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Comment by sillyfluke | Hacker News Reader

I call this the Mike Pence rule. Because as I recall at one point he was in the news due to his alleged behavior of not meeting with other women without his wife present.

I don't adhere to it, but I'm not judging or downvoting you and don't know why others are. I'm surprised other commenters are surprised to be honest.

Surely I'm not the only one who has been subjected to a seemingly endless stream of rom-coms where the protag ditches their SO for their good/best/work friend my entire life? So it shouldn't be surprising that some people are wary after being subjected to such propaganda.

It can be an issue when one person in the relationship has way more opposite sex friends than the other. It's hard for some to admit their insecurities in that situation, so they silently accept it instead of having a fight over it (which probably would have been healthier).

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> Surely I'm not the only one who has been subjected to a seemingly endless stream of rom-coms where the protag ditches their SO for their good/best/work friend my entire life?

No, you aren't, nor are you the only one to give inappropriate weight to common tropes of some genre of fiction that exist because it is a convenient narrative framework given the genre in deciding how to deal with real life.

Not being alone in that does not, however, make it a good idea.

>No, you aren't, nor are you the only one to give inappropriate weight to common tropes of some genre of fiction

I'm not the one giving it weight as I don't adhere to the rule in question. However, like I said elsewhere, if you aren't aware that occasionally life imitates art and art imitates life, and some people actually try to idiotically mimic the romcoms they watch, well you haven't been out much these days I guess.

Not to mention the person they were replying to literally had this happen to them.

> I'm surprised other commenters are surprised to be honest.

I'm surprised because I've never met anybody like this, and while I've heard about Mike Pence I'm not sure I really believed it. Thinking about it more, since I don't hang out in any male-only spaces (where would I find such a thing?), almost by definition I'm never going to meet anybody socially who follows this rule.

Also, as other commenters have pointed out, this philosophy completely falls apart unless you genuinely believe that everyone is heterosexual, or you refuse to be friends with anyone who is not.

> Thinking about it more, since I don't hang out in any male-only spaces (where would I find such a thing?)

Going for coffee or having a beer with your male friend?

From your comment it seems you are mixing up friends and acquaintances. A friend is somebody that you spend time with one-on-one and for most people in the world it is unacceptable that you do that with a friend of the opposite sex if you are in a relationship.

Yes but how did I make that male friend? I've met every single one of my friends in a mixed-gender context (college, rec league sports, work, friend's party, D&D group, etc.). I'm a man, I'm in a long-term committed relationship with a woman, and I have plenty of good friends who are women. I've hung out with all of them either one-on-one or with other women besides my partner, otherwise I wouldn't consider them good friends.

I've never heard anyone express surprise about this, I've never had anyone decline an invitation because they aren't "allowed" to hang out with men, I've never had a second thought about any of this.

> if you are in a relationship

I still disagree even with this qualifier, but fyi this is moving the goalposts a bit. The original commenter suggested that mixed-gender friendships don't ever make sense.

> I've met every single one of my friends in a mixed-gender context (college, rec league sports, work, friend's party, D&D group, etc.).

They were acquaintances when you met them there, and later became friends.

> I've hung out with all of them either one-on-one or with other women besides my partner, otherwise I wouldn't consider them good friends.

I'm kind of surprised by that. Do you mean that you are spending time alone with other women in their houses or in your house, and your spouse is fine with that?

Maybe people are far less sexual in different places in the world, but where I live everybody will assume that when a man and a woman spend time together alone, they are having sex. I assume that too. Of course discounting for relatives.

All my women friends completely understood that I couldn't see them outside of in a group setting when I got into a relationship.

> Do you mean that you are spending time alone with other women in their houses or in your house, and your spouse is fine with that?

Yes that is what I mean. I guess more often in public or at some event, but sometimes at one of our homes.

> where I live everybody will assume that when a man and a woman spend time together alone, they are having sex

Here's what I don't understand: if you can't trust your partner to not instantly have sex when you aren't around, then why would you trust them to never be alone with other people in the first place? Does that make sense? In other words:

"You can go hang out with that guy, but don't have sex with him" - impossible, she'd never be able to resist the urge

"I'm going out of town for a couple days, don't go see any male acquaintances while I'm gone" - I trust her completely, of course she'll do as I say

How can you believe both of these things? You either trust her or you don't.

