Six Ways Friends Can be Toxic to a Marriage
by This article discusses the negative influence that friends can have on the marriage relationship. It covers areas, such as, jealousy, temptation to cheat, and how friends can monopolize one partner’s time.
If you are married and choose to have lots of single friends or friends who wish they were single, the effect on your marriage can be devastating. With friends, it is not so much a matter of whether they can be toxic to a marriage. The real issue is to address how they are toxic. Often the problem is not with the friends, but with the way that one or both spouses react to those friends.
Friends can Overtax the Free Time of one Spouse
This type of friend is not usually deliberately trying to create friction within the marriage. These friends are looking for a buddy to hang out with together. They may play sports or like to go places together during several evenings a week or have outings of some sort on both weekend days.
For single people, this type of activity has little negative effect. With the jealousy factor plus a measure of loneliness that can set in, these activities will have almost a zero positive effect on a marriage. Generally, the conversation ends up as, “choose me or them.” At that point, this type of friend will rarely bow out gracefully. When confronted with the ultimatum, single friends will express a lack of understanding that the commitment to the marriage vows must come first.
Friends can Encourage a Married Person to get Involved in Unfaithful Activities
Since single people are sometimes known to haunt places seeking partners to hook up with for a fling of some sort, they will expect their friend to go along with the group. If the married member is not strong enough to resist the pressure from the friend to participate, cheating on the spouse will happen. No marriage is perfect. If one of these forays occurs while the marriage is having a few bumps, the spouse may be weakened by the problems at home and seek solace with a new mate for a night or more. For a marriage already in trouble, this will probably be a death sentence for the couple’s relationship.
A Friend may be Jealous of a Happy Marriage
If the friendship started before the marriage, some friends feel jealous that they can no longer have as much time with their friend as they use to have. While you hope that people are not this way, this type of friend may actively try to break the marriage apart. Some might argue that this would not be much of a friend, but by the time the married person realizes this, it may be too late to save the marriage. People who are like this will spread lies and set up compromising situations.
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