Friendships and Divorce

What do you do if all of your friends are friends from your marriage and you divorce? Most people say they don’t pick sides; but inevitably sides are chosen and battle grounds are drawn.

In my example, my best friend’s wife was friends with my wife. When we divorced they tried to opt out of picking sides. Him and I always had the “bro’s before ho’s” mentality; our friendship overruled everything else.

When my wife and I split, he was stationed in Korea for a year and came home, thankfully, the same time I was moving out. He and his wife helped me move and get setup in my new apartment. It was incredibly generous of both of them.

He and I stayed in touch after he was back in Korea and his wife and my soon-to-be-ex were still friends. Personally, I really didn’t care if his wife and my ex were friends. We’re adults and she didn’t pass judgement on me, or her, as best as I could tell. She treated me with respect and I gave her the same courtesy; it’s good to try to be the bigger person and in this regard we all exceled.

One evening my friend called to tell me everything that he knew was going on with my soon-to-be-ex and all of the nasty details that went along with it. It hurt, I learned a lot of things that at the time I wish I hadn’t but were good to know. His wife also reiterated things that she’d been forced to do out of “friendship” and apologized for everything that had happened. She had kept quiet about a lot of things but felt her moral convictions were driving her to come clean.

In the end I kept my friends. In many divorces this doesn’t work out. I spent zero time trying to save my friends by telling them the horrible stories of my ex, I let that run it’s course. Through her own faults my ex-wife drove a wedge between her and many of her friends. It is a shame to see good friendships go bad.

Friends are an important aspect of life. In many marriages, friends play mediator, spectator, role-model and support for our relationships. Be true to yourself and true to them and they will see you through anything. The cream rises to the top.