Why I Don’t Talk to Friends About Relationship Conflicts

My fiancee and I have been engaged for a couple of weeks, and we dated about two years before then. And in these over two years, I learned one important thing about my relationship through much trial and error:

I don’t talk to friends about my relationship conflicts.

My engagement and prior relationship are not perfect. My fiancee and I have arguments on occasion, and there are times when our communication breaks down.

We are undergoing relationship counseling prior to getting married, so I guess you can call it pre-marital counseling. We are working through any unsaid expectations and projections for the future.

Let me give one caveat: I sometimes talk to my friends about relationship conflicts, but there is one rule — no advice.

People always have an opinion on what you should do

What I find is people often live through your relationship. This is not everyone, but a lot of sentences start with “if I were in your situation, I would…” or “if it were me, I would feel…”

And at a certain point in my relationship, particularly in the early stages, talking about my relationship with friends was a way to feel vindicated, like I wasn’t crazy for feeling slighted by something my girlfriend did or I was right in a certain argument.

As an example, I bought a PS4 at one point and I barely used it. I still barely really use it. It went to my girlfriend’s place where she played it a lot to decompress, and the console went back and forth between myself and my girlfriend depending on who needed it more at the time.

It wasn’t a big deal and we had a great system for how to share the PS4. Then, gaming as a conversation came up among a couple of friends and I mentioned how the PS4 was at my girlfriend’s place in passing. Immediately, I started getting advice like “that’s messed up man — it’s your PS4 and you paid for it” and “you have to put your foot down in your relationship.”

I hope it’s not sexist or generalizing to say “most men love gaming.”

Suddenly, this whole situation with the PS4 ended up being a much bigger deal than it was, and instead of seeing it as something owned between us, I saw it as my sole possession since I paid for it. I demanded it back from my girlfriend in an emotional back and forth when she was stressed out and had a lot going on, and this sudden about-face and change in mindset did not bode over well in the grand scheme of our relationship.

Like the PS4, there are things I mention in passing about my relationship I probably shouldn’t have mentioned in the first place. These include details like how to split the bill at a restaurant, who pays for what while shopping, and as we start to move in together, how rent is split.

I’m not saying there is a definitive answer to any of these questions, and I’m not saying my judgment is always right. But a general rule is the more people you involve in a conflict, the bigger deal it becomes. This includes both of our parents. But we simply both deal with a lot of people with strong opinions, all of whom have their own ideas about relationships, marriage, and more as if their ideas are Gospel.

People who have input in your relationship are well-intentioned

I have a friend who thinks I’m getting engaged and married too soon. He tells me about the problems in his own engagement and subsequent marriage, and how even at 32, he was too immature and not ready to get married. He urged me to put it off until I’m in my mid-30s and enjoy my life more without a wife and without kids.

While he had good points, ultimately it wasn’t his life. It felt as if he wanted a do-over through my relationship.

And he is a good friend — he is well-intentioned and wants the best for me.

However, the fact remained that it was my relationship, not his. And the relationship wasn’t quite his do-over either.

The fact is in a healthy relationship, the communication and airing of grievances should be between yourself and your partner. On some level, the airing of grievances with other people outside the relationship is a betraying of trust, but it’ll naturally happen anyway because we’re all human beings at the end of the day.

The best thing you can do is listen

Let me just say it’s different with an abusive or violent relationship. Our friends are often the barometer for what’s normal and what’s not, and there are certain circumstances where they are right.

In most cases, I’ve learned from when I talk about my relationship with friends that unsolicited advice is unhelpful and often isn’t really taken anyway. It’s not like the person you’re giving advice to hasn’t thought about what you’re trying to say, and advice like “you have to communicate” or “you have to put your foot down” probably runs through people’s minds in relationships often.

First of all, it might be awful advice. And when friends get involved in the conflicts too, it makes those conflicts a much bigger deal.

We all want to feel heard, and we all want to feel validated. And sometimes we do need our friends for that when we have conflicts with our partners. I have friends who don’t give any advice that are great at listening. I talk to them sometimes, but less and less as my relationship has progressed.

At the end of the day, it’s our individual relationships, not anyone else’s.

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This post was previously published on With Love.

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