Search Results for: blog protect your friendships after marriage

Finding Support from Your Friends

We’ve talked extensively about how important it is that we keep friends outside of our marriage.  And that doesn’t mean that we have friends who can’t also be friends with our spouses.  It just means that we look for emotional connections with more people than just our spouses.  I know it’s very true for me; my two best friends give me things my husband never could, and not just things like watching the six-hour BBC “Pride and Prejudice.” It’s a real romantic notion – both in the love and in the story sense of the word – that our spouses … Continue reading →

The Difference Between Friendship and Marriage

Sometimes I wonder what the difference is between friendship and marriage.  Not casual friendship, or even good friendship, but really-close, best-friends, rely-on-each-other-for-everything friendship.  If we look to the media for answers, it seems to imply that the only difference is physical desire.  In movies and television, the only or at least primary distinguishable change in the relationship between two characters that are best friends, and then become something more, is that their relationship adds a sexual element. Those are usually my favorite types of stories (as opposed to ones where the characters aren’t friends but jump right to dating), only … Continue reading →

How Does Having Children Affect Friendships?

Sometimes, I worry about what having kids will do to my already nonexistent social life. I’m not whining about not being able to go out and have fun anymore. That’s just not my thing. I’m a stay-in, watch-movies, read-books, play-video-games kind-of-person. My closest friends are those who like to do the same thing. What I’m worried about is growing further apart from the friends that I do have. A lot has already been written about how important it is to preserve one’s friendships outside of our marriage. We may have (hopefully) married our best friend, or at least one of … Continue reading →

Marriage and Your Single Friends

Sometimes, quite without meaning to, we can hurt our single friends and make them feel uncomfortable. So what can you do to help your single friend? Here are some suggestions. Don’t always talk about your spouse and your family to them. I don’t have many single friends and so this was something I hadn’t thought about till a single friend mentioned it one time in passing, when talking about another person. But once she said it, I could see the problem. By talking too much about our spouse and our family we can make the single person more aware and … Continue reading →

Can Your Relationships Use a Little More Attention?

Here in the Single Parents blog we often talk about either our interactions with our children or our ex or have conversations about dating. There ARE other relationships in our lives—those with friends and family—and it may be the reality that those are the relationships that need a little more attention and a little more work. With all of the stresses and daily details we need to pay attention to, it may be our friendships that actually see the least of us. Why is it that our friendships seem to be the first thing we neglect or abandon when times … Continue reading →

Privacy in the Modern Marriage – Time & Technology Make Us Vulnerable

Privacy is a privilege that many of us cling to in a time when emails can be transmitted from one computer to another in nanoseconds. Privacy in the modern marriage is based more on trust than ever before. You can pick up your spouse’s cell phone and in short order have access to their email, their text messages and even the stored list of phone numbers. Privacy in the age of the Internet is a complicated issue. For even the most sensitive of data, you just require a few key numbers to enter and most married couples know their spouse’s … Continue reading →

Protect Your Friendships After Marriage

It’s a sad fact that marriage can alter friendships, but it’s important to recognize that your circle of friends are as important after you get married as they were before. When couples get married, the first few months, nigh on years can be time spent focusing intently on each other – to the exclusion of previous friendships. While most of us don’t do it deliberately, there is a line of exclusion that seems to divide us from our single and married friends. Subtle Changes The losses always begin subtly. You don’t call your friends as often. You beg off from … Continue reading →

Can Married People Have Single Friends?

Of course! But it’s not always easy. By nature, single people and married people lead different lifestyles. Case in Point The other day I wrote about my single fantasy and how I’m sort of living it at present due to the fact Wayne took a new job out of state and we’re currently separated until the house sells and I can rejoin him. Well, in some respects Wayne’s living his own single fantasy. He’s bachin’ it up eating out every night, doing whatever he wants after work, and hanging out with friends as much as possible. We have a lot … Continue reading →

Are You Too Old To Get Married?

We talked about being over 50 and enjoying dating yesterday, but do you ever wonder if you are too old to get married? I’ve seen plenty of people over the age of 50 discover love, companionship and even marriage for the first time and for some, the second time. These couples may meet for the first time at a church, a social gathering, on a cruise or just in the course of their everyday lives. They could be high school sweethearts reconnecting after decades apart. They can former spouses or even old friends who kindle a new relationship. What can … Continue reading →

A Glass of Water May Make the Burden of Child Sexual Assault Too Heavy.

The same student that sent the Donkey Story also sent me this poignant story about stress management: A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, “How heavy is this glass of water?” Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g. The lecturer replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that’s not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you’ll … Continue reading →