Is it acceptable for a married man to touch the face of another woman

June 12, 2021 5:29 AM

I am talking about in when interacting with another woman socially. Would this be disrespectful to his wife? Would this bother you?
posted by mintchip to Human Relations (45 answers total)

Would this be disrespectful to his wife?

It's disrespectful to the woman he touched, unless he had specific consent. Is it also disrespectful to the woman he married*? There isn't one answer to that. If your husband doing that makes you uncomfortable, you can ask him to not do that again. He can make his own grown-up choices from there.

*Married or partnered, it doesn't make a difference.
posted by DarlingBri at 5:36 AM on June 12, 2021 [71 favorites]

with no other information then what you have written, and my own assumption being that it is consensual, then:

Is it acceptable for a married man to touch the face of another woman? Yes.

Would this be disrespectful to his wife? No.

Would this bother you? No.

again, my answers are not necessarily anyone elses answer.
posted by alchemist at 5:36 AM on June 12, 2021 [4 favorites]

I do think face-touching is a pretty intimate gesture! Like, none of my friends, male or female, ever touch my face. Maybe some of my family members, but even that would be super-rare. If my husband were touching another woman's face I don't know that I would necessarily feel disrespected but I would be surprised and confused and want to know what the heck that was about.

But there are no right answers to these questions, only what the people in the relationship agree to.
posted by mskyle at 5:40 AM on June 12, 2021 [9 favorites]

Touched how? "You have a bug on your face" or "Frosting on your nose"? OK. I can not imaging why someone, male or female, might be touching my face!
posted by ReluctantViking at 5:44 AM on June 12, 2021 [26 favorites]

We are all autonomous beings, and there is no reason why a certain kind of relationship with one person should limit the kinds of relationships we have with other people.

That said, this sounds like part of some kind of overarching drama that needs to be addressed, before any discussion of how his wife should or should not feel.
posted by metasarah at 5:45 AM on June 12, 2021 [5 favorites]

It’s inappropriate to touch the face of anyone who’s not an intimate friend or family member, and even then it’s dicey.

If you’re the toucher, keep your hands to yourself.
If you’re the touched, you have every right to react and correct this behavior. (Maybe a big step back and a loud “don’t touch me” or “what the fuck is wrong with you?”)
If you’re the spouse of the toucher, this isn’t about you but you can feel disrespected. If my spouse did this to another person, I would probably grab his arm, say “don’t do that”, and we’d have a Conversation about appropriate physical contact (again, if it were inappropriate, which it would be in most cases. Male friends (like two!) have touched my face before and it was fine and appropriate).

Yeah, overall I would be more concerned about the touched person’s feelings than my own.
posted by punchtothehead at 5:47 AM on June 12, 2021 [15 favorites]

I often think that "respect"/"disrepect" is a bad concept to use in friendships, family connections and romantic relationships. It suggests that the morality of an action is less important than whether you're sort of....bowing to the other person, conforming to the proprieties. Like you'd be, eg, flirtatiously stroking women's faces all the time except that it would look like you didn't care about your wife , or like the reason not to spend all your money at the pub is about courtesy to your wife rather than security, planning and not making her have a relationship with constantly drunk partner. It often feels like just a less blamey version of "the old ball and chain", like "I respect my wife too much to engage in the awful behavior which would otherwise be fun and rewarding, because women are the arbiters of morality and propriety".

In any case, if we substitute "legitimately upsetting" for "disrespectful", we end up with more questions:

1. What kind of face-touching? Is it like "no, touch it, you can tell it's just a temporary tattoo even though it looks like I have a protruding wound on my cheekbone"? Is it like "whoops, you keep missing the fleck of road grit on your forehead, let me get it"? Is it "Oooh, your skin is so soft and youthful"? Is it "we are having a really intense conversation that is basically flirting and I stroke your face in a sensual manner"?

2. What are the boundaries on your relationship? If you and your wife have a swingery relationship, for instance, you might easily stroke another woman's face in front of your wife.

3. I would argue that the assumptions underlying some face touches might give you pause, if your wife felt that any consensual, non-romantic touch (like wiping off a smear of road grit in a situation where there were no mirrors available) was really about flirtation and infidelity. This wouldn't be about whether or not you were "respecting" your wife; it would be about whether you and your wife have similar views about gender and fidelity.
posted by Frowner at 5:55 AM on June 12, 2021 [43 favorites]

I would be completely freaked out if anyone but a romantic partner or small child touched my face unless they were like brushing off a spider. It’s not a matter of disrespecting the wife. It’s just weird and invasive.
I think there’s probably a lot going on here that you’re not including in your question.
Also, I’m answering from an American perspective. There may be cultures where it’s more acceptable.
posted by FencingGal at 5:58 AM on June 12, 2021 [19 favorites]

It’s usually inappropriate to touch anyone else’s face without permission in U.S. culture. So if that’s what happened here, absent other context that would make it an exception, it might well be disrespectful to the woman he touched.

