Tag Archives: friends

broken heart, celibacy, life, love, men, relationships, thoughts, women

Can we be friend with our ex?

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Recently, I met someone who told me he was friends with two women he dated thanks to Tinder. One of them is currently in a relationship with another man. But she still calls him and invites him for a drink to catch up. The other one invites him for her parties, and he reciprocates.

But is this friendship genuine? A true friendship between people involves contacts, presence, and moral (sometimes material) support. Friends are there in difficult times as well as in good times.

Some people keep their ex as ” friend” just in case to have an option when they are single. When they are in a relationship, they forget about their friend. This friendship is shallow and not sustainable in the long term.

It’s also cruel to ask your ex to be friends when you just break up the relationship. Friendship is difficult if you still resent the end of your relationship and want to scratch the face of the one who just broke your heart.

It’s also difficult to remain in a platonic friendship with someone you were attracted to and who saw you naked several times.

Many of my genuine friends told me it’s never a good idea to remain friend with an ex. Most of my friends are not friend with their ex. One of them tried to remain friend with her ex, but her ex has disappeared from the picture when she got married.

My true friendship with my male friends has developed over time, and none of them are my ex. We don’t share a sentimental past. These guys crossed my path in difficult times and we are there for each other.

Time tears apart the shallow friendships.

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celibacy, life, love, men, relationships, thoughts, women

Not fond of your friend’s partner

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Recently, one of my friends asked me why I didn’t try to stop his relationship with his ex. He broke up with her four years ago, after a four years relationship. During their relationship, he told me several times he wasn’t happy with her, and I just asked him  why he wasn’t leaving her. But he didn’t attempt to break up with her. Until after one night, he fainted after a violent argument with her. That day, he understood he had to leave her. She was verbally abusive with him all of the time, and used him as a trophy .

Honestly, I don’t think I could have succeed in stopping him to date her. I could have lost him if I tried, because he could have stayed with her anyway. I didn’t know how bad was his relationship with her, because he didn’t tell me anything about his relationship, except from time to time that he was unhappy. I’ve only met her twice during their relationship, during a short period, so I couldn’t see if she was verbally abusive to him.

Should you try to make your friend break up with his/her partner because you don’t like him/her?

Your intervention in your friend’s relationship, especially if unwanted by your friend, can backfire. When we’re in love, all we want, is to be with the person we love. We tend to forget about our friends. During this period, we can’t listen to eventual warnings our friends are trying to tell us. “I’ve lost some friends this way” told one of my friends. “I told a friend of mine her boyfriend wasn’t nice at all with her, but she got offended when I said that. She took her distance with me after that” she said.

It’s difficult to criticise your friend’s partner, because you don’t really know what is going on between them, because you don’t live with them (unless you are roommates). You can’t change your friend’s mind just by saying you don’t like his/her significant other. Your friend may even think you’re jealous of their relationship, especially if you’re single.

If you collect only failed relationships, you’re not in a good place to give relationship advices to your friend who try  to build a relationship.

But you can react when you see your friend struggling with his/her significant other. For example, if you witness your friend being criticised for no good reason, or yelled at for no good reason. That’s normal to stand for your friend in those cases.

If your friend ask you about his/her relationship and how right it is, yes, you can be honest with your friend. Your friend can have doubt about his/her relationship.

Personally, I don’t like if my friends give me advices on my relationship if I don’t ask for it.

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life, love, relationships

The closer, the better (when your group of friends strengthens your romantic relationship)

Can Facebook predict if your romantic relationship will last? Yes, according to Jon Kleinberg, a computer scientist at Cornell University and Lars Backstrom, a Facebook engineer.

It depends on the mutual friends you share with your romantic partner on Facebook (or in real life). Your couple has a better chance to last if your romantic partner is well connected to your network. “A spouse or a romantic partner is a bridge between a person’s different social worlds” said Kleinberg when his study was released.

In fact, it’s not the number of mutual of friends you share with your romantic partner that will predict if your relationship can last.

It’s a different dynamic at play.

Common friends can act as a counselor or mediator between you and your romantic partner. Of course, it depends on your common friends.

Many people I know don’t share many common friends with their spouse or romantic partner. Simply because they choose someone outside of their circle of friends. One of my friends, who’s about to get married, met her future husband on a dating site. I’ve never heard her speaking about their common friends. She went on holiday with her group of friends, without him, several times already. But she also tried to include him in her larger group of friends. I know him a little bit, but he’s always stood behind her whenever I went to their place. He didn’t try to be friendly with me. But it would have been weird for me if he started to act as my best friend. It’s curious, because two of her friends have now become two of my friends too. Whenever they are in my city, they call me for a drink of a dinner.

