Unexpected Reality

This summer, my college girlfriends and I went to Cambria, CA for an all-girls weekend. We are seven girls that have known each other for seven years and have grown to love and care for one another. Between us, we live in three states and we realized that we will see each other less, but will have more of these gatherings to look forward to. We imagine ourselves several years from now, married and bringing our future husbands with us to these annual reunions.

One of girls called me last week and told me that she just met one of her close guy-friends’ girlfriend and she didn’t connect with the girlfriend as much as she wanted or expected. This is an easy assumption: if you love one of your close friends, you want to love the person that they are dating. Granted that this was only one encounter and under the circumstances, it was not ideal, but my friend and I came to a realization. As much as we hope and imagine that we will love our friends’ boyfriends and girlfriends, more than half the time we are not going to like who are friends are dating.  Friend groups are filled with different personalities and it takes time to love your friends for who they are. So it would make sense that with each one of us having different personalities and preferences, our boyfriends/husbands/girlfriends/wives will also have different personalities and perhaps ones that we are not too fond of.

I think for most, it is important to find someone that gets a long with family and friends, but it is hard to please everyone. We are not in college anymore and the farther we live a part and lead separate lives, the more likely we won’t know the people who are friends are dating or marrying. And I don’t think we realize that we may not like our friends choices and it will be hard to do anything about it. As much as we have learned to love each other as friends, we will have to learn to love each other’s significant others. We hope that we aren’t a different person to our significant other and a different person with our friends, but to some extent we will be because that significant other gets to know you differently and in different circumstances. I just hope you’re not in a Jekyll/Hyde situation either. And as long as the significant other is not a harm to the friend, we have to do our best to accept and love them. It’s not always a fun thing to do, but really, what can we do?

Another one of our girls (and our only one) married a boy in our friend group and we are very lucky to like him and know him well. In part, they have set an expectation of how husband/friends relationships should be. But most likely those relationships won’t be as easy and great, and I don’t think my girls have necessarily considered this yet. We’re more excited about our boyfriends/husbands getting along like we do and yet, we may find outselves in a more different (and slightly awkward) situation.