Deeper Dialogues

What do you need to say?

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What to say

Friends

You're worried about a friend's new partner

Your closest friend is in love, and each time you meet the new partner you like them a little less: the joke that wasn't quite a joke, the cancelled plans, the messages that don't sound like your friend. "I don't like your partner" is the sentence that ends friendships, but saying nothing has started to feel like its own kind of lie.

What they need from you, and why

Your friend is in love, and people tend to idealise their own relationships, so they may not see what you can. In 2001 Christopher Agnew, Timothy Loving and Stephen Drigotas followed dating couples and their friends over three rounds of surveys. Friends rated the relationships less positively than the couples did, and both the couples' own views and their friends' views predicted which relationships ended; the friends of the woman in each couple were particularly good at predicting a breakup, and the reason seemed to be that she'd told them things. If your friend has told you what's going on, your worry may rest on better information than their hope does.

What they need from you is not a verdict on their judgement. They need the concern raised privately, as a question, with one specific thing you saw and no list, and then the certainty that you'll still be there whatever they decide. A friend who hears a concern once, raised with love, keeps thinking about it. A friend who hears it at every catch-up stops coming to catch-ups. That is why the module's advice is to say it well, say it once, and then be the friend who's still there.

It's tempting to stay silent on the theory that opposition only makes people cling harder. Colleen Sinclair, Kristina Hood and Brittany Wright (2014) tested that idea, the Romeo and Juliet effect, with 396 people over three to four months and could not find it: more interference, or less approval, from friends and family went with poorer relationship quality on every measure, and the same held when the earlier studies were pooled. Susan Sprecher and Diane Felmlee (1992) had found the same direction a generation earlier. Read carefully, this cuts two ways: your opinion carries weight, so it's worth giving once and well, and it isn't something to spend on a partner you merely find dull. One exception: if what you're noticing is the early shape of control, a partner who isolates your friend, monitors their phone, makes them account for their time or money, or whose moods everyone has to manage, the specialist services (1800RESPECT in Australia and Women's Aid in the UK among them) give consistent advice, and this app's entry for when someone tells you they're being hurt at home is built on it. Read that entry before you say anything, and call the service in your country; they take calls from friends.

Understand it properly

First

Write down what you've actually seen, events not interpretations, and sort it: a partner you don't warm to, a partner who's changing your friend in ways they haven't chosen, or a partner who may be unsafe. Only the middle one is this conversation.

You could say

  • Can I ask you something about you and [Sam], and you tell me to back off if I'm overstepping?

    Asking permission, one-to-one, makes it a question rather than a verdict, and gives them a way to say not now.

  • How are you, actually? Not the two of you. You.

    Start with your friend, not the partner: it's your friend you're worried about, and they're the one who can tell you if you've got it wrong.

  • The thing I keep coming back to is the dinner, when they made the joke about your spending and you went quiet. I didn't know what to do with that.

    One specific thing, the clearest one, without a verdict attached; a list sounds like a case you've been building.

  • You've cancelled on me a couple of times since you got together, and both times the message didn't sound like you. I might be reading too much into it. Am I?

    It names what you saw and hands the judgement back to them, which is where it belongs.

  • Okay. I believe you. I had to say it once, and now I've said it.

    They may say you're wrong, and they may be right; the friendship survives only if you let it be their call.

  • I'm not going to bring it up again. If you ever want to, I'm here, and I won't say I told you so.

    One conversation, not a campaign: a friend who hears it at every catch-up stops coming to catch-ups.

If it goes badly

Three ways this can turn. Read the one that happens; the others can wait.

You've said something like

Can I ask you something about you and [Sam], and you tell me to back off if I'm overstepping?

  • If they get angry, or defend their partner harder than you expected

    I might be wrong. I hope I am. I just didn't want to be the friend who saw something and said nothing.

    Neither reaction means you shouldn't have spoken; say the one sentence that keeps the door open, then let them go.

  • If they go quiet and pull away for a while

    I love you. That's the whole reason I said it.

    Silence is a common response to being told something hard. The friends who keep turning up are the ones they'll come back to, so keep inviting them.

  • If they agree with you and do nothing

    That's your call, and I mean that. I'd like to get to know them better. Would the three of us do something, just us?

    Hearing you and doing nothing is their decision too; staying close, and civil to the partner, is what keeps you someone they can tell the truth to.

Share these words

Send them to yourself, or to someone helping you.

Try not to say

  • "Everyone thinks..."

    Recruiting the group is a betrayal, and they'll hear it as one.

  • "I never liked them."

    A verdict on your friend's judgement, not on the partner, and the one line they can't do anything with except defend.

  • A list of everything you've noticed

    One thing, the clearest. A list turns a question into a prosecution.

  • Comparing them with your friend's ex, or with your own relationship

    It moves the conversation from what you saw to what you'd have chosen, and your friend didn't ask you to choose.

  • Raising it at the dinner, by text, or just after the partner has done something annoying

    Private, one-to-one and calm is the only setting where it can be heard as care rather than a complaint.

  • Keeping quiet because opposing a relationship only makes people cling to it

    Sinclair, Hood and Wright went looking for that effect in 2014 and could not find it; disapproval wore relationships down rather than firing them up. Your opinion carries weight, which is why it's worth giving once and well.

Afterwards

Keep doing the ordinary thing: invite them to things without the partner, without making a point of it, and ask about them rather than "how are things with [Sam]" every time. If the partner is in the room, be civil; your friend is watching how you treat them, and so is the partner. If they tell you later that you were right, don't say you knew. Say "I'm here. What do you need?" And if what you see moves into the alarm column, fear of the partner's reaction, money, phone, friends or movements being controlled, any violence or threat, it's a different conversation: read the entry for someone who tells you they're being hurt at home, and call the specialist service in your country for advice before you act. They take calls from friends.

Understand it properly

The words above come from these. A section is about ten minutes; the whole module is there when you have longer.

Where this comes from
  • Deeper Dialogues, Close Friends & Intimate Bonds, "When You're Worried About a Friend's New Partner": the WORRIED conversation (dislike, worry, alarm; one conversation, not a campaign; the door stays open), Agnew, Loving and Drigotas (2001), Sinclair, Hood and Wright (2014), Sprecher and Felmlee (1992), and when the worry is about safety

We gather and pass on what researchers and support organisations have found. This isn't a replacement for a doctor, counsellor or support service.