We’d need a lot more context to know whether it’s disrespectful to his marriage. You tagged this post “flirting,” and it’s up to any given married couple to decide how they feel about flirting with other people in the context of their marriage. If it’s a problem, then likely the problem is the general issue of flirting, more so than the one specific gesture.
posted by Stacey at 6:00 AM on June 12, 2021 [7 favorites]

I just noticed your last post is also around trying to untangle an ambiguous maybe-flirting gesture. If this is an ongoing thing you’re struggling with, if you’re one of the married couple, it might be time for a clarifying discussion about boundaries and flirtations. If you’re the third party, it might be time to put some distance between you and whoever is giving you some potentially boundary-pushing mixed signals.

Flirtation when it happens should be fun, welcome, and not a transgression of anyone else’s existing relationship’s rules. It shouldn’t be an ongoing source of confusion and distress that sends you repeatedly seeking help to figure out what’s happening and how to feel about it.
posted by Stacey at 6:10 AM on June 12, 2021 [17 favorites]

there is no reason why a certain kind of relationship with one person should limit the kinds of relationships we have with other people

unless the establishment of the relationship to the first person has involved the making of promises about what kinds of conduct are now off the table with others.

So, you're not going to find out from Ask Metafilter whether or not touching the face of a woman who isn't your wife is acceptable. You're going to find that out from both the woman whose face you're proposing to touch and from any person or persons you've made promises to around intimacy, and you're going to not do it unless all of those people tell you unambiguously and explicitly that they're fine with it.
posted by flabdablet at 6:14 AM on June 12, 2021 [7 favorites]

That said: if you're the touchee rather than the toucher, and you haven't given unambiguous and explicit consent to somebody else's attempt to touch your face, then I struggle to think of circumstances in which I'd rate the toucher as other than creepy.
posted by flabdablet at 6:21 AM on June 12, 2021 [2 favorites]

Also, Don't Flirt With Married People is obviously sound policy.
posted by flabdablet at 6:23 AM on June 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

This question is lacking vital context.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:30 AM on June 12, 2021 [38 favorites]

There's a plot point in Code of the Woosters (PG Wodehouse, 1930s comedy of errors set in England) where a man is seen taking a fly out of the eye of a woman with his handkerchief; said woman is not his fiancee; fiancee misconstrues the scene as flirting, and immediately breaks off the engagement. Eventually all is explained, the lovers reunite, etc.

Upshot of this is by 1930s Upper Class English standards, while touching another woman's face is definitely flirty, this does not cover incidental touching.

One can have one's own standards, though, for what one would feel comfortable with for what ones spouse does with another woman. Spouse can, in turn, decide if they can live with those boundaries and continue in the relationship or not.
posted by damayanti at 6:43 AM on June 12, 2021 [4 favorites]

If you have to ask, it’s probably disrespectful.
posted by kevinbelt at 6:51 AM on June 12, 2021 [7 favorites]

Intent is more important than specific actions to me.

And what's acceptable in the context of a relationship is up to the individuals involved, both between the two people in the relationship and the third party's consent. Even in middle age, myself and a lot of my friends will still platonically cuddle in ways that many people would consider inappropriate for their partner to do. It's not a matter of right or wrong, just different subcultural norms.
posted by Candleman at 6:57 AM on June 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

Face-touching is a very intimate gesture, at least in the US cultures I'm aware of. Whether a playful touch to the cheek, sensual stroking, or even brushing away a crumb... as the spouse, I would consider that to be more intimate than I would be comfortable with my husband doing to someone. We would definitely be having a talk.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 7:03 AM on June 12, 2021 [5 favorites]

If anyone touches my face they are going to lose a fucking finger.

Man, woman, child, partnered or not. Unless I have given you the okay to touch my face, it's inappropriate. I do not care about the context. If I have something on my face, use your damn words.

