Friends & New relationships

[Penguin_Woman]

You just met someone new. You are both madly in love and want to spend almost all your time together. Sounds great except for one thing. Your other friends.

Now they are feeling very left out and maybe a bit resentful towards your new s.o.

Or maybe your s.o starts to get upset because it seems like your so busy with your friends you have no time for them.

There is a happy medium here, you just need to communicate with all parties involved.

To your friends you have to explain that you still care about them and love to hang out with them. But, they have to know that there's someone new in your life who is also very important to you so things will be a bit different now.

To your s.o you say that you love spending time with them, as much as possible but that your friends are also important to you. That you feel it's important that you both have lives seperate from each other as well as the one you have together.

Maybe you can make it a rule that weekends are just for the two of you and if you want to be with your friends you do that on weekdays. This is not to say there won't be a rough patch here and there, but it can be worked through if you just keep the lines of communication open.


What are you experiences with this? :)

[mashmac]

Hmm - you are right. It's quite challenging as you are so obsessed with your lover that you forget about your friends a little. I never made rules about being with my lover at one time and friends some other time. I also always introduced them to each other o(YES ALWAYS! EVEN THE ONES THAT BROKE MY HEART!) so everybbody was still very much an integral part of my life. And if I didn't have time to see my friends, I would talk to them on the phone/mail/sms etc.
I love my friends and they've been around forever. I guess I am more faithful as a friend than as a lover.

And I don't think it's fair on your friends or on your lover to be upset with you. Friends will understand you need your lover now the most and your lover should understand your friends have been around before and respect them.
I must admit I never got grief from any. My lovers had friends too and my friends had lovers so it all kind of fit in.

And Ok - to pressure me in any shape or form will make me go away. That goes for friends and lovers.

[aussiecoffee007]

ive had horrible experiences as far as this goes, my friends hated him and his friends hated me even though we didnt EVEN spend that much time together, but whenever we spent ANY they would all just get so angry, but i think its cuz they were jealous... i dotn know, i moved friend groups shortly after (slightly unrelated) but they never forgave me for getting a boyfriend first/spending all this time with her.

[EC]

Aussiecoffee, that was some difficult situation you had! Either way, if they are really friends, they should know not to give too much personal opinions about their friend's relationships.

And we all should know that we can talk to our friends about things, and they are there to listen, not there to tell you what to do. If anyone have gone through these cycles, they should already know how destructive telling your friends about your relationship can be.

Sure there are good advises but you must decide for yourself. Your partners should see that your friends are part of your life as well, hating your partner's friends could give out wrong message that you don't really like who your partners really are. A lot of people made mistakes on this.