> Here's what I don't understand: if you can't trust your partner to not instantly have sex when you aren't around

It's not really about that. When people are grown up, there's really no reason for people to be one-on-one with the opposite sex unless it is for intimate reasons. And I think people are more sexual here (or people where you live are un-sexual), because most women and men here don't really want to have intimate friendship with people of the opposite sex, unless there is a sexual spark.

This might sound weird to you, but if somebody is so repulsive that you don't want to have sex with them, why would you want to be intimate friends with such a repulsive person? And the opposite: If somebody is so repulsed by you etc.

That doesn't mean people are horn-dogs that are trying for sex all the time. It's just a law of nature that when a man and a woman are together alone, they will sleep together. After all, that's what we were born to do.

>Also, as other commenters have pointed out, this philosophy completely falls apart unless you genuinely believe that everyone is heterosexual

To be fair, the post he was responding to specified the context of the relationship as between a "(M)" and "(F)".

But the relationship isn't relevant, this is a philosophy for how to treat everyone outside the relationship. Many of those people are the same gender as you but might still be attracted to you (oh no!), or a different gender but have no interest in you so there's no potential for mixed signals. So the rule a) does not protect you from accidentally leading someone on, and b) does cut off a bunch of potential friends for no reason.

>But the relationship isn't relevant, this is a philosophy for how to treat everyone outside the relationship.

I think the relationship is very relevant. For example, the comment would not make any sense either if you don't assume they're talking about about a strictly monogamous relationship. Worrying about giving "mixed signals" to people when you're in an open relationship would be way less of an issue understandably.

From the context of their post and the post they were replying to, the comment is about how to interact with people you may potentially be attracted to given the right circumstances (or who may be attracted to you) when you are in a strictly monogamous relationship.

> Surely I'm not the only one who has been subjected to a seemingly endless stream of rom-coms where the protag ditches their SO for their good/best/work friend my entire life? So it shouldn't be surprising that some people are wary after being subjected to such propaganda.

this exists of course, but surely we can tell the difference between fact and fiction? I just watched Midsommar last year but I am not afraid of Swedish people or the countryside.

One would hope that having a modicum of life experience would be enough to counter such propaganda, and I don't think it's surprising that people are surprised to encounter this viewpoint in real life.

>this exists of course, but surely we can tell the difference between fact and fiction?

I'm not sure we can? From what I understand, the person was responding to someone who literally had this happen to them after all. Life mimics art. Art mimics life. When you're told you're being left for someone that is a friend they have been frequently hanging out with one-on-one with your full knowledge, it takes a considerable amount of willpower to not introduce distrust to your psyche in your future relationships.

Like you, such a rule would be a dealbreaker for me. But I know people who requested this rule because they didn't either trust themselves or trust their friends for not misinterperting the situation. Why is it ok to say you're tempted by alcohol but not ok to say you may be tempted by the people you may be normally attracted to given enough time, the right circumstances, interactions, conversations etc.?

It's ok to say that about yourself, but it's not ok to force that requirement on a partner ("My wife would never allow me to hang out with another woman solo"). It's also not reasonable to say that since it works for you, it's the most "sensible" thing for everyone.

Huh? It’s perfectly okay. My wife and I have the same rules, and neither of us feel hampered by it. We don’t seek out opposite sex friends, and most events are by sex anyway (sports, board game groups, book clubs, etc.)

Even at the gym, men hang with men and women with women. It’s just how it goes.

I have genuinely never heard of a gender-segregated board game group or book club, and I've attended a lot of both. Sports, sure, but I find that usually only the more competitive leagues are gender-separated. When I join a recreational ultimate frisbee or soccer league, which I've done many times, it's always been mixed.

I believe you, I just want to communicate that what you're describing is definitely not even close to universal. One or both of us (probably both) are living in a cultural bubble.

We must live in very different areas. Most of my friends are either from sports (soccer watching, ultimate frisbee playing, running club, hiking club, etc.) or board game groups, and none of the ones I've ever attended are segregated.

I have seen book clubs for men and book clubs for women advertised, but (especially those for men) seem to use gender segregation as a selling point—which would mean most of them aren't.

Interesting how different life experiences are.

>Opposite sex friendships just don’t make sense

that's an extremely poor judgment right off the bat, so i am not surprised by the downvotes. The second paragraph then sounds like they would rather sit in silence with another woman than have the chance of an interaction being interpreted incorrectly

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