恶人谷

The Great Divide
When One of Two Pals Makes the Break to Romance or Wedlock, The Friendship Faces a Test

By Suz Redfearn
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, July 25, 2006; HE01



For five years in his twenties, Curtis McCormick had a pal he could count on -- someone who shared his interests, he says, in "hanging after work, going to happy hours, going to baseball games and cruising chicks." But when McCormick fell hard for Meg Beaver, his friend began acting strangely: When Beaver was around, he would look past her, refusing to address her.

"Meg, of course, hadn't done a thing to him. It was a weird jealousy thing because I was suddenly spending most of my free time with Meg," says McCormick, now 41.

After McCormick and Beaver married and had a child, things got stranger still. When the couple brought their newborn son to a softball game on the Ellipse, the friend refused to acknowledge the baby, too.

McCormick, out of patience, called his old pal and, essentially, broke up.

"Everyone likes to think friendships will last forever, but I think the truth is that they are far more ephemeral than that," said McCormick. "And one of the things that can really get in the way of friendships is marriage."

Relationship experts confirm his sidewalk analysis, saying marriage is one of the key shifts in life -- along with graduation, having kids and getting divorced or being widowed -- that can put friendships in jeopardy.

"All friendships among single people happen within a context," explains Linda Sapadin, a New York psychologist who focuses on helping individuals and groups maintain relationships. "You met and got to know each other at work, or through a tennis group, or during college, or whatever. But when you get married, you change that context, and that takes a major toll on the relationship. . . . Usually only a few best friends manage to continue with you through context changes."

Many of these dynamics were explored in Robert Milardo's 1982 landmark study, "Friendship Networks in Developing Relationships: Converging and Diverging Social Environments," published in Social Psychology Quarterly. "The overall story is that, as people get closer with a primary partner, they withdraw from their network selectively," said Milardo, professor of human development and family relationship at the University of Maine. "They spend less time with acquaintances and intermediate friends, but continue relationships with best friends and close friends -- though even those may be muted as the relationship is intensified."

Another study from the early '80s -- when friendship research was particularly hot -- analyzed the amount of time people spent with friends vs. family throughout their lives. The research, published in the journal Social Forces, showed that singles spend more time with friends than family. Once people marry, it showed, the ratio tilts the other way. When they have kids, they spend even less time with friends and more with family.

Who Me, Jealous?

For friends whose relationship is being tested by a new marriage or engagement, jealousy is usually a big issue, said Jan Yager, a Stamford, Conn., sociologist and author of "Friendshifts: The Power of Friendship and How It Shapes Our Lives" (Hannacroix Creek Books, 1999).

"And often it's not just a matter of being jealous of the time the married friend is spending with their new spouse," she said, "but, rather, feeling jealous that the married one is gaining something that the single one may never have, and feeling that, simultaneously, they are losing something: a friend."

Kristen Ade, 26, a neuroscience student at Georgetown University, understands the problem. When her best friend fell in love and got engaged, Ade lost not only a close companion ("she just dropped off the face of the earth," said Ade) but confidence in her life decisions.

"It makes you reflect on what you're doing, and you start thinking more seriously about what it is you want and don't have," she said. "You think, hmm, should I be doing something similar right now?"

On top of that, information channels often dry up, as a former best buddy slowly ceases to share the details of his or her love life, which become more private as the new romantic relationship deepens. Some singles may be poorly equipped to handle all of this.

"The reaction to such perceived loss can be made much worse if the single friend has, say, abandonment issues or low self-esteem," explained Chevy Chase psychiatrist Carol Kleinman, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at George Washington University School of Medicine.

The combined effect can be particularly trying for women, who are more likely than men, says Kleinman, to derive a lot of their self-esteem and feelings of fulfillment from interactions with female friends; men tend to seek such fulfillment from accomplishments at work. Women are more likely to give up casual friends after they marry and spend more time trying to bond with the new spouse's family and friends. However, women are more likely than men to hold onto their very closest friends through transitions like marriage; according to a 2003 study in the Journal of Marriage and Family, a quarter of married men have no close friends at all.

It's not only the single friend who suffers; the newly married or engaged friend is in a tough spot, too. She needs the support of her buddies at this time, but maintaining friendships becomes a challenge now that she is intensely focused on a romantic partner and also working hard to make room in her life for his friends and family -- not to mention planning a wedding. If her close friend starts exerting pressure on her now, she can easily get angry and feel unsupported, said Kleinman.

Open to Change

But the withdrawal from one another may be temporary if the single friend can remain flexible while the newly married friend finds a way to balance her old and new relationships.

It worked for Jennifer B. Shoemaker, 34, of Fairfax, and Tara Greco, 35, of the District. Friends since the ages of 8 and 9, the two were close in high school and stayed in touch in college, then became chummy again when they found themselves back in Washington. When Shoemaker married in 1999 and then gave birth to two children, John and William, her friendship with Greco didn't skip a beat.

"Our friendship has evolved through a lot; marriage and kids were just another facet of that evolution," said Shoemaker, a homemaker. Both she and Greco, who's in public relations, work to accommodate each other's lifestyle. Sometimes Greco will have all the Shoemakers, big and little, over to her apartment for dinner; other times, Shoemaker makes it a point to get a babysitter so she and Greco can have one-on-one time.

