When your spouse hates your friends…

What happens when your spouse starts to treat your long time close friend as his/her enemy number one? A delicate situation arises and one may need to make tough choices to get out of it. Photo/ANTHONY NJOROGE/Posed by models, courtesy tacos restaurant

A former classmate of mine in college is in trouble with his wife of four years.

When he called me two weeks ago telling me he had a serious personal issue he wanted to discuss with me, I dropped everything I was doing and went to meet him.

To protect his identity, I will change his name to Martin*. Martin is a father of one, a son, and has been married for four years.

What troubles him today is that his wife has come to loathe his friend of 12 years, a friend from high school in the mid 1990s.

The bond between Martin and his friend is that they shared the same cubicle in Form One. They were bullied by the older cube-mates together and eventually learnt to defend themselves as they grew to be close friends.

They come from the same area and almost every term, one had to bail the other in terms of bus fare. After Form Four, they joined different universities although they studied the same courses.

They kept their friendship alive by visiting each other while in campus. As fate would have it, they graduated the same year (2004), “tarmacked” for two years before joining the same telecommunication company as new employees in 2006.

It is this friend that encouraged Martin to marry his wife. When the first child came, he was there as one of the close friends.

Party animal

But this year, things suddenly took a turn for the worse and the wife started to complain that the friend was “a bad influence on him”.

Martin, himself did not seem to see any problem with the friendship and does not understand exactly why his wife now hates this friend.

“This guy is a party animal. Every time he is with my husband, they come home past 3am,” said the wife when I reached her on phone.

Her problem on this one is that Martin doesn’t drink on weekdays but whenever he meets the friend on a weekday, they drink up to the wee hours. This is not his wife’s major problem, however.

Her beef with this guy is that at 32, he is yet to get married or even be serious with one woman. Instead of thinking of settling down, he’s busy changing girlfriends. This year alone, he has had three different girlfriends.

“What bothers me when they are together with my husband is the fact that the friend always has one of the girlfriends.

So what does my husband do when the friend is having fun with his girls? Does he just sit and watch as his friend enjoys life with his women?

Would I be blamed for thinking that he could also be having female company?” she says. There comes a time, she says, when a married person should spend time with people who care about the family’s future and not just those who are out for endless fun.

“I want him to have serious friends. Not those who are talking about how to spend money instead of how to earn more and invest. Martin apparently does not see why he should not discuss leisurely topics with his friend once in a while.

“I work in a busy environment and I need to let loose sometimes, life is not always about saving and investing. Sometimes we take life too seriously,” he says in a defensive tone.

A fortnight ago, matters came to a head when Martin’s wife refused to cook for the friend who had come knocking after the family had had dinner. “I am not married to two men. Let him get his own wife, she said furiously. She left them in the sitting room and went to bed.

“I am going to work early and I can’t go back to the kitchen. I’m sorry my dear,” she had told her husband loudly enough for the visiting friend to hear.Martin’s dilemma is that he is now confused on what action to take.

Should he cut any links with his long time friend at the instigation of the wife? Is the wife in order to choose his friends, to dismiss some and endorse some? And if Martin decides to keep the friend, what impact will it have on his young family?

The delicate balance that faces the couple is that there are people associated with one spouse who become ‘a burden’ when the family has rolled off.

Should such friends be kept at a distance? Or is it advisable to discard some of these close friends for the sake of the family?

Fallout

It is not only wives who get fed up with their men’s friends. Martin’s case replicates the trouble that brewed between Jane, a female workmate and her husband. Both women are teachers in Nairobi.

Two years after her marriage in 2002, Jane’s husband categorically told her to terminate the friendship with the colleague. But how could she suddenly stop seeing her colleague who has been her ‘confidante’ over the years? That was Jane’s dilemma.

The husband had allegedly feared that this friendship was “destroying” his wife. The story was that the lady friend had separated from her husband after 12 years of marriage.

There was a serious fall out that involved both families and as a friend, Jane always accompanied her to family meetings. Finally, the matter landed in court with custody of children and equal share of matrimonial property taking centre stage in the legal battle.

Three months into the saga, Jane’s husband could no longer take the sight of his wife in tow with the plaintiff in the courts especially after a short court drama was captured in the media. “I ordered her to cut off the friendship immediately.

She strongly defended the friend’s legal action but I told her to choose between me and the friend as I would never allow the friendship to continue,” says the husband.

What triggered the husband’s wrath is the fact that during one school opening day, Jane was late to take their child to school because the opening day coincided with the mention of the friend’s case.

“She opted to attend the mention and deal with her child’s issue later. AS far as I’m concerned, that was unacceptable!” says the husband. The husband confides that he feared the same fate could befall him one day.

“I saw my wife picking up her friend’s aggressiveness and felt jittery. The woman is also the type that has little respect for men,” he says. It was hard for Jane to let go of her friend.

The matter could have degenerated into something else had the friend not been transferred to another school just in time. “It was a relief for me to see her friend go,” admits the husband.

Jane and Martin are examples of spouses who cannot stomach the characters of their spouse’s friends. What should one do when faced with the dilemma of having to choose between your spouse and a long-term dear friend? We spoke to a counselling psychologist.