If I were in a relationship with a man who touched another woman's face, I would light him up about respecting other people's boundaries.
posted by phunniemee at 7:50 AM on June 12, 2021 [16 favorites]

Yes, I would freak out. It’s impressive that other people have agreements with their partners in which face touching is ok, but I would freak.
posted by 8603 at 8:16 AM on June 12, 2021 [6 favorites]

Touching another person's face is a pretty intimate gesture in most cultures. Regardless of the genders and partnership status of those involved. Unless all three parties have had an open conversation about being ok with this, I'd call it inappropriate. In a social setting, when there are other people around, this is also a really good way for rumors to get started about having an affair.
posted by basalganglia at 8:18 AM on June 12, 2021 [3 favorites]

Impossible to answer without context. I (single, AFAB, mostly cis/mostly hetero) have one married hetero male friend whom (if we weren't in a pandemic) I would expect/permit to touch my face. I would also expect/permit his wife to touch my face. They're both extremely tactile people, and we've all known each other long enough and well enough to know there's no sexual agenda there. Their marriage is monogamous and happy.

But I'm a singer/actor, and I run with musos and theatre people (the above couple are both actors), so there are slightly different norms there.

(I also have a few married male gay friends who might, in non-pandemic times, touch my face. But I assume your question relates to men married to women)
posted by Pallas Athena at 8:25 AM on June 12, 2021 [4 favorites]

If you touched a woman’s face, odds are she would find it uncomfortable but would not say anything in the moment. Why? Most people are non-confrontational and are generous with excuses for people who are pushing boundaries. They shouldn’t be, but many are.

Probably she would replay and feel that moment and think of how she should have responded. Then there would be inner strife: Is it worth it to go back and say something about it after the fact? Am I the asshole? And so forth.

This would be adding shit to someone else’s life. Don’t do it.
posted by argybarg at 8:34 AM on June 12, 2021 [4 favorites]

any man touching the face of any woman who hasn't invited him to do so better have a damn good reason.

if he HAS been invited to do so by the touchee, actively or otherwise, then it's a very flirty move.

if he hasn't been invited to do so, then it's doubly not ok, because it's an unwanted intimate touch.
posted by fingersandtoes at 8:44 AM on June 12, 2021

Much more context needed. Mere speculation otherwise.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 9:02 AM on June 12, 2021 [3 favorites]

I'm American, woman, in a relationship with a man. If anyone other than my partner touched my face in anything other than a "You have a bug on your face and are in imminent bug danger" I would think they were crossing a boundary. My partner likely wouldn't care because he is chill like that but I would be fairly annoyed. If a woman touched my partner's face in a way that was more than a "you've got a bug on your face and are in imminent bug danger" way and he didn't do/say anything, then he and I would have a talk about it later. I wouldn't feel disrespected but I'd want to be clear we were both drawing our "What is acceptable flirting?" lines in the same place. I would never touch a man's face in a flirty way as someone in a monogamous relationship and I would expect my partner wouldn't either.
posted by jessamyn at 9:08 AM on June 12, 2021 [4 favorites]

I'd class it as roughly equivalent to french kissing with your tongue in her mouth.

As to whether it's disrespectful to your wife, that depends on if she is your wingman or not.

As someone without a bug phobia, I would say that touching someone's face to brush off a spider is rather like when someone on the metro sways with the motion of the car as it thunders down the tunnel and their crotch just happens to be brushing back and forth against your butt. It doesn't even have plausible deniability as not having a sexual subtext.

However it might not have a sexual overly intimate connotation if the person you touch is screaming, "Get it off me!" but even then you're better off letting someone less likely to be seen as a creep rescue them and using something like a hastily removed glove to do the brushing.
posted by Jane the Brown at 9:19 AM on June 12, 2021 [2 favorites]

I interpret this question as "my husband keeps touching a female friend's face and says it's totally harmless. When I object, he tells me (or I suspect he'll tell me) I'm overreacting."

Which is not ok, firstly because it is reasonable for onlookers to see this as a romantic gesture, and secondly, even if this were totally platonic, if the wife objects he needs to cut it out. (All of this assuming the other lady's consent).
posted by Omnomnom at 9:32 AM on June 12, 2021 [20 favorites]

I mean, would the man in question touch another man's face that way?
posted by Omnomnom at 9:33 AM on June 12, 2021 [8 favorites]

Nope; touching someone's face is innately intimate in our culture.
posted by ftm at 9:59 AM on June 12, 2021 [2 favorites]

either he's an opthamologist, an optometrist, a dentist, a dermatologist, committing assault, or checking to see if she's feverish. otherwise, this is barely even still flirting, it's plain old seduction.

used to be you could flirt that way because if you were, say, lighting a woman's cigarette for her, your hand was already close to her face. or you could gently smooth the tear from the corner of her eye with your callused thumb because women are always bursting into tears, who knows why. but you cannot do that now.

or uh I guess if you were stranded by the side of the road and she was changing your tire for you & had both hands fully occupied and the wind was whipping at her hair and she asked you to pull her hair back so she could see what she was doing without letting go of a heavy object, maybe that would be fine

tl;dr: come on now.
posted by queenofbithynia at 10:19 AM on June 12, 2021 [33 favorites]

Didn't realise till you asked.

