lawmummy

I had a particularly sad conversation with a friend this morning. She has grown apart from her former best friend, as sometimes happens. But this time, it has more to do with someone else - her friend’s husband.

I feel her pain.

I do not get along with the spouse of one of my formerly closest friends. I feel that he has changed her in ways that I couldn’t have ever contemplated, and not for the better. My fun, spunky friend has become ever-clingy and dependent. She dare not venture out on her own or make decisions without first consulting with her spouse. And while I appreciate that they are now a partnership, it is as if she has completely lost her own identity. And that makes me sad.

I remember the first moment when I realized that it had happened. He asked her to move “for” him. And she did. Not because it was a new and exciting place (it isn’t), not because it was a good career move (it wasn’t), not because she wanted to - but because he wanted her to.

When she called for the first time from her new home, to tell me how lonely she was, I told her to move back. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. She had, for better - or much worse - made her decision.

So as I listened to my friend today vent her frustrations about a relationship gone sour, I tried to be supportive and positive. But as she was speaking, I really did feel as though it might end exactly as she feared.

It is an odd concept, no? We will spend years getting to know our friends and yet, we will walk away from them in the space of a few weeks for the sake of a partner. I don’t know who is to blame in that situation - the friend, the partner or ourselves.

But it does happen. Has it happened to you?