When your spouse hates your friends…

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.