Ladies Don't Say They Hate Their Friend's Partner. They Just Stop Doing Couples Things.

In this episode of That's Not Very Ladylike the dinners you stop accepting. The double dates that suddenly never work with your schedule. The friend you used to see weekly who you now see at brunch, alone, twice a year. The text you draft and don't send. The "we should get together soon" that never has a date attached. The version of the friendship that survived because you stopped saying the thing.

Women have been quietly editing themselves out of friendships for generations to avoid one uncomfortable sentence, and most of us were never told there was another option. This episode is about noticing what you've been swallowing for the sake of the friendship, naming what it's actually costing both of you, and asking whether the silence is protecting her or just protecting you from a harder conversation.

Music from #Uppbeat
https://uppbeat.io/t/mountaineer/break-it-down
License code: 1S4TI94HJFOHIGSH

What is That's Not Very Ladylike?

That’s Not Very Ladylike is the podcast for every woman who was told to be polite, stay calm, or stop being so dramatic, meanwhile her hormones, boundaries, and sanity were quietly falling apart.

Hosted by Tracey Willingham, licensed social worker and the voice behind That Hormone Girl™, each episode starts with one rule: Ladies don’t…and then they do it anyway.

Together, we unpack the unspoken expectations, the emotional labor, the generational BS, and the hormone chaos modern women are carrying and we get honest about what it actually takes to feel like yourself again.

If you’re ready to question the rules, trust your body, and stop shrinking to make everyone else comfortable, you’re in the right place.

Tracey: 00:13

You're listening to That's Not Very Ladylike, the show where every week, we start with one rule, ladies don't, and then we do it anyway. Welcome back to That's Not Very Ladylike. My name is Tracy Willingham and you may know me as That Hormone Girl. And today's rule is one that has cost women friendships, marriages, and years of our own peace. And almost nobody is brave enough to say it out loud.

Tracey: 01:04

So ladies don't say they hate their friend's partner. They just stop doing couples things. Right? That one hits. So that's the rule.

Tracey: 01:15

And once we say it out loud, every one of you is going to be able to point to at least one couple in your life where you have been doing this exact thing for years. And it's a friend that you love, but you cannot stand their partner. And the slow fade of the couples dinners and the stories that you don't tell anymore. The thing that happened that you never said out loud. So today we're going to talk about why women do this, what it cost us, and what happens when we finally tell the truth.

Tracey: 01:48

So you know, I always love to start with a good story. Storytelling is one of my things. So I want to tell you about this type of experience that happened to me. And I want to tell you because almost every woman listening has had some version of this experience. So years ago, my husband and I, we got invited to this Halloween party.

Tracey: 02:09

Such a good group of friends. Got me through a certain period of life. I'm no longer in touch with any of those friends, but man, they were like my ride or dies for several years. And I mean, it was a big friend party, big group of people, lots of couples and it's like it's the kind of party where you're like reaching across a buffet for a chip and laughing and everybody's kind of in that kitchen area So it's tight. You're all in there.

Tracey: 02:38

It's loud. And it's just, you know, if you were to like pause and look back for a moment, you'd be like, man, my life is good. So I was at the bar getting some food. And so I was reaching across for some yummy looking food, and I felt a hand get inserted into my back pocket. And it didn't stop there.

Tracey: 03:01

It that hand started cupping my ass. And I want you to understand the lifetime of this because it tells you everything about how women are wired. So my first instinct was to turn around and wink at my husband because my husband is the only person who's supposed to have their hand in my back pocket. So I assumed it was him, I think as most of you would, but it wasn't. It was my friend's husband.

Tracey: 03:33

And I want you to sit with how fast my body had to recalibrate from flirty wink to confused panic, from this is sweet, this is unlike my husband, to this is wrong, and from a friend's house to a danger zone, and it happened in less than a second. And then he tried it again at other events, leaning up against me, standing too close, cornering me at our parties. The kind of behavior that if a man is doing it, he knows exactly what he's doing. This wasn't like a, Oh, she must have I'm friendly. She misread me.

