Groom Duties

Who Do You Side With When Your Friends Get Divorced?

While we all hope love is eternal and never fades, the fact is that some people just aren’t right for each other. When a couple you know gets divorced, the trauma of their breakup can have a ripple effect on your relationship. Anger, anxiety, and arguments: all these issues might bubble up when dealing with your friends’ divorce—especially when you start taking sides. So, if you happen to find yourself in this emotional minefield, we’ve got a few words of wisdom to help parkour your way through to safe ground.

Don’t Hate—Investigate

When you hear about your friends’ divorce, you’re instinct will be to jump to one person’s defense. This is the exact opposite of the right thing to do. Instead, take some time and try to understand both sides of the story before you start picking teams. Until the public verdict is in, you want to try your best to maintain both friendships. Breakups are complicated beasts, so you should exercise some patience and empathy until you understand the whole picture.

Proceed With Caution

You’ll need to be extra careful during the investigative phase of “Operation What the Hell Happened?” This is especially true if your wife is angry with the other husband. If he shows up at your place with two tickets to the big game, and you start to engage in in a series of high-fives, chest bumps and a moonwalk/touchdown dances, you might notice some major shade being thrown your way from the Mrs. If you want to keep the peace, keep the overt bro-havior hushed until things smooth out.

The Theory Of Selectivity

You’ve gathered plenty of intel about the breakup but before you select a side, consider your history with the struggling couple. If you were buddies with the husband before your marriage, you’ll probably remain closer to him but still be friendly with the wife. If you were buddies with the wife before your marriage, you’ll probably remain closer to her and release the hounds on the husband—his memory will soon be lost in time, like tears in the rain. The only way the wife gets entirely cut from your lives is if she did something extreme, like slowly poisoning him and/or cheating with a blood relative.

50 Thousand Shades Of Grey

The cause of most divorces isn’t black and white, so prepare yourself for endless shades of grey. Both parties might have understandable reasons for calling it quits or both parties might have engaged in equal amounts of sub-optimal behavior. Listen to where both of your friends are coming from and consider the history of your friendship with them—seniority counts here. Who knows? You might not have to choose sides—just separate get-togethers. That’s right, twice as much beer.  

Bottom Line

When your friends get divorced, start thinking like the judges on Law and Order: SVU. In most cases, one person is obviously in the wrong. But you still need to hear all the facts before making a decision.

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