If your pal is not merely down about a specific event, but clinically depressed, helping her will be a tough endeavor, because the disease itself makes her resistant to taking action or believing that life can improve. "You'll feel like you are pouring help into a black hole," says Apter.
Your friend will likely need professional guidance to feel better, but just being there is important and soothing—even if it doesn't cause a discernible positive change in your friend, says Martha Manning, a clinical psychologist and author of Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface, a memoir of her own severe depression.
"Friends think: 'I know this person really well. If I try hard and I try a lot of things, I can bring them back,'" says Manning. But people set on "fixing" a depressed friend risk making her feel even more helpless. "Don't presume that what you do will be a cure. You wouldn't presume that if it were pneumonia."
Be pragmatic: Take your friend's kids to school, bring over casseroles, or clean her house. Close friends, says Manning, can gently suggest beneficial activities, such as exercise. But don't push it. "You need to show humility in the face of this disease."
The Takeaway: Think before pulling an intervention. Listening is usually the friendliest thing you can do. But don't let yourself become a limitless dumping ground for kvetchers, either. If a friend is depressed, show up and pitch in, but don't expect to make it all better.
3: Blending Your Pals with Your Partner's
"I can't stand his college friends."
They're a bunch of snobs. I can tell they're judging me." people come in packages, friends and family included. You'll instantly connect with one or two of them, you'll gamely tolerate some, and you might hate a few. Your partner shouldn't automatically drop people you don't happen to like, says Sills, nor should you stop seeing pals that he doesn't care for. Instead, "everyone has to move over a little bit."
Meeting admirable friends of your partner burnishes his reputation. But disliking most of his pals is not automatic grounds for ending the relationship. "They may be people he just happened to room with or work with but who are not similar to him," points out William J. Doherty, a professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota. "If they're a bunch of slackers but your boyfriend is in medical school, you don't have any reason to worry. But if your concerns about his friends mirrors your concerns about him and his values, then you should take that as a warning."
Don't be surprised if the two of you start ditching both of your clans for evenings in. When people get into a relationship, friendship circles shrink, especially for men. It's worth making the effort to maintain ties to a few single friends, since double dates often leave one or two people less satisfied emotionally; it's hard to find a couple you'll both click with perfectly. Friends who have known both you and your partner for a while and who see you frequently are natural divorce-busters, Doherty adds. "Ideally, you'll want a cadre of people who are invested in your relationship. They'll sway you toward resolving your marital problems, for the sake of their own social lives and because they'll be able to see both sides of your conflicts."
The Takeaway: Let bonds form naturally between all parties. Don't complain about your partner's friends you don't like. Instead, nurture friends who genuinely like both of you.
4: Getting Chummy With The Opposite Sex
"Well, yeah, I mean, of course I think she's pretty. And we always laugh so much. But wouldn't getting together ruin our friendship?"
All friendships start with a spark of mutual attraction. "Attraction has a libidinal element," says Sills. "But does that mean that opposite-sex friends have to be lusting after each other? Not necessarily."
And if there is some overt tension, it won't automatically threaten the friends' romantic partnerships. With opposite-sex friends, says Apter, "There are often flare-ups of sexual appreciation, but also the safety of knowing that that expression is going to be contained. We get the reassurance that we can still be attractive without the extreme complication of having an affair."
Things get sticky, of course, when your friend wants to turn the fellowship into a romance, and you absolutely do not.
Or when your partner suspects your opposite-sex pal's intentions are less than honorable. Or when the world at large refuses to accept that you are "just friends." These challenges are pesky, but they are not huge obstacles that routinely undermine such friendships.
When you're facing a buddy who wants more, respond to early signs of sexual interest, and ward them off without humiliating the person. Apter suggests bringing up a hypothetical coupling with a clear rebuff, e.g., "You're watching another game? Good thing we're not a couple—I wouldn't be able to stand your sports obsession."
When one friend is waiting for another to suddenly fall in love with him, a nasty power imbalance develops that can threaten the long-term viability of the relationship, Pelusi warns. If you're the piner, Pelusi suggests working through your own sensitivity to rejection so you can deal with the imbalance in an honest and non-dogmatic way. Instead of trying to "fix" the situation, Pelusi says, both people should "shift their expectations of what a friend should be. That way, they'll open up possibilities of deepening the friendship."
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