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Your close friend has a new partner who, to put it mildly, does not arouse your sympathy. How to be in that case? Avoid communication? To speak frankly? The opinion of psychologists.
The situation when, for one reason or another, we do not like the romantic choice of the best friend (girlfriend) is common and extremely painful. What to do? Be honest about it or keep your thoughts and feelings to yourself? Research shows how a decision can affect our friendship.
“A third person we didn’t invite into a friendly alliance often creates conflicting feelings in us,” says social psychologist Sean M. Horan, a professor at De Paul University (Chicago). – We are happy for a friend, because he has found love, and at the same time we are concerned about our relationship. The situation is full of inner tension for us. And this feeling becomes even harder, as we often have to spend time together.” In the end, a natural question arises – should we talk with a friend about how we feel about his new romantic partner? Research by Shuangyue Zhanga and Andy Merolla reveals the reasons why we choose (or don’t) talk and how our decisions affect friendships*. Most – 59% lean in favor of openness with a friend. The desire to protect a loved one from an unworthy choice – this is how 57% of respondents motivated their decision, 26% indicated the need to always remain honest in friendship, 15% answered that a friend himself asked them to express their opinion, 5% are sure: “great is seen at a distance” , and they see the problem better from the outside, 3% admitted that they were driven to the conversation by the fear of losing the relationship.
At the same time, 40% of the participants decided to keep their unhappy thoughts to themselves and not start a difficult conversation. 54% explained this by not wanting to hurt a friend, 48% answered that the most important thing is that a friend is happy, and they will deal with their experiences themselves, 23% are sure that the conversation will not lead to anything good and will only greatly worsen their friendship, 14% consider themselves not in the right to advise something, because the choice of a partner is the business of a friend, 12% believe that this is pointless, because after this conversation no one “on command” will stop loving.
“As we see, there are more people who are trying to influence a friend. This is connected both with the prevalence of egocentrism (I want to take the same place in a relationship with a friend and am not ready for any changes), and with the power of what is called “interfering behavior” in psychology, – commented on the results of the study, gestalt therapist Maria Lekareva- Bozenenkov. “We take this “interfering behavior” from the experience of childhood, from our family, in our own way adapting the behavior of close people who show a tendency to excessive guardianship and patronage, which threatens to blur the boundaries of their own “I” for each of the parties.”
Read more:
- Is friendship possible between a man and a woman?
Third wheel?
Formally, we accuse our beloved friend of not being good enough: honest, sincere, considerate – and can even cause harm. In fact, with close friendship, the third will always be a priori “unworthy”, and we should be aware of this. “Yes, here we can talk about jealousy,” says Maria Lekareva-Bozenenkova. – The appearance of the second half inevitably makes changes in the relationship – you will either have to meet less often, or include the chosen one (chosen one) in your life. Both options can have a significant impact on us. Either we get less support and exchange of energy from a friend, or we are forced to put up with the character of a person who was not chosen. Sometimes we perceive the third competitor as painfully as if we ourselves were bound by relations not of friendship, but … of love. “This is no coincidence, because both of these feelings are associated with a strong emotional significance for us of another person,” emphasizes Maria Lekareva-Bozenekova. “And in friendship, as in love, emotional dependence, the desire to have the fullness of attention, jealousy are possible.” At the same time, the Jungian analyst Lev Khegai believes that “acquaintance”, “friend”, lover(s) are only socioculturally conditioned labels that mark different degrees of closeness in relationships. But their emotional basis is the same. In psychoanalysis one speaks here of a hidden, homosexual libido. There is nothing pathological in it. Libido does not know the norm, it is polymorphic, that is, it can be directed at anyone. To what forms of relations this libido will lead us depends on many factors and external circumstances. However, in any relationship, the third will be superfluous. He is a rival who threatens to take away from us the object of our subconscious passion. Hence our desire to intervene.”
His (her) love is like a mirror of our friendship
So what does this widespread rejection of our boyfriend/girlfriend’s new love bring to light in us and our friendship? Indeed, on the field of friendship, as well as on the field of love, the same scenarios often play out: strong dependence on a partner, a desire to appropriate him, an attempt to dissolve in him, creating a single “We”, in which it is more comfortable to exist. Maria Lekareva-Bozenenkova believes that all this does not indicate the “vulnerability of friendship” as such, but rather the lack of an inner core, low ability to rely on oneself, lack of one’s own individual interests in life, perhaps insufficient self-realization. And the very realization of rejection of the choice of a friend may be an opportunity for us to look at ourselves from a slightly different angle. Another aspect, manifested in the so-called concern for a friend, is anxiety about change, fear of losing relationships, stability, predictability of one’s life. “Separating the emotional territory of your friend from your own and giving him the right to build his own life is in many ways a serious test of our psychological maturity,” says Lekareva-Bozenenkova. – The choice of a loved one in itself is a very serious step, expressing us in this world. It becomes part of our identity. Attempts to debunk an idol by a friend can mean both disrespect for our choice and denial of a significant part of our soul, fascinated by a loved one. These emotions are experienced painfully, and no one will feel gratitude for the attempt to “protect from an unworthy choice.”
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- Friendship: decide to break up
So should I talk about him (her)?!
What if we become aware that the new romantic hero can be a dangerous person for our friend – a gambler, an alcoholic, a drug addict? And we really sincerely worry. “It makes sense to check if your friend is aware of such features of his chosen one,” says Maria Lekareva-Bozenenkova. “If so, then we may regret this choice, but it turns out to be a personal matter of our friend. It is worth starting a conversation in the event that there is reason to believe that my friend or girlfriend is being drawn into a financial scam – to ask how all the consequences are thought out. But even this makes sense to do more in the context of “foresight for all occasions” than the revelations of the chosen one. The Jungian analyst Lev Khegai draws in this connection an ironic analogy with the question once asked to Socrates – “to marry or not to marry”: “Whatever I advise you, then you will still scold me.” Psychologist Sean Horan (Sean M. Horan) recalls the result of a study by Shuangue Zang and Andy Meroll, according to which the vast majority of those who decided to talk later admitted that they had lost their feeling of intimacy, and some of the respondents broke up with their friend. “After all, it’s worth remembering that many romantic relationships do not stand the test of time and fall apart on their own,” says Sean Horan. “Is it worth risking that deep friendship that you both hold dear?”