by Carole Ligi

Created on: June 20, 2009   Last Updated: June 21, 2009

When a couple divorces, not only are the property and possessions split up, but often so are the mutual friends. Ideally the former couple can maintain ties, although separate now, with all of their mutual friends when they were married, but that is rarely the case.

Friends often gravitate towards one or the other partner for various reasons. One partner may have inflicted so much damage to the other spouse while in the marriage, that the friends decide that they never really knew this person and do not want to associate with that person anymore. Sometimes the friends are only friends because of the couple being married and never had any connections with one of the two people now divorced.

One case occurred when a young wife decided that she married too young and was no longer having any fun being tied down to a house and raising the couple's baby. She left her husband for another man and took her baby with her, only to keep the husband from gaining full custody. She demanded that their mutual friends severe all ties with her soon to be ex-husband and only associate with her. That strategy backfired and their friends decided that she was too high maintenance and since she often made poor choices in the past, would continue to do so. The husband in this case got custody of the friends.

But often women do need emotional support from friends when going through a divorce, especially in cases where the husband cheated on her during the marriage. The husband often buries himself in work and may distance himself from the mutual friends with his new life. The ties with the mutual friends may change and often since the couple is no longer a couple, there may be an awkwardness of being solo at any gatherings with friends who are still couples.

Often the friends revolve around the common interest of raising children and that may be the determining factor in who gets custody of the friends. Sometimes while maintaining past friendships, the wife needs to find new interests or renew old interests that had been put to the side over the years and find new friends with whom to share her interests.

Divorces are rarely civil and usually there is a great deal of mud slinging. The trick for the mutual friends is to stay out of the line of fire as much as possible during the process of the divorce and then the friends decide who gets custody of them afterwards.

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