Marriage and Friends: Help or Damage Your Relationship?

Good friends, especially good couple friends, can enhance a marriage. They can be playmates, sounding boards, and support through tough times. Some friendships enhance a couple’s relationship while others seem to steer things off in the wrong direction.

It is important to pay attention to your friendships and decide if they are ones that will support you through your lives together and help in building and maintaining a healthy marriage or promote heading in a different direction and away from your marriage.

You can learn a lot from others who are going through or have gone through some of the same struggles that you experience. What a relief it is to know that you are not alone in the struggles of parenting or dealing with career and family or aging parents … whatever stage of life you are in at the time.

Think about the relationships that you and your partner have right now and see if you can determine what category they might fall in to.

Friends That Enhance a Marriage

Committers
Couples who believe in commitment are helpful when the times are tough or the “itch” to give up bubbles up.

As a marriage and family therapist, I am always happy when I hear couples use phrases like “I know we will get through this” or “We are committed to our marriage and divorce is not an option”. When that value is present, then problems are dealt with very differently. Choosing friends who also have that same belief will support a marriage.

Supporters

Cultivate friendships with couples who are glad to be a listening ear and yet will always direct you back to your partner to work through problems. Sometimes, talking out loud about situations in your relationship can help you to calm down and develop a better perspective on a situation. At other times, sharing with someone who has gone through a similar problem, can offer suggestions for solutions.

Friends who will also encourage you to work through problems with your spouse are good supporters for the marriage.

Learners and Enrichers
Couples who bring new interests and activities can enrich a marriage. Life can become boring if you do the same old things all of the time. Having friends who bring new stories, activities and interests can keep relationships vital.

Couples who have new and different experiences also get some of the same changes in their brain chemistry that comes from an affair, although not to the same intensity. It is a good thing to have new, first time experiences.

Seek out couple friends who know how to expand their lives and join them in pursuits. Ballroom dancing classes? Golf or another sports activity? Travel with and without children? Movies? Classes or restaurants?

Check back here to read Part II: Friends That Might Endanger Your Relationship.

Tip of the Week.

The person who benefits most from forgiveness is the person who forgives.

Seven Ways to Connect With Your Partner

Here are 4 more ways to reconnect with your partner when you are feeling that you are fading away from each other.

4. Find ways to connect with each other, just to say “I am thinking about you” during the day. Send a text, call or email. Leave notes in pockets or lunch boxes. Find ways to remind your partner … and yourself, that he or she is important to you. If you find that you are the kind of person who gets caught up in the day, set your phone alarm, or find some way to remind yourself to do what might come naturally to others.

5. Physically touch, hold, soothe, snuggle with your partner. Reaching out and touching each other is a physical reminder of your connection. Touch invites caring. It is good to be playful in touch if your partner appreciates it. Romantic touch is not necessary all of the time. Warm and affectionate ways of saying “I love you” and “You matter” are great ways to nurture a relationship.

6. Share positive comments and affirmations. Gottman found that couples in healthy marriages have 5 minutes, accumulated throughout the day, of positive affirmations.

7. Don‘t sweep conflict under the rug. A lack of resolving conflict can easily lead to distance and loneliness in a marriage. Avoiding conflict may seem to help in the short run; however, if left unresolved, can lead to the distancing cycle that is a breeding ground for affairs. Learn ways to communicate calmly and respectfully about differences.

Many live with the myth that marriage and connection should come easily and, if it does not, then there is something wrong with the marriage or the partner. In actuality, for most, it involves a conscious decision to make the relationship a priority and find a way to make connection happen.

People don’t just fall out of love in a marriage. If love dies, it is because they did not make their marriage a priority.

Seven Ways to Connect with Your Partner

I often meet with couples who complain about growing apart as the challenges of daily living lure them into routines that leave little time for focusing on the relationship. This, coupled with the new and added stress of technology, invites people to be more involved with things other than their marriage.

Connecting with your partner is crucial to the stability of any marriage. It doesn’t take a lot of time to fan the flames of the relationship. In fact, research studies by John Gottman, PhD found that a simple 5 hours a week can make a difference in the quality of a couple’s relationship.

Here are 7 suggestions for ways to reconnect with your partner.

1. Find some way to connect with each other, even if it is only briefly, before you begin your day. Share a kiss and a bit about the plan for your day. If possible, have breakfast together, even if the children are rushing around with you. Spoon a few minutes before getting out of bed in the morning and make sure that you are not always the small spoon.

2. Develop a ritual that involves sharing your day with your partner. Find some way to spend time every night processing your day. Use the time to talk about positive or stressful events. Share highs and lows with each other. Share confidences and secrets.

3. Plan a regular date every week, even if you never leave home. Dates don’t have to be fancy, but they do need to be time that is devoted to relaxation or fun and just the two of you. If finding a sitter is too expensive or too hard, make sure something happens after the children are in bed, over lunch or any other time that fits with your schedule. This should be a time that you devote to each other and last for at least a couple of hours, not hurried to fit in between events.

Check back for the next 4 ways to connect with your partner.

Read more of our articles at Counseling Relationships Online

Questions to Ask Yourself Before Starting a New Relationship

Questions about my part in the relationship, both the positive and the parts needing change

No relationship ends completely because of one person. Even if the choice was a bad one, part of the reason it got bad has to do with the dance between you and your partner. Carefully look at how you handled situations and ways that you treated your partner.

• What have I learned that I have done well in relationships?
• What have I learned that I need to do differently?
• Do I sabotage myself in relationships?
• Have I received any advice from a trusted source that might give me information about how to be a better partner in a relationship?

Remember when … Look at a picture, watch a video, remember a happier time together. Revisit all of the good memories and talk about what happened then … what each of you did to help make that a special time.

Dissect what you did and what you most appreciated about your partner and what he or she did that made that a special time. As you notice softer, kinder and better feelings slowly come. Talk about how to keep them alive in the present.