Friendship with the opposite sex

We hope that the tips we have been discussing through these columns have made a positive difference to how you handle your friends of the opposite sex. It would be a pity to mess up your marriage simply because you did not know how to handle friends of the opposite sex. It is imperative that your friendship with the opposite sex should never be the source of conflict or tension between you and your spouse. If it has caused conflict or tension, it is critical that you seriously consider terminating the friendship at the earliest possible opportunity.

Ask yourself whether your spouse has ever asked you to terminate your friendship with a member of the opposite sex. If he has expressed any concern or dissatisfaction about the friendship then you seriously need to consider terminating or scaling down the friendship for the sake of your marriage. It is quite dangerous to ignore or trivialise your spouses request in this regard. You may also need to check yourself out in terms of whether you have ever deceived or misled your spouse concerning your opposite sex friendship. Serious traps lie along the friendship path with the opposite sex; small deceptions can easily grow into big ones over time, and in the end you may fall into hot soup.

Also find out whether anyone other than your spouse has ever cautioned you about your friend of the opposite sex. Many times, the husband or wife is the last to know. If other people have cautioned you about your friend of the opposite sex you need to quickly terminate the relationship before it is too late. Ask yourself whether you do with your friend things that your spouse is unwilling to do with you. What are those things and to what extent can they be harmful to your marriage? You may also wish to establish why your spouse does not wish to do such things with you, and why your friend of the opposite sex is willing to do them with you.

At any rate, it is quite dangerous to a marriage for one spouse to find interest in doing some things with a friend of the opposite sex that they cannot do with their spouse. This can be taken further by asking yourself whether your friend of the opposite sex fulfills needs that your spouse should otherwise fulfill. If the answer to that question is in the positive then you are in danger of wrecking your marriage, and the friendship has to be terminated as soon as possible.

There are times when you may have unexpressed or unresolved anger towards your spouse, and you may find it easier to share such anger with your friend of the opposite sex. The best thing to do in such circumstances is to find a way of expressing that anger and dealing with it with your spouse rather than with your friend of the opposite sex. In fact, it is quite risky to bottle up any anger towards your spouse for any length of time since bottled anger tends to fester and become venomous to your marriage. Sharing that anger with your friend of the opposite sex should be the last thing you do since it can easily be misconstrued as speaking behind your spouses back.

Finally, find out whether your marriage lacks intimacy. If it does then you need to urgently work on correcting that with your spouse rather than with a friend of the opposite sex. We hope that you take urgent measures to get your marriage on a sound footing in relation to friends of the opposite sex. May God bless your marriage.