wife’s trust by (seemingly) not being fully transparent about the nature of the trip. As the trip was planned without her consent, this would have broken her trust and made it much harder for her to feel secure about a glamorous trip between her husband and another woman.
‘A male-female friendship is really only one step away from romance; it only takes one person to think, “what if” to change that friendship into something more.
‘So, while jealousy and insecurity isn’t inevitable in opposite-sex friendships, these issues will arise unless there’s a high degree of trust between everyone involved.’
So what’s the solution? ‘First of all Dylan needs to put on his big boy pants and apologise,’ Hayley insists.
‘Then he’s going to need to include his wife. At this stage, it may be hard to include her in the F1 trip as he has already made it clear that she’s unwelcome.’
The coach’ has three suggestions for Dylan: he can book another one-to-one trip with his wife, step back from the trip with Angie altogether, or for his wife to attend the F1 with them.
What would you do?
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