Yes.
posted by DrtyBlvd at 11:42 AM on June 12, 2021

I am a woman married (for 13 years) to a man in America. This question made me try to remember the last time anyone other than my husband touched my face. Like, my mom and I are super close and huggy kissy and she hasn't touched my face since I was a child.

So I asked my husband and we agreed that more than likely the creepiest creep in the circle of friends we hung out with when we were first dating must have touched my face without consent and I blocked out the memory. (We're also certain I would have removed his hand from my face and told him off.) People who try to touch your face also like to try and "play footsie" with you in my experience.

As a small woman with a certain demeanor I have been subjected to a shitload of unwanted touching from girlhood on and I make it clear I'm not okay with it every time it happens. People don't expect it but KEEP YOUR HANDS (AND FEET) TO YOURSELF THX.

The last time anyone other than me touched my husband's face it was a very very very drunk person throwing herself all over him at a bar. This happened one time out of countless nights out together so definitely not a normal occurance. He was horrified. I gently pried her off of him and she wandered off.

If my husband touched another woman's face I would be perturbed for sure. It would be totally out of character for him and I would absolutely ask him WTF it was about. If I was married to that creepy creep I mentioned earlier, I suppose it wouldn't surprise me at all.
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 5:34 PM on June 12, 2021 [5 favorites]

I'm known to be weird about personal space, in that if someone is 'safe' then I'm something of a limpet, but otherwise pandemic distance at all times. So I do have several friends who touch my face or I touch theirs but literally all of those relationships are extremely intimate in a way that is non-normative for heterosexual monogamous relationships.

Anyone not those people, and I am not literally in a hospital bed, struggling with my hands full and hair in my face, or unable to see in a mirror? Its an extremely intimate act that either is a prelude/invitation to intimacy or an affirmation of it.

(Most face touching I do is me smoothing beards/stroking hair, or errant eyelash removal/brow furrow stroking, and 90% is my boyfriend or my kid, AND the other 10% are because I am not monogamous)

(I also hold hands with friends)
posted by geek anachronism at 7:59 PM on June 12, 2021 [1 favorite]

No it's definitely not okay even if she has an eyelash or an insect there or anything. He can hand her a mirror and she can touch her own face. If there is no mirror she can look in a car window or the ocean. If there is no car window or ocean then that's tough. For me this would be serious boundary crossing and if there is any gaslighting taking place ("it's nothing, this is just what we do in Transylnarnia") then I would make plans to exit.

If you are the woman being faced-touched you should ask him to stop. If you find it difficult to set boundaries verbally just move back physically when he does it so that his hand is left cradling the air. If you like it then I would take space from this man as this is a very dangerous road to go down.
posted by ihaveyourfoot at 11:17 PM on June 12, 2021 [3 favorites]

This question led me and my husband to have a brainstorm session about when someone would ever logically touch anyone’s face plutonically since it’s so rare. All we could come up with was:
-if you’re a professional actor who has been directed to do so
-if you’re a professional tango dancer with this in your choreography
-if you’re a spa tech or dermatologist doing so as your job
-if the woman is your adult child with whom you have a healthy relationship and you are dramatically giving her your last words
-if the person is in cardiac arrest and you’re administering cpr
-if you’re the person’s ophthalmologist or dentist
-if you are Captain Hook and you are shifting a young woman’s face with your hook hand (but we’re fairly sure he’s not married)

Hopefully this gives you a sense of how rare it is to ever touch anyone’s face. It’s reasonable that people, spouse or otherwise, would be weirded out if you did this.

But also, we’re in a pandemic. Touching other people’s faces is literally one of the last things we should be doing right now.
posted by donut_princess at 4:12 AM on June 13, 2021 [5 favorites]

As I've thought about this, I have been considering how I'd feel if I walked into a room and my partner were touching someone else's face. Honestly, I wouldn't worry about it one bit, because I have known my partner for quite a while now and frankly I know that it would have to be a "Gussie Fink-Nottle removes a fly from a girl's eye" situation as referenced upthread. Or, since we know a lot of theater people, some kind of "what a weird facial prosthesis you made" situation. But my first response would be "I wonder what kind of zany explanation is behind this".