Besides, one of my friends got a bad experience with the common friends he shared with his ex. She left him after five years for one of his best friends. They are now married with two kids. My friend has moved abroad.

And how do you make common friends with your romantic partner? That is a difficult question. It can happen because you bonded separately with them before your relationship started. One of my friends met her husband through their common friend.   She accepted once an invitation to an exhibition by one of her friends. Her friends also invited a group of his friends, including her future husband. He simply introduced her to him during the exhibition.

But it’s true Facebook can give you an indication on how connected your common friends are with your romantic partner. The study shows we tend to like status, pictures and posts posted by people who are close to us. We may not like those posted from someone you just met twice in your life but asked you to be friends on Facebook. But for the people we like, it’s the opposite. For instance, I tend to like every picture, even if these are failed, posted by my sister, and my friends. I get that too, from my closest friends. I’m not surprised, when I get some analysis from my datas on Facebook, to see familiar names coming up in the statistics.

In real life, it’s also the same.

In a world where it is easy to find a romantic partner (or a one-night stand – hi Tinder), the common friends are much harder to find.

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broken heart, celibacy, life, love, men, relationships

Better off alone?

Last night, I was invited to a birthday party, where I ended up in the kitchen chatting with the house guest and her friends. Her husband and her friends’ husband were in another room, playing a game where the loser had to drink shots of whisky. Of course, after one hour, the husbands started to talk incoherently as they all got drunk.

One of the women shrugged her shoulders when she heard they were playing that stupid game. She stormed into their room and shouted at her husband, mentioning he had to wake up early the next morning as they were about to hit the road for their holidays in Italy. He was supposed to be the driver.

When she came back in the kitchen, she looked at us very disappointed. But then, another woman told her her man wasn’t better. Because he was the one who initiated the game.

I know her man really well. And to be fair, I pity her a lot, because I know how unfaithful he can be. When she got pregnant two years ago, he cheated on her, and one of my friends told me he tried to woo her as he was sending her a lot of suggestive SMS. He also has a nasty habit of looking at me with concupiscent eyes, like one of my coworkers, who’s a pervert.

Later, the woman who shouted at her husband admitted she didn’t understand him very well. “I don’t know if he’s serious or if he’s just trying to make me laugh” she said. But her husband has a curious sense of humor, consisting of mocking other people. Well, if you read Lilian Glass’s book, “Toxic men”, you will know that when a man is joking at your expense, he just says what he really thinks. He’s serious, despite his laugh.

It is said that it’s better to laugh it off, in those situations. But sometimes, the jokes can be hurtful.

When I left the party, I thought I was better off alone. This is the good side of being single: there is no significant other to criticize you or diminish you.

On the other hand, I have some examples of couples where there’s no animosity like that. When I’m invited to my friends’ place, I never end in situations like these. Usually, I end up doing the dish washing with my friends and their husband, and we just laugh together (and get drunk together). One of my friends’ husband cooks when they receive guests, and she’s the one who chat with the guest while he’s in the kitchen, sometimes popping by.  Yes, my friends have had downs in their relationship, but so far, they have all managed to get through that.

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broken heart, celibacy, life, love, men, miscellaneous, relationships, thoughts, women

Give it to me right…

… Or just don’t give me at all.

At the G8 meeting last week, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy refused to follow the other president’s wives during their tour in Rome, and she also arrived on a separate group so she could avoid meeting Silvio Berlusconi. Apparently, she doesn’t like Il commendatore (and I can understand her). But unfortunately for her, he’s a friend of her husband. So, in this case, she’s a bit forced to be nice with him. At least, she has to, if she doesn’t want to upset her husband.

Unfortunately, when we fall in love, we don’t know if we would get along with the object of our affection’s friends. In the case of Carla, there were some warning signs. She’s close to the Socialist Party in her heart. Her husband is from the opposite Party. Her ideas can only collide with her husband’s friend. She didn’t choose an easy situation by falling in love with Nicolas. But if she wants to make things work between them, she has to adapt, with the risk of losing herself in this relationship. It’s not easy to give up your philosophy like that.

Why is it so important to please your lover’s friends? Well, first, they are his/her best allies. They know him better than you do, simply because sometimes, they’ve known the object of your affection since they were kids, while you came years later in his/her life. Second, if they don’t like you, they can ruin  your relationship. Each time you will fight with him/her, his/her friends will take position against you. And if they hate you, they will take  the opportunity to advise him/her a break up. And at last, if you don’t  like them, you will have to bear their presence each time he/she wants to pay them a visit. So, it’s in your best interest to like his/her friends (at least, some of them) and that the feeling is mutual.

On the other hand, if you don’t like them, they can serve as a good indicator that maybe, the object of your affection isn’t the One. If you absolutely hate all of his/her friends, ask yourself why you love him/her. They’re a part of him/her. It’s a part you have to accept, or not.

