When Your Spouse Doesn’t Like Your BFFs!

luciamuresan (67)in #life • 7 years ago

Do you remember those days when you met your spouse and everything seemed like spring? Those initial months were filled with the first few dates, first smooches, first adventures and, of course, the first time they introduced him to the other "loves of his life" - his besties. In an ideal world, your friends as your partner as much as you, and vice versa. But when they do not? It can wreak havoc not on friendships, but rather on their marriage, according to a new study.

For the study, the researchers followed 355 heterosexual couples to determine the impact of friendships on marriage after 16 years. Neither pair was interracial, to rule out race as a potential source of tension). What the researchers found was fascinating: in white couples where husbands liked their wife's friends, 70 percent of the couples were still together at the end of the study. However, in white couples where husbands did not like their partner's friends, only 50 percent remained attached. For black couples, the taste for friends did not seem to affect the relationship.

What do psychologists think of this theory? The Sex and Relationships Therapist Courtney Geter, LMFT, CST says that connecting groups of friends is an important aspect of a relationship, and not getting along with each other's tribe can lead to arguments. "It is typical for spouses to bring friends into conversations. If your spouse makes a negative comment about your friends, you may feel unsupported or divided between two aspects of your life," he explains. "If you do not respond to your feelings and resolve the conflict, it could affect other areas of the relationship, such as your husband's enjoyment or even areas such as sex."

Disapproval of your group of friends is worse when it comes from your partner, whose opinion usually means more than any other person. "This is the person we most love and trust, so your assessment of others around us matters to us," says psychologist Nikki Martinez, PsyD, LCPC. "We want to know that they agree that someone is a good person, that they are nice and enjoy being around," he says.

One possible reason why you may be bumping into this problem more and more in recent years is that dating patterns have changed from person to person online. So while we used to meet people at parties or friends, where there was already an internal connection and a similar mentality, more and more we find people in sites and applications of appointments, where there is no such framework.

This internet lens can be difficult to navigate, since your partner knows your friends not in a bar or a barbecue, but through their profiles and stalls, which can be very cured. "Social media does not provide a realistic view of another person's life because they are posting the most interesting and exciting images and status updates on their lives," says Geter. "Since there is a screen between you and the rest of the world, humans are more likely to make comments that they would not normally do in person or they can avoid conflict resolution with a single click of a button or close a window."

So your marriage doomed if your husband is not a fan of your BFFs? Definitely not, according to Geter and Martinez, but you may have to manage the expectations of both sides. A key way to approach it is to have friends in pairs and individual friends, none of whom have to mingle.