Tracey: 04:17

There is no innocent reading of what this man was doing. And so here's the part of my story that I'm not proud of. For a long time, I sat on it because I didn't know what to do. Because if you're listening to this and you're female, you've probably had a moment where you tried to do the right thing. You were going to help a sister out.

Tracey: 04:38

I'm gonna tell you what I saw. I took pictures. I read his text. And it has blown up. And it's not just like one friendship.

Tracey: 04:47

It always leads to like a whole group friend blow up. It's so nuts. So I just sat on it because I really didn't know what to do because she was my friend. And I didn't want to blow up her life because I didn't want her to think I was the kind of woman who lies about another woman's husband or that maybe I was doing something that led her husband astray because I had heard so many stories of the wife siding with the husband and ending the friendship. And it made me scared because this was my group.

Tracey: 05:22

But it sat with me and it bothered me for so long. And I thought, have to. I have to do it. So I finally got brave. And I was like, I'm gonna tell her today.

Tracey: 05:31

And as expected, she ended the friendship. Not the marriage. She chose to end our friendship. And I'm not mad at her. I'm not.

Tracey: 05:41

Because I want to be very honest with you. I'm not sorry that I told her. And I'm not sorry about the outcome. I am sorry that I took so long to tell her because she deserved that information years before she got it, regardless of how she responded. And probably based on the way she responded, I probably wasn't the first to share it.

Tracey: 06:06

But I withheld it because I was scared of exactly what ended up happening. And I want every woman listening to hear me. So if you're sitting on something right now, something a friend's partner did, something you saw, something that made your skin crawl, you are not protecting your friend by staying silent. You're protecting the person that's doing the wrong thing. So let's talk about the cost because, I mean, that story kind of led right into a big cost because the cost of this rule is enormous and most women are paying it without ever naming it.

Tracey: 06:45

So there's research on women's friendships in midlife. And the data shows that close friendships between women are one of the strongest predictors of physical and mental health in middle and late life, stronger than marital satisfaction, stronger than income. Women with deep friendships live longer, have lower rates of depression, lower rates of dementia, and better outcomes across almost every health category. And do you know what is the leading cause of female friendship loss in midlife? It's not distance.

Tracey: 07:25

It's not the life stage. It is the slow drift caused by uncomfortable partners, by things that happened that nobody talked about, by the woman who stopped getting invited because her friend's partner made everybody else feel weird, by the woman who stopped inviting because she didn't know how to explain why. So we are losing friendships. Our friendships, and a good percentage of those are because of men. Not always, but a good percentage is because of men who behave badly, and we are calling it growing apart.

Tracey: 08:07

And I want to acknowledge what it does to your body because I'm the hormone girl, so we should talk about it, right? I mean, if we're going to go, if we're going to open this up, let's go. So here's what it does to your body. Sitting on knowledge you should have shared is its own kind of stress. So the cortisol load of carrying a secret that affects somebody else's safety is brutal.

Tracey: 08:27

Brutal. There is research on women who are sexual assault witnesses but not victims. And the data shows their cortisol levels remain elevated for years after the event if they do not speak up. The body keeps the secret that you don't tell. My body knew that night at the Halloween party that something was wrong.

Tracey: 08:54

And every event after, my body knew. And every time I saw my friend's husband at the barbecue, at the party, at the happy hour, my body knew. So the cost becomes about carrying that knowledge alone. And it's real and it's physical. So I want to talk about how deep this goes.

Tracey: 09:18

Let's look at the history because, you know, I'm a little bit of a dork. So let's do it. So now I want to ask the question. Where the hell did this rule come from? Right?

Tracey: 09:27

Because the idea that a woman should keep quiet about another man's behavior to protect another woman's peace, We didn't just invent this recently. So for most of human history, women's relationships with each other were structured around men. Your friend's husband was sometimes also your husband's business partner, your husband's neighbor, your husband's drinking buddy. The men were the network, and the women were the support staff. So if you blew up another woman's marriage, you were blowing up a piece of your own husband's social and economic infrastructure too.

