Who Gets Bob?

By Belinda Luscombe

Anita Cali sat with her old college friend Gloria, talking about Gloria's ex-husband Peter. Suddenly tears sprang to Anita's eyes. "I miss Peter," she said of her friend's husband. Gloria rolled her eyes in exasperation: "You're just like the kids!" she said. Gloria and Peter (who don't want their real names used) were married for 17years. Their divorce, while not exemplary, was not particularly malicious. After 18 months they had worked out custody of their three children and portioned out the assets.

Nevertheless, their friends felt compelled to choose between them. Gloria, who had instigated the divorce because she realized she was gay, kept her old friends, like Anita, but nearly all the Orthodox Jewish couple's married friends sided with her husband. Peter, who told his ex-wife that of the friends he lost in the split, he missed Anita most, did not return Anita's calls.

The question of who gets the friends when a couple splits is not the sort of issue that attracts a federally funded study, but it's a dilemma almost every adult faces. Can you stay friends with both spouses after they're not friends anymore? Does the snapping of one bond put all the skeins of the friendship at risk?

While there are no rules ordaining the divvying up of friends after a split, in many cases it works like an unspoken prenuptial agreement. That is, you take those friends you brought to the marriage with you when you go. You also take the friends you use more often--the ones you work with or, if you're the custodial parent, the friends with kids. Often a sort of morality clause kicks in. People feel they should side with the spouse they perceive to have been wronged. The adulterer has a new love; the betrayed spouse gets the old friends.

But the situation is infinitely more complicated when a couple makes friends as a couple and there are no clear loyalties. For starters, many married people read the divorce of close friends as a threatening act. It breaks the cocoon that surrounds the foursome. The intact couple sometimes doesn't want to confront the fact--or let each other see--that there's life after divorce. The now separated friend becomes a third wheel on outings. And, suggests matrimonial lawyer Robert S. Cohen, many wives feel threatened by newly single women in their midst. Finally, people don't know what to do or say or how to help without being too intrusive.

The net result for the divorces is often abandonment. "I am good friends with exactly two of the couples that Harry and I were friends with," says Beth Hartman, 41, who called an end to her marriage in 1996 after five years. She was stunned by how quickly she was dropped from her social circle after the split. Her ex-husband, she says, fared no better. "I was almost more confused at the loss of all these friendships than I was at the end of my marriage," says Hartman, who is sensitive enough about the issue that she asked that we not use her real name. Indeed, losing friends often intensifies the alienation and unlovability divorces feel. "One thing that cushions the effect of divorce is social interconnectedness," says Linda Carter, director of the Family Studies Center at New York University's Child Study Center and a couples therapist. In other words, friends don't let friends divorce alone.

But when the divorces are acrimonious, therapists and marital lawyers say, people almost always have to choose sides, at least for a while. This usually means that the women have an easier time. "Women are trained from an early age to be relationship oriented," says Carter. "And they're very often the ones who have been the keepers of the social flame." Men, often unfamiliar with the mechanics of socializing, are doubly at a loss when they have to deal with feeling worthless as well. "Very often the closest friend of a man is his wife," Carter says. "When he loses her, he's lost his connectedness with the world, and he doesn't have the capacity to make new friends."

This was true for Mario Grigorov, 39, whose wife Rosalind left him after five years. English was Rosalind's native tongue, so sometimes she had acted as a social intermediary for Mario, who was born in Bulgaria. After the split, "my wife's college friends became her support group, and I was left with no friends," he says. Most of the couple's joint friends stayed away, so Mario had to start over: "My first new friends were really dysfunctional; none of us had any idea how to be in a relationship," he says. But after he remarried, some of his predivorce friends sought him out. Several years later, he's again on friendly terms with Rosalind.

The state of the relationship with an ex-spouse often plays a big role in the state of the relationship with old friends. "Divorce is a conflict between two people that, instead of being solved, is frozen and then lived around," says Philip Belove, a therapist specializing in marital and family issues in West Brattleboro, Vt. "The rule of thumb is this: the less forgiving people are, the more they tend to want to involve others in their unresolved conflicts, and the more they have custody battles over friendships." Spouses who try to make their friends choose sides and isolate an ex-partner as revenge may find themselves isolated, because people, if pushed, usually choose the partner who is less bitter.

The issue of who is really to blame for the split is also an engine in battles for the friends. "It is probably around divorce that spin control was developed," says Belove. "The players feel they need the story to be told a certain way, and they need people to buy their version of the story." When friends favor one spouse over the other, it is read as belief in that spouse's side of the story. The one with the most friends can believe he or she is less to blame for the marriage's failure.

What then can friends do if they want to remain on good terms with both parties? First, give it time, say therapists. Cut both spouses some slack until the waves of anger and grief subside a little. Let them know, gently, that you intend to be friends with each of them. "Early on in the separation, there are going to be strong feelings, and you need to be a shoulder to cry on," says the Rev. Scott Stevens, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Willimantic, Conn. "But if after a few months the venting is not getting better, tell them you're not going to listen to ex bashing." He says it's crucial to let each party know you are not going to act as a go-between: "Explain that there are now two different, separate relationships, and you won't be a source of information about each other."

Sometimes, though, you have to choose. If it's possible, try to do so in a way that allows for a later rapprochement. If you know one partner has lots of support, choose the other. Eventually, both exes may build new lives with new partners, and it's possible the friendship will not last or will change. But therapists emphasize how important it is not to desert the former couple. This is especially true, says nyu's Carter, if there are children. "As far as kids are concerned, the fewer broken connections, the better," she says. "Having the sense that Mom has friends who are also friends with Dad tells them that not everything in the world has changed." --With reporting by Lisa McLaughlin/New York

With reporting by Lisa Mclaughlin/New York