Have you ever been in a relationship in your life that just seemed to have have a naturally relaxed feeling about it? Or do you know a couple who have their differences, but always seem to know how and when to take breaks and came back to the relationship refreshed and even stronger than they were before?
A lot of this positive atmosphere comes down to the relationships with friends that they have!
If you start to focus all of your time and energy on your relationship, whether it’s old or new and start to pay less attention to your friends – not only are you being unfair to your friends if you’ve known them for a long time, but you would also be putting a great deal of pressure on this relationship and your partner.
Are You Wanting Your Partner To Be Your Life Hero?
If you start having less and less people in your life, you start to look to the people that you do have for being absolutely everything to you. You want that one person to give you support, help and guidance, you look to them to make you laugh and be with you as much as possible. Already this sounds like too much work for just one person, and the list could go on much further!
What happens when one of you needs a break? What happens when you want someone different to talk to, but since you spent so much time focused on this relationship, you have started to alienate your old friends?
Of course, the flipside of this comes when you’re in a relationship, but refuse to spend any time with this new person because all your days are taken up by being with your friends.
So What’s The Answer?
The best scenario you can have to combine your friends and your relationships, is to have two separate circles of friends. One circle should be a group of people that both you and your partner know and feel comfortable hanging out with, and the other group should be people that are known separately to you both in the relationship. Here’s a (very professional I know :P) picture to show you what I mean by this:
So here, both of you have a group of friends that you both know and can spend time with, and an individual group of friends too.
I have found that this system works greatly, because you really get the best of both worlds: You both have friends that you know, so that you can organise get-togethers or meals where everyone knows everyone and the atmosphere will feel, most of the time at least, comfortable and fun!
But, each person in the relationship also has their own group of friends. This way, if the pressure of the relationship gets too high or you find yourself becoming too focused on your partner and forcing too much energy on them, you still have a separate group of people that you know you can spend time with and not feel guilty about being away from your relationship.
So if you find yourself putting too much into your relationships, maybe you need to take some time to build (or rebuild) some friendships with others in your life. That way, you’ll always have people around you that you can help and be helped by, and not focus too much on your partner and ask them to be more than they could ever be for you.
What about you? Do you think that your social circles are as complete as they need to be, or have you realised there are some areas you need to do some more work on? Leave a comment or question below, and share what you think 🙂