Tracey: 10:09

So that structure has loosened in modern life, but the script has not changed for us ladies. The script still says that loyalty between women is conditional on protecting the men in their lives. The script still says that the woman who tells is the woman causing the problem, not the man who acted or maybe not even the other person who acted, but it's always the woman who reported. Studies on bystander reporting in cases of male misconduct, so that's going to be things like sexual harassment, inappropriate behavior, Consistently show that the social and professional cost of reporting falls more heavily on the reporter than on the perpetrator. The person who tells loses friendships, loses jobs, loses social standing.

Tracey: 11:03

The person who acted often retains their position. So we have built a culture where the social cost of telling is so high that telling becomes a brave act. Like there should be a special word for women who say what they saw because most women won't. And I want to name this because it's true. The cost of telling is heavier on women without resources.

Tracey: 11:30

So a woman who has financial independence, social capital, and professional standing can sometimes afford to lose a friendship over telling the truth. A woman who is dependent on a network for childcare, employment, or community cannot. The luxury of telling has never been distributed evenly. So I'm not in a position to speak to every version of this experience, but what I can say is that the silence is structural. It is not a character.

Tracey: 12:03

It's not a weakness. It's that rational response to a system that punishes women who tell. And this history has shaped all of us. So let's look at if this were allowed to be said. If a woman could just say it to her friend without losing the friendship, without becoming the bad guy, these are the sentences that have been swallowed for generations.

Tracey: 12:29

And let's take it in the context of what happened to me. I have to tell you something about your husband. And I've been wanting to tell you because I didn't know how to say this, and I'm going to say it now anyway. He put his hand on me at a party. He said something to me that I've not been able to forget.

Tracey: 12:50

He has stood too close. He has cornered me, and he looked at me in a way that I did not invite. I have been pulling away from the couples' evenings that we've been scheduling, and the reason is your husband. And I should have told you years ago, and I'm telling you now. And I'm not asking you to leave him.

Tracey: 13:10

I'm not asking you to choose me. I'm just giving you information that is yours, and what you do with it is yours because I love you. And I'm not gonna keep being quiet for the price of being your couple's friend. And then the big one, outside of the context of my story, but what we all really should say, my friendship is worth more than my comfort, and so is yours. So I'm adding a new segment in because I'm like, man, listen, I'm spicy, but I'm not getting to be spicy.

Tracey: 13:47

I'm like, this is my podcast. Like, what am I doing? Be spicy. So I've added a section called This should piss you off because. You know, a little righteous pissed off.

Tracey: 13:59

That's not bad. So here's the part that should piss you off. We have built a system where the woman who tells the truth becomes the problem, where the friendship ends with the messenger, not the person who acted, where the social cost of saying what happened is born almost entirely by the woman who saw, while the person who did it goes home and pours themselves a drink. It should piss you off that men can behave like this for decades in plain sight, at parties, full of witnesses, and the conversation among the women is whether we should risk our friendships by saying anything. It should piss you off that we have been trained to fear the wife's reaction more than we fear his behavior.

Tracey: 14:46

He grabbed me. The conversation should not be, Will she believe me? The conversation should be, What is wrong with him? But the conversation every single time is about her. And it should really piss you off that this is the rule that women learn to live by on their own without being taught.

Tracey: 15:09

We just figure it out. We watch what happens to the women who tell. And you know what I mean. We watch their friends drop them. We watch their reputations go to shit.

Tracey: 15:20

We watch them get called dramatic, jealous. Oh, that's an attention seeking. That's a troublemaker. And we learn. We file that away.

Tracey: 15:30

We learn that the safer thing is to stop going to the parties. And that is how we lose our friendships. And it's not in a big blow up. It becomes a slow fade over a behavior that nobody named because we were trained to think that the cost of naming it would be higher than the cost of swallowing it. And it's not.

