For me, it depends entirely on my relationship with the person who is venting, and in this context I note that you refer to a female "friend" but a male "acquaintance."
I have a lot of male friends, but in general, they don't vent about their spouses, and actually, if they did, it wouldn't bother me as much, because it would have that "in-family" feel. It does bother me if I don't know the guy all that well.
But it doesn't bother me if I don't know the woman all that well; I think, though, that burger_eater is right; on some level, I respond to it as if it were unnecessary cruelty or almost bullying behaviour (and I have a fairly strong knee-jerk reaction to bullying, and in a way that I don't respond if a female acquaintance with whom I'm not that close does the same. I'm still thinking about this, because I don't actually like that I have these two very different reactions.
So I guess I don't feel a man is bad-mouthing his wife if he vents a little, so long as he and I are close enough. I have no idea whether being single affects this attitude at all, although I'm certainly wondering about that now.
That, I'm not sure about; I'm not sure how much of my reaction is to the sense of power in the relationship, but I think if it is mostly due to that (as I suspect it is), it wouldn't be affected by whether or not I was married.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2008-03-23 06:20 am (UTC)I have a lot of male friends, but in general, they don't vent about their spouses, and actually, if they did, it wouldn't bother me as much, because it would have that "in-family" feel. It does bother me if I don't know the guy all that well.
But it doesn't bother me if I don't know the woman all that well; I think, though, that
So I guess I don't feel a man is bad-mouthing his wife if he vents a little, so long as he and I are close enough. I have no idea whether being single affects this attitude at all, although I'm certainly wondering about that now.
That, I'm not sure about; I'm not sure how much of my reaction is to the sense of power in the relationship, but I think if it is mostly due to that (as I suspect it is), it wouldn't be affected by whether or not I was married.