How to start a relationship without losing your friends

Last Update : June 12, 2018 by Lauren

We’ve all been there: a friend with whom you used to go with everywhere until she/he started a relationship… from there everything changed. Your friend wasn’t available anymore and even if you didn’t want to, you started to feel some frustration, and let’s be honest, anger as well!

Indeed, when people start a relationship, it is very easy to start losing friends. Your focus is just another, and it’s understandable.

The problem comes when you are starting a relationship and suddenly you realize that everything you hated about the moment your friend started to be a couple, well, it’s also happening to you!
What to do then to start a healthy relationship without having to exclude your friends?

#1 – Don’t choose love over friendship

Tip number 1 and perhaps the most important one. Do not feel like you have to choose love over friendship. If you really want to create a healthy and strong relationship this is perhaps the best and only advice you should ever consider: your partner should also be your friend.

In that way, if your partner is your friend, then it becomes completely natural to be able to share your friendships with him/her.

On top of that, by creating a relationship in which love and friendship are the two main pillars, your partner will easily understand when you’ll like to spend some time with your friends.
At the end of the day, love is more ephemeral than friendship, so make sure you keep both tangents in your life!

If you make sure that your friends see your partner as another friend, you’ll create a great dynamic in which you won’t have the feeling that you have to either choose between your partner or your friends.

#2 – Learn to manage efficiently your time: Keeping in touch with your friends

Although it might sound obvious, the truth is if you really think about what really annoyed you about that friend that disappeared when she/he started a relationship, you’ll probably realize that it wasn’t so much the fact that your friend would spend time with their partner – after all, that’s completely understandable.

It was rather the fact that your friend didn’t keep in touch with you!

So, lesson learned!

Make sure you always keep in touch with your friends. Call them, text them, be interested in their lives. We’re living in the 21st century and luckily, there’re many technologies to keep in touch with people!

#3 – Allow your friends to be part of your love story

Nobody likes to be the third wheel, however, another common mistake when people start a relationship is either to talk A LOT about their partner or not to talk about them at all.

When a friend suddenly changes the conversation to a monologue about their relationship, it can (and definitely will) be the moment a friendship will be lost.

That’s perhaps why some people prefer not to talk too much about their relationships with their friends. However, some friends might feel left out apart.

It is very important to find a great balance between telling too much or too little.

Our advice is to make sure that your friend still feels like she/he’s part of your life, love life included. You can talk about how you feel, the challenges you might be facing, the things you like about being in a relationship, the things you might miss about being single, etc.

At the end of the day, if you manage to keep your friendships and love story intact, you’ll be the luckiest person on earth!