"And I certainly try not to bore her with talk of how many teeth John has," adds Shoemaker.

Greco, in turn, has made an effort to become friends with Shoemaker's husband, Dan, and Dan has extended himself to Greco; the two have bonded over live music and sports -- two things in which Shoemaker tends to have little interest.

The overall key, Shoemaker and Greco say, is a sense of commitment.

"With the kind of friendship we have, we see each other as family," Greco said.

"There's way too much there there for the friendship to just disappear as our lives change." ・

Suz Redfearn last wrote for Health about the locking of condom cases in some local pharmacies. Comments: health@washpost.com.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

密斯张三 wrote:homemaker，这词不错。
那婚后的人找的新朋友是否也趋向于（如SATC等表现的固定思维式）婚了的人呢？以couple为单位出动？

karen wrote:这文章挺逗的。 把毛皮小事引经据典写成长长一大篇。
这世界是有些偏见。 换车换房子换男友换老婆换工作都没事，但换朋友好象就不厚道了。 友谊非得天长地久才算数。 其实维持友谊多不容易。两人得有共鸣得没厉害冲突，两人半斤八两混得差不多，这才能平起平坐当朋友当下去。

washingtonpost.com

Social Isolation Growing in U.S., Study Says
The Number of People Who Say They Have No One to Confide In Has Risen

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 23, 2006; A03

Americans are far more socially isolated today than they were two decades ago, and a sharply growing number of people say they have no one in whom they can confide, according to a comprehensive new evaluation of the decline of social ties in the United States.

A quarter of Americans say they have no one with whom they can discuss personal troubles, more than double the number who were similarly isolated in 1985. Overall, the number of people Americans have in their closest circle of confidants has dropped from around three to about two.

The comprehensive new study paints a sobering picture of an increasingly fragmented America, where intimate social ties -- once seen as an integral part of daily life and associated with a host of psychological and civic benefits -- are shrinking or nonexistent. In bad times, far more people appear to suffer alone.

"That image of people on roofs after Katrina resonates with me, because those people did not know someone with a car," said Lynn Smith-Lovin, a Duke University sociologist who helped conduct the study. "There really is less of a safety net of close friends and confidants."

If close social relationships support people in the same way that beams hold up buildings, more and more Americans appear to be dependent on a single beam.

Compared with 1985, nearly 50 percent more people in 2004 reported that their spouse is the only person they can confide in. But if people face trouble in that relationship, or if a spouse falls sick, that means these people have no one to turn to for help, Smith-Lovin said.

"We know these close ties are what people depend on in bad times," she said. "We're not saying people are completely isolated. They may have 600 friends on Facebook.com [a popular networking Web site] and e-mail 25 people a day, but they are not discussing matters that are personally important."

The new research is based on a high-quality random survey of nearly 1,500 Americans. Telephone surveys miss people who are not home, but the General Social Survey, funded by the National Science Foundation, has a high response rate and conducts detailed face-to-face interviews, in which respondents are pressed to confirm they mean what they say.

Whereas nearly three-quarters of people in 1985 reported they had a friend in whom they could confide, only half in 2004 said they could count on such support. The number of people who said they counted a neighbor as a confidant dropped by more than half, from about 19 percent to about 8 percent.

The results, being published today in the American Sociological Review, took researchers by surprise because they had not expected to see such a steep decline in close social ties.

Smith-Lovin said increased professional responsibilities, including working two or more jobs to make ends meet, and long commutes leave many people too exhausted to seek social -- as well as family -- connections: "Maybe sitting around watching 'Desperate Housewives' . . . is what counts for family interaction."

Robert D. Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard and the author of "Bowling Alone," a book about increasing social isolation in the United States, said the new study supports what he has been saying for years to skeptical audiences in the academy.

"For most of the 20th century, Americans were becoming more connected with family and friends, and there was more giving of blood and money, and all of those trend lines turn sharply in the middle '60s and have gone in the other direction ever since," he said.

Americans go on 60 percent fewer picnics today and families eat dinner together 40 percent less often compared with 1965, he said. They are less likely to meet at clubs or go bowling in groups. Putnam has estimated that every 10-minute increase in commutes makes it 10 percent less likely that people will establish and maintain close social ties.

Television is a big part of the problem, he contends. Whereas 5 percent of U.S. households in 1950 owned television sets, 95 percent did a decade later.

But University of Toronto sociologist Barry Wellman questioned whether the study's focus on intimate ties means that social ties in general are fraying. He said people's overall ties are actually growing, compared with previous decades, thanks in part to the Internet. Wellman has calculated that the average person today has about 250 ties with friends and relatives.

Wellman praised the quality of the new study and said its results are surprising, but he said it does not address how core ties change in the context of other relationships.

"I don't see this as the end of the world but part of a larger puzzle," he said. "My guess is people only have so much energy, and right now they are switching around a number of networks. . . . We are getting a division of labor in relationships. Some people give emotional aid, some people give financial aid."

Putnam and Smith-Lovin said Americans may be well advised to consciously build more relationships. But they also said social institutions and social-policy makers need to pay more attention.

"The current structure of workplace regulations assumes everyone works from 9 to 5, five days a week," Putnam said. "If we gave people much more flexibility in their work life, they would use that time to spend more time with their aging mom or best friend."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company