Staff Writer Jade Gerald
If close female friendships are so important, then why do they seem to suffer when some of us get into relationships.
Now If I’m being honest I can relate this situation directly to myself, I remember during my first serious relationship at the age of 17 being so infatuated (I won’t call it love)with my then boyfriend that close relationships with friends and family suffered. At that time I became totally caught up in this bubble of going to college, working and living for the times I got to spend with him.
Now hindsight is a great thing and I can now objectively look back at that period of my life and say that the amount of time we were spending together was too much and that I am not proud of the way in which I neglected friends and family in favour of a relationship that ultimately proved not to be beneficial to me. But we live and we learn, we experience each new experience and hopefully learn the lessons from the last.
My experience was a teenage one, which I am happy to say I’ve never repeated but surely this only happens when we’re really young, right? – WRONG. Lynette was 36 when she met Andrew and after working as a bank clerk (a position she loved) for a number of years she found herself childless and unmarried. Lynette had a good circle of friends and family who she could always rely on to set her straight whenever she needed it but she couldn’t help but feel as though something was missing from her life, until she met Andrew.
“But we don’t see you anymore Lynette, it’s like some teenage love affair you 
and this man are having when we going to see you next, I’ve all but forgotten the last time you were here”. Her closest friend Rhonda told her over the phone, she said the words calmly but with a definite tone of concern. “Teenage love affair indeed, has it really been that long? We’ll meet up soon I promise, I’ll see you in the week”, Lynette replied. Only Rhonda and Lynette both knew that they wouldn’t be seeing each other that coming week or for a long time after.
As their relationship progressed Lynette knew that she was seeing less and less of her old life and more and more of Andrew’s, but it was something she was prepared to do in order not to mess this relationship up. So did this explain it? Why many women willingly ditch their female friends in favour of the man in their life – so as not to screw their romantic relationship up?
In my opinion I believe that the real reason is fear, some of us are afraid that if we let our men out of our sights for one moment that they’ll leave us? Find somebody else and we’ll be left all alone to start over again. But a life or a relationship lived in fear can’t really be worth having. Good fulfilling relationships must be based on trust and friendship and that should include you being friends with his friends and him with yours. And until we make that our ideal and stop settling for being with him and him alone we’ll never experience what it truly means to have a grown-up relationship.
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