[airheadangel101]

My fiance and I are getting married in December. We've always argued a lot over his friends because he claims that I hate all of them. That's completely not true. I just don't think that his friends are good people. He's got one friend that he's known since he was probably in 1st grade (so about 20 years). This guy went to AA meetings before he was 17 years old, went to rehab for cocaine before he was 19, can't hold a job (even at a fastfood restraurant), still lives at home with his parents (and they support him) and got his driver's liscense suspended because of a DUI on the way back from seeing his probation officer and is facing jail time because he failed the drug test his probation officer gave him. I understand that you have a certain relationship with someone you've grlown up with that you hate to break, but there comes a time where people grow apart for whatever the reason may be. Whenever my fiance gets around this person he does stupid stuff and totally disregards everything I ask him to do. I'm tired of this being an issue in our relationship! I would like to know if I'm being unreasonable about wanting to protect him from this person. ( I use the word "protect" because I feel like spending time around people like this will do nothing but bring you down to the level these people). What should I do about this situation and how should I go about handeling it?

[samantha]

That's hard! I have been in his shoes before, and it's not easy to let go of a friendship that has lasted 20 years. Maybe you could suggest that he set a day or time that the two of them hang out. If he starts choosing to spend more time with his friend then you...he has made up his mind who he picks, and you don't have to ask him. Just leave, or advise him that this friend could get him into trouble. Either way I would not go through with the wedding until I felt comfortable with all aspects of the relationship.

[Kristina555]

ah guys and there mates, its hard to break them im sorry to say. guy friends can be harder to break apart than girlfriends, i see it all the time. but i can feel you love your fiance so much that its hard to let him go but you still want to see him happy with his mates. but if his mate irritates you or you feel hes just a bad influence on him then talk to your fiance about it and tell him to talk to his mate too.
there has to be some kind of negotiation here, such as a win win for everyone, i would find it unfair if they just stop being friends cos they have been for such a long time regardless of his problems, but you love your fiance and i suggest he loves you too, you should really just sit him down and be serious and talk to him about it, because his mate is a bad influence and if you get married to your fiance i dont think the marriage could work very well, just think about it maybe his mate could be saying some bad things about you behind your back, and your fiance could be brainwashed by him easily because theyve known each other for over 20 years.
just be wise in this and dont marry him until you are totally comfortable.

[Benjamin Fry]

The question you need to address is why this bothers you and exactly how it bothers you. I understand the surface presentation and itís an issue that anyone who has ever had a relationships can relate to, but not everyone makes a big crisis out of it. So what we need to look at for you is what might be underlying the intensity of your reaction to this situation.

It seems reasonable that if you donít think his friends are good people that this is going to upset him. After all these are his friends. Heíd hate it if anyone was rude about you, and I suspect gets equally defensive if you disparage his friends. What Iím a bit surprised about is how you get to be so keen on someone whoís friends are all so undesirable? It is usual not to like all your partners friends, but unusual not to approve of any of them. It suggests to me that perhaps there is more to this than simply a judgmental point of view.

Perhaps events in your life have made it hard for you to feel secure in your fiancÈís love? Iím speculating that if you could have things your way, youíd get his attention one hundred percent of the time and that would feel just about like you were getting nearly enough. This could be a sign that you didnít get enough attention from a parental figure when you were younger (most likely your father) and that you still feel a childlike ache for this hole to be filled. If so, then this resistance to your partnerís friends would carry an unconscious quality of actually wishing that he had no friends; youíd like to have him all to yourself, or at least all to yourself and anyone else that you could chose and control. In that instance, you would be asking your partner to carry the weight of an emotional burden from your own childhood by reversing his choice of lifelong friends. Thatís a sure recipe for tension in a relationship since the underlying problem remains with you, regardless of what he does with his friends.

Also, evolution is against you. A million years of mankind has fashioned us into beasts that know the value of reliable male company. It is the men that have the hunter-gather instinct beating in their hearts. They need to know that they can count on other men to boost the chances of their tribe surviving a threat. You can see this almost everywhere in the way that men behave today, most notably in sport and its supporters. So if you take away his tribe, you take away his manhood. I suspect that you wouldnít find him so attractive if he gave into every one of your wishes in this respect. You are also a product of evolution and want to find a strong partner ñ part of his strength comes from his social network.

The way out of this is to separate your underlying issues from the ordinary daily irritants of other peopleís friends. If you can, then you may find that this becomes about 80% less annoying for you both. Then you can behave like a truly supportive couple and grin and bear it through the times when one of you wants to spend time with some people that the other doesnít. Every other couple you know has the same issue. Itís just that for most people it doesnít resonate perhaps as deeply as it does for you. Your challenge now is to speculate about what it is resonating with. If youíd like to do that here please do.