Tracey: 15:53

It never was. And the man who counted on our silence has been counting on it since long before he met us. So, how do I know if this is me? And this is not meant to I don't want you to be like, Gosh, this girl is a jerk. But let's have some open conversations, my friend.

Tracey: 16:15

Let's not be ladylike. So how do you know if this rule is running in your life right now? So I want you to listen, and I want you to think honestly. You have a friend whose husband makes you uncomfortable. You haven't named it, and you've just adjusted around it.

Tracey: 16:33

You've stopped going to certain events because of who will be there. You've declined invitations and given vague reasons. Oh, we're so busy. We haven't been doing much. We've been kind of staying home.

Tracey: 16:48

When the real reason is one specific person. You have a story about a friend's husband that you've told only your closest one or two people and never the wife. You felt your skin crawl at a barbecue and pretended it was the heat. You've seen behavior at a party that you didn't know what to do with, and you decided not to think about it. You've taken yourself out of a friendship slowly so you wouldn't have to have the conversation.

Tracey: 17:19

You carried a piece of information about somebody else's marriage that you have not been able to fully put down. It is still running through your mind. You've assumed the wife wouldn't want to know. You've assumed the wife already knows. If you said yes to even one of those, you are sitting on something and it is making you sick to sit on it.

Tracey: 17:44

And you know whose name I just made you think of. So here's what I want you to take from this. If you are pulling away from a friendship because of her partner's behavior, the friendship is already in trouble. You're losing her either way. So the only choice is whether you lose her in silence slowly with that secret still held intact, or whether you lose the chance to be silent and give her the information she deserves to have.

Tracey: 18:19

And she might end the friendship, and that is her right. And I'm not gonna lie to you, she might. Mine did. I am not telling you that this is going to be a Disney movie and this is not a guaranteed happy ending where she's going to sing to you. It's not a Broadway musical where you're going to sing a song about being besties.

Tracey: 18:37

You might even lose your entire friendship circle. But I want to tell you, I have gone through several friendship circles since that. I have survived every single one. And I choose now to look at some friendships are going to last a good chunk of my life and some are going to be with me for seasons. And that's okay.

Tracey: 19:03

But the truth is, and we have to look at this, ladies, you cannot save a friendship by lying to your friend about her own life. That is not friendship. And the work isn't to march out tomorrow and confront every situation because I also don't want you being like, Dear Tracy, thank you for blowing up my life. Just start at the place of the work is to stop pretending the situation isn't there. So what I want you to do this week is small.

Tracey: 19:32

If there's a wife you've been protecting from information about her partner, I want you to ask yourself just one question. Would you want to know? And for some of you, you may be saying, No, Tracy, I would not. But we also don't want to take what makes us in our own comfort levels. We don't want to assume that's what our friend wants.

Tracey: 19:54

So if a woman in your life had a piece of information about your partner, a real thing, a real thing they did, a real thing they said, a real moment that crossed a line, what do you want her to tell you? And truthfully, if some of you are like, No, that's probably another podcast we need to have. I'm marking it. I'm bookmarking it right now in my brain. But I want you to sit with the answer either way.

Tracey: 20:19

So if you're sitting on something right now, I want you to know one thing. Your silence is not protecting your friend. Your silence is protecting them. And the version of female friendship that requires you to swallow what their partner did is not friendship. It is a survival pact built around a person who behaved badly and counted on both of you to keep it that way.

Tracey: 20:45

So tell them. Tell them in the most awkward, weird way. Tell them while shaking, while crying. But just tell them. They might hate you.

Tracey: 20:59

My friend did. But here's what I want you to know. To this day, I am still not sorry. And that's the most unladylike thing of all. Thanks for joining me today for That's Not Very Ladylike.

Tracey: 21:21

If today's episode lit a fire, pushed your buttons, or called a little BS on the stories we've been sold, share it with another woman who's tired of being told to tone it down, smile more, or play nice, and help a girl out by making sure you subscribe, leave a quick review, and catch me on Instagram at that hormone girl. And until next time, keep getting loud, messy, and raising hell because being ladylike is overrated.