So anyway, it occurs to me that this type of question arises when there's already something wrong. If a married man isn't dodgy, he's basically only going to be touching someone's face in one of those oddball, totally unpredictable but completely innocent situations with obvious explanations*, precisely because it is so unusual to touch someone's face.

The innocence should be in fact pretty apparent because the explanation should be clear. So you're left with two alternatives: touch that isn't innocent or an excessive response by the wife to an outlier Gussie Fink-Nottle incident. It should be fairly obvious which is which - if a guy is removing a fly from someone's eye and his wife insists in the face of testimony from all concerned that the very act of fly-removal is disrespectful and unfaithful, that's about the wife, because there are outlier incidents of face-touching. But because touching someone else's face is so unusual, there really isn't any such thing as "casual" facial touch with no particular explanation. "Casual" facial touch would be a strong indicator that something was wrong if it happened.
posted by Frowner at 5:35 AM on June 13, 2021 [7 favorites]

Are you a married man who touched the face of a woman to whom you are not married? Are you a woman whose husband touched the face of another woman? Touching another person's face is an act of intimacy. Possibly with the exception of someone having something on their face, but even then, it would be very familiar. I was not comfortable with my husband being very familiar or intimate with other women, and, in fact, he was disloyal and unfaithful. One could say that disloyalty and unfaithfulness are forms of disrespect. Whatever's going on, it sound like there are real and unresolved issues. In my experience, when one's partner tries to dismiss concerns, and is overly argumentative about the behavior, it's a form of gaslighting.
posted by theora55 at 8:13 AM on June 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I'm a woman who had a married man touch my face and I was wondering if his wife would typically have an issue with it because I really wasn't sure what to think.
posted by mintchip at 7:50 PM on June 14, 2021

If this is Mr. Touchy-Shoes from your earlier question, I would think I was being hit on by somebody with no respect for me or his wife or his marriage.
posted by flabdablet at 11:10 PM on June 14, 2021 [2 favorites]

Unless he was removing a fly from your eye or seems very, very likely to be non-monogamous (eg, also participates in some kind of polyam or swinger scene, talks openly about his open relationship, etc) this sounds like a bad scene.

When I was a younger and single person, I had the opportunity to pursue things with several partnered people. At the time, I just kind of left it vague in my head, like "oh, this is probably okay, surely this person wouldn't be [doing what they are doing] if there was anything wrong". My own experience being single rather than seriously partnered meant that I didn't really have a visceral sense of how long-term monogamous relationships tend to go.

It was flattering, it didn't feel that different from flirting with a single person and I basically went along with the flirting up until it would have gone from "probably a bad idea that is actually annoying the partner" into definite infidelity, at which point I pulled back because ultimately I didn't feel good about literal cheating. In retrospect, I'm really glad that I had that much common sense but I also wish I'd cut things off sooner.

Now, the original couples are still together and seem happy, and I tend to assume that the flirty partner was kidding themselves along in much the same way I was rather than seriously, truly looking to cheat. But it could probably have turned into relationship-ending cheating if we'd kidded ourselves along into something that could not be ignored.

My point here is that if Touchy-face is being all flirty even though he's married, think about Future You and spare Future You the embarrassing and/or guilty memories.
posted by Frowner at 5:59 AM on June 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

I'm a woman who had a married man touch my face and I was wondering if his wife would typically have an issue with it because I really wasn't sure what to think.

If he didn't have permission to touch you, never mind what she thinks -- if he touched you without your consent, that's creepy and your own boundaries should tell you that.
posted by DarlingBri at 6:47 AM on June 15, 2021 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: > If he didn't have permission to touch you, never mind what she thinks -- if he touched you without your consent, that's creepy and your own boundaries should tell you that.

Good point. I guess I was thinking that if his wife would have a problem with it, it would indicate something about what he was up to.
posted by mintchip at 4:35 PM on June 16, 2021

I'm just doubling down here on what I said earlier, but: well-intentioned, non-creepy flirtation should not be this confusing an experience for the recipient.

There are plenty of circumstances where this might not be disrespectful to his wife in the context of their marriage, but in the context of his interactions with you, it's disrespectful of him not to make it very clear to you if that's the case. Whatever his deal with his wife is, his deal with you sounds worse and worse all the time. I'm sorry you're being put in this situation, and I strongly urge you to put whatever space you need to between you and this person so that he cannot keep interacting with you this way.
posted by Stacey at 4:49 PM on June 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: Btw, I'll still be keeping up with this thread if anyone new cares to weigh in.
posted by mintchip at 6:14 AM on June 27, 2021