Tag: middle

When friends divorce, it impacts everyone around them. When you’re friends with a couple who’s breaking up, it can create a whirlwind of emotion: shock, sadness, worry, even reflection or concern about your own marriage—if it happened to them, could it happen to us?

As your friends undergo a painful, all-encompassing change in their lives, you and your spouse may ride your own emotional roller coaster as you wrestle with two tasks: maintaining your friendship with the divorcing couple and also taking away lessons that will help you keep your own relationship solid.

Conflict is a part of life, and in many marriages it can be part of a daily occurrence. In my decade and a half of working with couples and families, when arguments and conflicts happen between parents, it almost always impacts much more than the two parties involved. Kids can often be affected and the impact can last a lifetime. Regardless of the genesis of the belief that the child has caused their parents’ problems, the guilt can be overwhelming and can lead to depression, anxiety, drug/alcohol abuse, relationship issues, future divorce, self-harm and even suicide.

Gossip can be a major threat to a marriage, especially when a mother gossips to her son about his wife and a wife gossips to her family about her husband.

If your mother-in-law gossips to your husband about you, here’s what you can do. Gently tell your husband, "I‘d like to start having a healthier relationship with your mom, so in the future, I‘m going to communicate directly with her instead of gossiping to you about her. And I need for you to start refusing to listen to your mom gossip about me, too. The next time she starts to say something negative about me, I’d like for you to say, ‘Mom, I don’t like being caught in the middle, so I’m not willing to listen to you criticize my wife anymore. I need for the two of you to talk directly to each other from now on.’"