Contents
- 1. Negotiate with your partner about a relationship with divorced spouses
- 2. Remember that staying neutral won’t be easy.
- 3. If neutrality is not an option, talk honestly with the «loser»
- 4. Once you have chosen a policy for dealing with divorced spouses, try not to change it.
- 5. Be as careful as possible in everything related to the children of a divorced couple.
- 6. Spare the feelings of divorced spouses if both of them remain your friends on social networks
Divorce doesn’t just destroy families. Often because of them, friendships that have been proven over the years are crumbling. How to avoid this, or at least minimize the damage, while still not offending the parted partners?
Family friendship is one of the important sources of joy for any married couple. Your children have known each other almost since infancy and consider each other almost brothers and sisters. You often visit each other, go on picnics, spend holidays together. And then suddenly it all ends: you suddenly find out that your friends, whom you have long been accustomed to perceive not as two separate people, but as a single whole, a couple, are getting divorced.
We often perceive such a situation almost as a personal insult and even undermining the foundations of our own lives. But what about children, picnics, vacations? And who are we going to visit on Saturday? But how did they even come up with such a thing — to get divorced ?! What did they think of us?
They hardly thought about us, believe me, they already have enough problems and worries. But relationships with friends can at least slightly brighten up the life of parting spouses. And they can make it even harder. Screenwriter and producer Barry Gold shared his advice on how to avoid problems in friendly relations with the “fragments” of a broken couple if possible.
He participated in the creation of several popular television series on family topics, including, for example, «Married … with children.» He is also the creator of the website DivorcedOver50.com, designed to help people over 50 who are experiencing a divorce for the first time start a new life. Finally, Barry Gold is divorced himself, and therefore knows firsthand what he is talking about.
1. Negotiate with your partner about a relationship with divorced spouses
And try to keep each other informed of any activities related to them. Imagine what happens if you don’t. Let’s say you meet your recently divorced friend and say how excited you are to see him at your wedding anniversary in a couple of days. And he, with a sour face, says in response that, in fact, no one invited him.
Yes, yes, of course, this is just a ridiculous misunderstanding, your partner (or partner) called the guests, and you were simply not in the know, everything is clear. But believe me, such incidents leave a very unpleasant aftertaste and do nothing to strengthen friendly relations.
2. Remember that staying neutral won’t be easy.
Of course, you may feel that it is fair to maintain equally good relations with both divorced spouses. But in practice this is not always possible. If only because one of the two will always be painful to perceive your meetings and friendly gatherings with the other.
There is also a more serious reason. The reason for divorce can be, for example, marital infidelity or even domestic violence. And for the injured party, your neutrality in such a situation will turn out to be tacit support for deeds that are obviously bad.
Of course, you can say that you have no right to judge someone in someone else’s relationship. And you will even be right, but in the end you will still ruin your relationship with someone who equates your neutrality with approval, for example, of treason.
3. If neutrality is not an option, talk honestly with the «loser»
In the same situation with an invitation to a family celebration, it would be much more correct to meet in advance or at least call someone whom you do not intend to invite. And openly say: “I’m sorry, Petya, but we don’t call you for the anniversary, because we decided to call your ex-wife Masha.”
Yes, this conversation can be difficult for you. But in any case, this is much better than clumsy attempts to pretend that you simply forgot to invite Petya or did not celebrate any anniversary at all.
4. Once you have chosen a policy for dealing with divorced spouses, try not to change it.
And if you do change, take the trouble to explain it. Imagine Masha’s feelings when she comes to your party and finds her ex-husband Petya among the guests, whom you, in your own words, were definitely not going to invite.
Did you change your mind at the last moment? Did you feel sorry for the unfortunate Petya? Very noble, of course, but you could at least call Masha and warn her. She herself would have decided whether she should come or not, but one way or another she would not have any complaints against you and would not have survived a few very unpleasant minutes.
This is one of the most painful topics. By default, children after a divorce most often remain with their mother. Who often has a new partner, which subjects the feelings of her father and ex-spouse to a double test.
There is no worse mistake than casually saying that your child is visiting his friend and his parents for the weekend, referring to his mother and her new partner. Your interlocutor is a real parent of a friend! — you are unlikely to forgive.
You can easily make friends with Petya’s new darling, for example, Olya. And have a wonderful day together. But you should not post a photo of your happy company on a social network with the caption “we never had so much fun as yesterday with Petya and Olya.” Masha will inevitably take such a publication as evidence that while they were together with Petya, your friendship did not bring you any pleasure.