Friendly Fires

Q: What should you do when your friends start dating?

A: It’s bound to happen. You and your friends share thousands of things in common. You plan fun events together, and one night, things get more than friendly between your friends. What do you do now? How do you support your friend with her new beau while you have more insight than you’d like to have on how he might be feeling? This has happened to me a few times. One of those times actually ended up with a marriage of two really happy people in love. This could be a great opportunity for you to have a pair of couple friends that you and your spouse love being with! OR, this could end up in disaster with two broken hearts and a lot of “he said, she said”. The best way to navigate this very friendly fire is by creating a “Chinese Wall”.

“Chinese Wall” is “A term used to describe procedures enforced within a securities firm that separate the firm’s departments to restrict access to non-public, material information, in order to avoid the illegal use of inside information” (www.investorwords.com).

You have to pick your side, pick your area of insider information and NOT share it with the other side. I know you want to be involved in chatting endlessly and analyzing all the details of this exciting new relationship. But, you CAN’T. You have to realize, you may have the benefit of having two friends blissfully happy, all because of YOU! With that glory, comes some sacrifice. Listen, be supportive, but try not to analyze. The best thing you can do for the new love birds is to stay out of their relationship as much as possible and to be supportive without creating confusion. Look at this as an exciting opportunity to test your abilities to keep information to yourself. And when they marry and eventually have children, be sure you get to name their first born.