Your friends, my friends, our friends
Friends keep you both happy, and couple friends can even bring you closer. How to share a social life, keep your own friends, and handle the ones you don't click with.
The short version
Family & friends
- Having your own friends is healthy. Secure couples usually have full lives outside the relationship.
- Spending time with other couples can help you feel closer to each other.
- If you don't click with a partner's friend, be specific and kind, and never ask them to choose.
Before you met, you both had a life: friends, group chats, the Thursday quiz. Now you're working out what's yours, what's theirs and what's shared.
Getting the balance right is one of the nicest parts of building a life together.
Your own friends are good for you both
Being able to rely on each other is what makes it easier to head out into the world. A secure relationship isn't one where you do everything together. It's one where you both feel free to have your own life, and glad to come home to each other.
So a night out with your own friends isn't a threat to the relationship. It feeds it. You come back with stories, energy and a bit of missing each other.
When you want different amounts
One of you might love a full social calendar while the other needs quiet weekends to recharge. That's a classic lasting difference: not right or wrong, just different. Our guide to the same argument on repeat has more on handling these.
More social
“I feel alive around people.”
Too many quiet weekends can feel lonely or flat.
More quiet
“I need time to recharge.”
Too many plans can feel draining, however much you like the people.
A deal might look like this: one social plan each weekend, one quiet day, and freedom to go to things on your own without guilt.
Make friends as a couple
Couple friends can be a real boost. In one experiment, psychologist Richard Slatcher paired couples up with another couple for 45 minutes of increasingly personal questions. Afterwards, they felt closer to their own partner than couples who'd spent the time on small talk.
Doing new things together helps too. Research led by Arthur Aron found that couples who share new and exciting activities tend to report better relationships. So a games night, a class or a weekend away with another couple ticks two boxes at once.
When you don't click with their friend
It happens. Maybe their best mate is loud, or brings out a side of your partner you don't love, or never asks you a single question.
- Be specific. Not “I can't stand Jamie” but “I feel left out when you two talk in in-jokes all evening.”
- Separate the person from the behaviour. You don't have to like someone to be polite and let your partner enjoy them.
- Don't ask them to choose. Ask for what would help: shorter visits, seeing them one to one, a heads-up before plans.
- Check your own story. Look for exceptions before you settle on a label. Is there a version of this friend you could like?
Instead of
Your friends are so rude to me. I'm not going.
Try
I feel a bit invisible when we're out with your uni friends. Could you bring me into the conversation a bit more?
Sources and further reading
- Slatcher, R. B. (2010). When Harry and Sally met Dick and Jane: Creating closeness between couples. Personal Relationships, 17(2), 279–297.
- Aron, A., Norman, C. C., Aron, E. N., McKenna, C., & Heyman, R. E. (2000). Couples' shared participation in novel and arousing activities and experienced relationship quality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 273–284.
We describe these studies in our own words, and we're not affiliated with their authors. This article is general information, not therapy or professional advice.