But you don’t have to like all of his/her friends. Only those who matter the most. And usually, they boil down to two or three people. This makes the task less daunting. It’s just important to know who are the one swho matter in his/her life.

I’ve asked around me if people matter about their lover’s friends, and most of the time, people answer that they try to be nice with their best friends. Period.

So, do you think it’s important to have his/her friends on your side?

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celibacy, life, love, men, miscellaneous, relationships, thoughts, women

A whole lotta love

Among the various criteria we require from our partners, there’s one that counts more than the others, apart from love: the acceptance of our entourage.  Whether we like it or not, we’re not alone in our existence. Our life is fully intertwined with our family and friends. Partners can come and go throughout our existence. Members of our family and our real friends will stay for the long run.

I know a lot of people who rely on their friends and family’s advice on their love life. It’s not like if they ask them to find the one. But they need their approval for their choice. When you think about it, it’s not a bad idea. Who knows you best than your family and friends? When we fall in love, we often yield to the irrational of limerence. We’re not really ourselves in the first months of a relationship because of that, and we can sometimes make the mistake of choosing a partner who has nothing in common with us, or worse, who can really be bad for us. Our friends and/or family can bring us to reality in this case, even if sometimes, we don’t listen to them.

Besides, our friends and family can be a good indicator of how our partner love us. “He didn’t like my parents and my sister. He thought my friends were stupid and insignificant. As a result, my family didn’t like him, my friends neither. But they didn’t tell me so. They believed I had my reasons for choosing him, even if  I knew they didn’t agree with them. Each time we were invited in my family or by my friends, they would act as if he wasn’t there because he didn’t bother to be nice with them. It took me a while to understand he wasn”t for me. When we broke up, my friends and family were relieved I took that decision. I know now that the next one will have to be nice and loved by my entourage, and that they should tell me if there’s something wrong with him instead of not saying anything” G., 35, said.

When you love someone, you accept to embrace the whole aspect of his/personality. This includes friends and family. The things we love to do and the people we love define ourselves. Excluding them from the big picture of love can be a mistake.

Of course, there can be a cold war between us and our family. In that case, if your partner doesn’t get along with them, it’s understandable. But if he/she doesn’t bear your closest friends either, maybe there’s a problem.

The next time you will curse your in-laws, think about this: they’re the ones who raised and brought up the one you love. If they raised him/her properly, they have transmitted him/her a part of their values and their character. If you don’t like them, maybe you don’t like your partner so much.

So, would you tell your friend about his/her bad choice if he/she picked the wrong partner? And do you think it’s important our family and friends mind about our love life?

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celibacy, humor, life, love, men, relationships, thoughts, women

My friends over you

There’s one sentence pronounced by Miranda Hobbes in Sex and the City that strikes me:

“You know a lot about a man by looking at his friends”

The friends you have generally share some common points with you: you enjoy doing the same activities together (sport, drinking beer, going out,…) , you have more or less the same centers of interests and you come from the same background. So, this sentence makes pretty much sense: your love interest’s friends can tell a lot about him/her.

An example? If his friends only think about going out and getting drunk, he would probably be exactly like them. If they’re into poetry reading, activisms, politics, …. chances are he will be too.

“When we first met, I thought he was absolutely charming, but then I met his friends. They were gross, always making horrible jokes about women and gays. The exact opposite of my man. It turned out they made a bet he would date me for two weeks, I should have run away the first time I saw his friends” explains H., 30.

“He kept on talking about his friend who was an apostle of partner-swapping, and about his other friend who were a frequent customer of the prostitutes. I should have known from the start I had to deal with a pervert” T., 30, said.

“All his friends were computer geeks who spend their time playing games like World of Warcraft. At the beginning, he tried to spend time with me, but then, his friends started complaining he was missing, so he just followed them and neglected me” M., 34, told me.

“His friends were stupid dorks who kept on telling stupidities, and took nothing seriously. What I thought was a detached personality turned out to be a completely irresponsible and afraid of the real world person” A., 34, explained.

A woman’s friends can also tell a lot about her. For example, if her friends are shallow chicks who only think about their appearance, chances are she wouldn’t be interested in artistic exhibitions and other stuffs like that. But, for a reason, I’ve noticed that some men don’t bother at all about this aspect, while women pay a lot of attention about their man’s entourage, especially when we become older.

I know that when you fall in love, you only fall for one person. But sooner or later, you will have to deal with your partner’ s surroundings, and if it doesn’t tick for a reason, then maybe it’s time to run away. Some people do choose their partner over their friends, but this is silly, I think.

If your partner’s friends are total idiots, perverts,… would you run away or would you stay?

 

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