Verified by 
Each of us is a member of a network made up of friends, acquaintances, and family members, and these folks are essential to our mental health. They can enhance our self-esteem, make us feel part of a group, and form the basis for our personal identities. Sometimes they serve as guardians, making sure we stay reasonably inside the bounds of a healthy lifestyle. The emotional support they provide in our time of need makes it easier to handle problems and keep us from over-reacting to difficult situations.
When we develop an intimate relationship, we bring along our network and so does our partner. Our personal social circle then widens because we merge the two groups into one. Not all of the friends from each network will be retained. Rather, we typically go through a weeding-out process, culling down our network to a select group. The shrinking process is gradual, but it isn’t random or haphazard. Rather, we consciously try to make our network more homogeneous. That is, we focus on building a network of friends whose lifestyles match our own. We might develop closer relationships with other married couples, and drop some single friends, especially those of the opposite sex who might be a threat to our partner.
A homogeneous social circle is good for our relationship. It validates our lifestyle and strengthens our identity as a couple, leading us away from seeing ourselves as individuals. Married friends also help to keep a marriage intact. They have a vested interest that a couple stays together because their lives are intertwined, and each couple validates the lifestyles of every other couple.
Our married friends and acquaintances provide another benefit. We gauge the quality of our own marriage by comparing it to theirs. We can find out what we’re doing right and what we can do better, but we’ll also use these comparisons to feel good about our own relationship. To achieve that goal, we go for downward comparisons. We focus on couples that don’t seem happy or have problems, and we avoid upward comparisons because they’re risky. We can feel better and more secure if we believe other relationships have as many or more difficulties. It’s not that we’re happy other couples aren’t doing well, but when we feel badly, it helps to believe that we’re not alone or things could be worse. Ultimately, we want to be able to say to ourselves that “my marriage is at least as good, if not better, than yours.”
As our networks merge, partners come to share their friends with each other. Stable marriages have a lot of sharing of friends. When we accept our partner’s friends as our own, they believe we’ve accepted them and they take it as a sign of our commitment. Our partners also feel more secure because they believe we want the same things out of our social lives, and we’re more bonded because our friendships further intertwine our lives. Of course, it also means that splitting up is more complicated because we might have to give up some friends along with a spouse.
In most successful marriages, those who matter to one partner are usually accepted by the other. However, if we decide to reject our partner’s friends, especially those who are highly valued, that can become a source of friction. If our partner doesn’t like who or what is important to us, we might think that says something about how they feel about us. We’re also likely to feel anxious when we get together with unaccepted friends, and can come to resent our partner for making us feel that way.
Sometime, outright dismissal of a partner’s network might signal underlying problems in the relationship. Let’s say we resent the way our partner treats us. If we’re uncomfortable with confronting them directly, we might look for an indirect way to retaliate. That indirect way might be through rejecting our partner’s family and friends. The thing about such behavior is that it has everything to do with the underlying problem and nothing to do with the people we’re rejecting. Passive-aggressive rejection occurs more frequently than we might realize, and not just over social networks. We might belittle our partner’s personal interests, their careers, or other things they say or do. When we reject without a rational reason, it’s often an attack that stems from some other problem.
Adopting our partner’s network is one side the story. There’s also how our family and friends react to our partner. Feelings that partners have for each other can be strongly influenced by the opinions of the people in their networks. When our friends and family like our partner, we feel good about the relationship. However, if they dislike or are ambivalent to that person, it can disrupt the relationship.
There are a few reasons why our relationship is affected by our social circles. When a partner is liked by our friends and family, we have less second guessing and believe we’re still accepted by and a member of our network in good standing. We might also feel more attracted to our partner — if you like your friends and they like your partner, then you should also like your partner. Another relates to building our identity as a couple. If your relationship is considered to be a good match by people who are important to you, then you’re also likely to label yourselves as a good match.
We’re aware of how our family and peers can affect our feelings. That’s why we’re likely to be nervous when we have to introduce a partner into our social circle. We might even put it off for a while just to make sure things are going well in the relationship and our new partner won’t be an embarrassment. When the introduction occurs, we’ll do whatever we can to make sure our partner leaves a good impression. If it doesn’t turn out that way, we’ll then talk up our partner up in the hopes of convincing our group that they should approve.
Despite all the benefits they provide, friends and family can sometimes get in the way when a marriage has problems, even though that’s not their intention. Very often they can exacerbate a conflict and further divide the couple. Sometimes we’re to blame because of who we choose to talk to about our problems. We’re trying to feel better, so we might pick friends who validate our point of view. These friends might even go so far as to point out why we should be unhappy about our partner or our marriage. We might not go to friends who would be objective, because objectivity is not what we’re looking for.
Outsiders might also offer opinions about our problems that are misguided or inappropriate. They’re likely to know only one side of the story and their advice won’t take into account our partner’s perspective. For example, telling a friend our partner always yells at us might lead that friend to give one piece of advice, but different advice if they find out we do the yelling first. As the biggest concern, when friends and family insert themselves into our conflicts, we can become too reliant on them for guidance, and we might then avoid talking our problems out with our partner.
That’s not to say that we should never discuss problems with others. Friends and family can provide valuable emotional support when times are bad. They are a counter-balance to the negativity we’re dealing with at home, just as our spouse might when we’re coping with problems with friends, co-workers, or family members. However, confiding in a friend or family member cannot be much help in fixing a difficult marriage. Our friends can only give us moral support, but our marital issues won’t get resolved until we work through them with our partner, without the assistance of outsiders.
When your marriage is in a difficult phase, do yourself and your spouse a favor and keep friends out of it. While you might want to seek comfort from those close to you, they’re likely to be more of a problem than an aid in the long run. Their advice may not be accurate and not particularly helpful, but more importantly, they will know your secrets. These they will not forget, nor will you, so going forward your private life will become part of that friendship, long after your marriage problems have been resolved. Besides, when we go outside we lose opportunities to learn how to solve our problems together. That skill is important; we not only can fix what’s wrong, but working through them together actually builds our connection with our spouse.
Link to our books on marriage and managing your emotional life:
- Making Marriage Work: Avoiding the Pitfalls and Achieving Success
- Taking Charge of Your Emotions: A Guide to Better Psychological Health and Well-Being
