friendship after marriage...

Many of us form friendships and some of them actually are deep and meaningful… Friends are family we choose for ourselves, I once read on a magnet sold at Knick-knacks but I was too cheap to buy it :P But that sums up what I feel…

Good friends are with you through the thunderstoms, not just during SUMMER time… Real friends give you a piece of their mind knowing that you will trash them saying mean but had to be said things! You tell friends your most intimate secrets that you don’t even tell anyone else… maybe not even your parents, siblings or other close family members! Good friends are very difficult to find and even more difficult to keep once you form a different kind of special bond with someone else of the opposite sex that may lead to not only you spending less time together with your friend… but you growing separately… I am talking about marriage!

Marriage may strengthen a bond between a man and a woman, but it can also dissolve a friendship you build on trust that had you going for YEARS before you even met your “partner”. In its truest sense, if your other half is truly your “PARTNER”, why would he/she condemn a friendship that you have built with your friends? Why do they question motives behind boy/girl platonic friendship? Why do they question your trust? Surely they understand the importance of you having friends and not just concentrate all your affections to him/her!

I do understand friendships like any other types of relationship goes through different stages… and for some marriages to work, you may have to ‘communicate’ less with your friends to give way for their new and thriving relationship… but at what cost? Its ending? A wise person once told me, a friend is someone you keep for life, one that you trust would always have your back covered… a BOYFRIEND/GIRLFRIEND may do the same, but do you really know that they would??? Even a married couple cannot tell if their spouse would really ‘help’ him/her if they fall into huge trouble! But true, strong friends do, and you can trust that they would help you if and when they can, but yet, we are eager to be rid of these people we call our friends.

I have lost many good friends through different ways, but one way that really hurt the most is one that you do not have control over, marriage. I have lost friends through studying abroad as distance makes the heart grows less fond-er… a Malay saying “Tak nampak, maka tak cinta”. I lost friends through different view points (we grow up, and don’t see things as we used to… We don’t fight but we grow distant), and through marriages (just because they got married, they have less time to spend with you and they also manage to make you feel like second class citizen, being summoned to only when they have no one else to talk to, or that their spouse disapprove of your relationship with your friend, and worry or perhaps have low self esteem that you would actually STEAL their spouse from them, not knowing you have no designs of such on your friend you had since you were in diapers!) and YES! I am bitter!

Why can’t we have a marriage and a friendship working at the same time... friends are not stupid people… They do understand that married couples do need their time and space to be together, as it is only important… but it is also important to keep your friends… My ideal scene is where I see myself with my married friends. We are having our lovely chats in the garden, overseeing the children playing. The husbands joining in the chatter-banter of life and circumstances. All of us having good bonds and mutual respect and admiration for each other.

I would just like to feel that I lost something because of something…. Because I made a mistake that I should learn and not repeat… but losing friends through a marriage only tells you to fear marriage itself and that it robs you of a different kind of happiness… marriage is suppose to bond people together, spread love… but all I learn from marriages is it destroys you and people you love slowly!