How Friends Destroy Marriages: 8 Common Ways

Friendship is a beautiful thing and friends can make your life better. They are there to cheer you on your bad days and celebrate with you on your good days. They are present through graduations, sicknesses, weddings, childbirths, burials and others. Because of how close friends are to you, you may let them in on many family matters and secrets, including the workings of your marriage.

Many marriages have been destroyed or badly damaged due to the interference of friends. You may have known marriages like that or experienced them yourself.

This article is for those who want to know how friends destroy marriages so that they can avoid it happening to them. If, as a friend, you have been accused of trying to destroy your friend’s marriage or you just want to be aware, this article is for you too.  It is going to be an interesting read, I promise. So let’s delve into it.

COMMON WAYS FRIENDS DESTROY MARRIAGES

1: Through Gossip

This is the most common way friends destroy marriages. Have you ever heard anyone say gossip is a good thing? I bet you haven’t. Why? Because gossip is deadly.

How does gossip ruin marriages? These ways include:

• When your friends spread the wrong information about you to your spouse and vice versa,. This builds resentment, which can develop into hate, suspicion and a lack of trust.
• When your friends spread sensitive details about your marriage to people, especially when these details are not even supposed to have left your mouth in the first place. Your spouse loses trust in you because you cannot keep your marital affairs private.

Gossip breaks hearts and destroys the marriage relationship.

2: Through Wrong Advice

Giving the wrong advice is how friends destroy marriages.  It is something most friends are liable to do: give advice in matters that don’t concern them.

When friends who are not married give advice to their married friends, it sometimes does not end well. Because they don’t know the dynamics of marriage and have not experienced marriage before, they are bound to give some wrong advice that will lead to the ruin of their friends’ marriages.

This does not, however, mean single friends cannot advise married friends; it’s just that sometimes the advice is good and other times it is not.

3: By Telling Your Spouse All Your Dirty Secrets

Some friends are wolves in sheep’s clothing. They despise you but won’t tell you to your face. They would rather look for opportunities to sabotage you to your spouse, especially if they think you don’t deserve them or anything good.

There are certain things you’ve done in life that you never want to see the light of day, and to which they are the only witnesses. These evil friends will go to your spouse and reveal your dirtiest, deadliest secrets, hoping your marriage will be destroyed because they know those details will make your spouse lose trust in you.

Sometimes, though, a friend can spill a secret you’ve asked him or her to keep innocently without meaning harm but in most cases, the act is intentional.

4: By Trying To Steal Your Spouse

There are wicked friends whose jealousy for you goes over and beyond that; they’ll do anything to steal your spouse away from you.

They can either form undue closeness and attachment, advise you wrongly so you can leave your spouse or spew lies about you to your spouse so you are the bad person and they are the good person. These friends are snakes and trying to steal your spouse is how friends can destroy marriages.

5: They Don’t Understand Boundaries

One of the ways friends destroy marriages is by disrespecting boundaries. They will show up at your house at odd hours and demand that you attend to them without minding that you are no longer single.

One friend might call you on the weekend when you’re with your spouse and family and stay on the phone for hours, not minding that you are with family.

When friends repeatedly barge into family time, call at odd hours, or intrude into your family space, your spouse gets irritated and it can lead to the destruction of your marriage.

6: Through Negative Influence On Your Spouse And Children

Your friends normally have access to your spouse or your children and can negatively influence them in a way that destroys your marriage. Their unruly behavior can rub off on your children. If your friend is involved in pornography, your children can come in contact with pornography from their phones or laptops left carelessly around.

Some friends can molest your children, introduce them to drugs and sex and turn their minds against you. Some friends can also introduce your spouse to bad habits they didn’t have—smoking, drinking, drug use, cheating and others. They can also smear your image to your spouse and turn his or her mind against you. Negative influences on your spouse and children are how friends destroy your marriage.

7: By Refusing To Acknowledge Your Spouse

Some friends are not happy that you are spending your life with your significant other, and they show this by refusing to acknowledge your spouse.

They will never ask you how your spouse is doing, and if you try to talk about your spouse, they will change the subject. They will act oblivious when you talk about your spouse or deliver a message your spouse sends to them. They will always look down on your spouse and find ways to belittle whatever achievements, goals and plans your spouse has.

These are some ways your friends may destroy your marriage by not acknowledging your spouse.

8: Through Negative Influence On You

Sometimes your friends are a bad influence on you. They may intentionally drag you into bad habits that are harmful to you, your spouse and your children.

If you had some harmful habits that you quit, like smoking, drinking, prostitution, stealing, or forgery, they might drag you back into them.

Sometimes they do this out of jealousy because you have a good and loving spouse, which they don’t have. They may also do this as revenge for quitting or some other thing that happened between you. Luring you into bad habits is one of ways friends destroy your marriage.

A couple once shared a story of their experiences with bad friends, and I’d love for you to hear it.

Mr and Mrs. B married right out of college. They met the year before his graduation and became fast friends. Mr. B was so jovial and friendly that all her friends became his friends too. Everything was going smoothly and great until he told her best friend he wanted to propose to and marry her friend, Ms. B. All of a sudden, her best friend began to find fault with her.

She would provoke Ms. B until she reacted and told Mr. B she had anger issues. She would tell lies about Ms. B, such incredulous lies that you would have opened your mouth in wonder. Mr. B didn’t believe her, though, and went ahead. He told Ms. B what her best friend did, and she confronted her. She apologized and promised never to interfere again.

After they got married, her best friend began to come to their house unannounced. She would exclaim at the grandeur of the house and praise Mr. B so dearly and loudly. She kept intruding on family times, inviting herself to their outings, and doing everything she could to be close to Mr. B. She even boasted to a friend that in 6 months, she’d push her friend out of the marriage and get married to Mr. B.

Now, the twist is that Mr. B told his wife about all the things her friend was doing and advised her to cut off the friendship, but she refused because she claimed she had known this friend all her life and wouldn’t cut her off.

Slowly, she and her husband began to have issues because of this friend until her husband started to stay late at work to prevent arguments.

As usual, she told her friend, who wasted no time in telling her to quarrel with him when he comes back and break up with him. This same friend went behind her back to visit her husband at work and complain to him about how bad a wife her friend is and for him to divorce her friend and marry her. Imagine the audacity.

A lot of other things happened before Ms. B became sensible and reasonable again, but by then her marriage had become badly bruised. Luckily for her, her husband loved her and already saw through that wicked friend, so they were able to save their marriage. You might not be so lucky.

So, in conclusion, marriage is a beautiful, lifelong commitment to love and be with someone. Friendship is also beautiful—having someone who cares about you and is for you through thick and thin. However, when it comes to the marital relationship, you have to be careful to keep each relationship in its own space and not allow friendship to destroy your marriage.

If you’ve noticed any of the above characters in your life as a friend to a married couple, you have to change, respect and let your friend’s marriage be.

 

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