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A recent article is on making "couples friends" as adults. Research shows couples who have good couples friends have happier, healthier relationships with their own partners.
Couples who have more couple friends are happier in their own relationships and more likely to stay together, research shows. Hanging out with another couple can provide social support and help you see your partner in a new light.
“Couple friends can help you to better appreciate your partner,” says Richard Slatcher, a psychology professor at the University of Georgia, who studies couple friendships. When you see other people enjoying your partner’s company, he says it can make you think: “My partner is pretty great.”
It gets tougher to make any new friends as we get older. We have less time to get together. We no longer have a ready-made pool of potential friends as we did when we were in school. We’re more inhibited, too. Gone are the days when we can approach a new kid in the sandbox and happily just start playing together.
I sort of laughed when I read this because we have some couple friends who we laugh that at least our partner is easier to put up with than their partner! We all see each others' relationship foibles and still want to be friends anyway. It makes me appreciate my own partner.
We moved 4 years ago.
We were thrilled to make friends with three couples (and one wonderful single!) in our neighborhood. We love to try out new restaurants, and we keep an eye on each others property vacations take us away.
We are all late 60s through late 70s.... so you CAN make friends later in life.
A few recently divorced, and seeing each single struggle in the dating world has actually reinforced our commitment to each other. It's rough out there!
Last edited by clevergirl67; 08-15-2023 at 02:12 PM..
In the course of my life, I came across multiple guys (and curiously, this pertains to guys only, not to any women I know) who I think each of them had married their wife only because she was well liked in their mutual social circle. Almost like an arranged marriage - arranged by the opinion of their friends. All of these couples were highly social, and it seemed to me they would have had no interest in each other whatsoever if they hadn't been so plugged into their whole social shebang as a couple.
To which I personally don't relate at all :-). While I have not been married, I have had several long serious relationships (the very long one, with the late great last boyfriend, would have likely ended up as marriage, had there not been complications related to my citizenship at that time). But it always seemed to me he & I were like Adam & Eve, the only fully alive couple in the world, and all the other people were sort of only half-real (and certainly had nothing to do with what was going on between him and me). We didn't really enjoy hanging out with other people as much as being by ourselves (I mean being just with each other).
We moved 4 years ago.
We were thrilled to make friends with three couples (and one wonderful single!) in our neighborhood. We love to try out new restaurants, and we keep an eye on each others property vacations take us away.
We are all late 60s through late 70s.... so you CAN make friends later in life.
Same here. We moved here 7 years ago and made friends right away within our condo complex. Unfortunately, the couples moved back to the States and only single guys were left. But we are all trusted friends and I don't mind going out with all guys.
There is one new couple who are like old hippies and I can hear them shouting at each other a block away. Loudest voices ever---but very sweet and generous. Strangely, we don't go "out" with them, but party at their place.
Yes, all these relationships make me appreciate DH all the more---I'm sure the author is right. Everyone needs a social life, especially as we age. (everyone here is 60s or 70s)
A recent article is on making "couples friends" as adults. Research shows couples who have good couples friends have happier, healthier relationships with their own partners.
I don’t know . We’re very happily married and together 47 years and currently have no couple friends. I read the article and yes the research has good points but I don’t need couple friends to see that my husband is great. We don’t crave or seem to have the need to make couple friends and seem to be happy just doing our own thing at the moment.
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