I Don't Like Your Friends: When Concern Becomes Control

On the back of a photograph of a woman outside a restaurant, the anonymous woman had written: He was right about her. Underneath, in red: That doesn't mean he was right about what to do.

Being right about someone's friends feels like permission. That is where this story starts.

Three people, all partly right

I'll call her Laura. She teaches at a primary school and has known her best friend, whom I'll call Sofia, since university. They had survived terrible flats, two weddings, a divorce and the death of Sofia's father. When Laura started dating a man I'll call Nicholas, Sofia disliked him almost at once, and he returned the favour.

"That's the annoying part," Laura told me. "They were both partly right about each other."

Sofia thought Nicholas was controlling. Sometimes he was. Nicholas thought Sofia interfered. Constantly, she did. Sofia heard about every argument before Nicholas had finished being angry. Then, during one row, it turned out Sofia knew something private about his family that he had told only Laura. "A confession in bed can be brunch conversation by noon," Laura said, "if nobody's discussed who it belongs to."

A price on every dinner

His first request was fair: no more private details about his family. She agreed. His second was also reasonable: stop taking every argument to Sofia, who hears the fight and never sees the repair. She agreed to that too.

Then he objected when she saw Sofia straight after a row. Then he asked what they had talked about, and whether Sofia had mentioned him. Apart from one night after a huge fight, he never told her not to go. Each dinner simply came with a conversation afterwards.

When I met Sofia, she was candid. Had she encouraged Laura to leave? More than once. Did she want them to work things out? "I didn't care. I didn't want them to solve it." She also said something sharp: "If the person criticizing you dislikes you, it's very easy to decide the criticism is just hatred."

The useful question

A partner's jealousy about a friend can be intuition, insecurity, real disrespect from the friend, or several of those at once. Asking whether the feeling is justified rarely gets you far. The better question is what the person thinks the feeling entitles them to do.

• Asking for privacy about his family: fair.
• Asking not to have every argument judged by a third person: fair.
• Making each meeting cost something, through questions and silences: control, even without a rule.
• A friend who wants the relationship to fail: also a problem, even if she's sometimes right.

Most couples can agree on what stays private between them. That conversation is worth having before an argument forces it.

I wrote about the same slow drift with technology in Send Me Your Location, and with money in Quit Your Job, I'll Take Care of You. Laura's story is chapter fourteen of Become My Papi. More about the book in Become My Papi: The Book Behind the Investigation.

Questions people ask

What should you do if your partner doesn't like your friends?

Separate the requests. Some are fair, like keeping a partner's private matters private. Others, like making every meeting with a friend come at a cost, are a form of control.

Is it okay to tell friends about relationship problems?

Often, yes. But a friend who hears every fight and never sees the repair can end up judging a relationship the couple has already mended. Agree on what stays between you.

Where is this story from?

It is chapter fourteen of Become My Papi by Nora Vellick.