I never made demands or had an demands made, but my ex cut off all our mutual friends, including a family with a little girl who saw her as an older sister. We'd known them for three years.

When I went to the Bay Area to see the family, the little girl would ask, "Why won't _______ come over anymore?"

I told her that when people have a big change in their lives, sometimes it's too painful to keep seeing friends who remind them of their old lives.

"But I miss her. Doesn't she like me anymore?"

That still eats at me, twenty years later.

If she and I had had more --and better-- friends, we might not have gotten married, let alone divorced.

These aren't properties to be divided. They are always loyalties to be nourished. If you enjoy someone as you ought to, for purposes less-than-erotic, what difference does their marriage make to you, as long as it's not hurtful to them?

My ex didn't need to demand I give up our mutual friends. After he cheated on me with a colleague and then hit me with an out-of-the-blue breakup, he immediately started bringing his new love to all our friends' events. I mean immediately, before I'd even moved out of our shared home, which took just a few days. Our friends said it was awkward, but didn't want to tell him he couldn't bring her (he was the alpha in our circle). I bowed out by default, unable to fake being okay with it in those first post-breakup days.

Now, more than 8 years later, we share a couple of mutual friends, and a few of those who he originally got "custody" of by default are now my friends and not his.

Now, more than 8 years later, we share a couple of mutual friends, and a few of those who he originally got "custody" of by default are now my friends and not his.

Life is very odd. My father hit my mother with an out-of-the-blue announcement that he was living a double life and had a three-year-old son with his office manager. Dad and his other family had traveled the world and visited his relatives in the Midwest.

The initial plan was divorce, but Dad got cold feet at the last second and stayed. Mom's Catholicism made her stick it out too.

At my mother's insistence, my half-brother began visiting us every summer from when he was seven years old and I was twenty-six.

Today he's thirty-two, and I'm closer to him than I am to all but one full sibling. He also became as close to my mother as he is to his own, and when Mom died, her obituary listed him as one of her children.

From selfish betrayal came a magnificent man who transcended all the potential disadvantages of his birth.

I'm 28 and a girl I was close friends with from middle school hates to this day my now my husband because he continued to be friends with her ex-boyfriend when they split up in college.

The guys, being very similar, hit it off immediately when we introduced them and became very close friends. When things ended between them, she did lean on me for support but never outright said, "Don't hang out with him."

When she found out my guy was still hanging out with him, she flipped out on me, saying that since I wasn't mad about it and wasn't telling my boyfriend not to see him, I was just as bad.

I told her that you can't control other people and once you introduce them, what goes on between them is not about you and not up to you. She didn't speak to me again for a few years.

She did similar things to other friends over hanging out with him but to lesser degrees. The ironic thing is, she has since turned very Christian and other friends have told her the Christian thing to do is to forgive but she still refuses to forgive my husband. Even after 7 years and her getting married to someone else better suited to her...

I ended an 11-year relationship with my ex, and he got all pissy with me because a majority of our mutual friends ended up with me (it didn't help that he lives 45 minutes south of the rest of us). I got accused of telling everyone the breakup was his fault and supposedly that was why they "took my side". When I asked him specifically who it was so I could make it clear that the end of the relationship was my doing, he had NOTHING to say.

The irony here is that almost all of them started out being HIS friends first. As a matter of fact, I was certain that not only was I ending a relationship, I was going to lose a whole raft of friends as well.

I had a friend do that several times in high school. I only even became friends with the guys because she was dating them. Then, after a year or so of group camaraderie, they would break up and I was suddenly not supposed to get along with this person. I had the nerve to have a conversation with one two months after the breakup (forever in high-school-time) and got the silent treatment for 3 months.

I decided that real friends don't try to tell you who you can be friends with. Request maybe, but he who tries to dictate my social life will quickly find him/herself removed from it entirely.

When DH and I were having problems, our mutual friends did not know. I didn't want them to feel they needed to choose. My DH was a good guy...we just had some major disagreements. Most of them, never knew we had problems. I had my exclusive friends to vent to. I even wished that he had friends like that.

At a point where we were largely back but a major crisis occurred, I was so pissed off that I was ready to leave. I called a friend, who loved us both to talk some sense in me. And she did and I am very grateful for it. Though I had to be conscious enough to know what I wanted was irrational and needed a 3rd party to explain that to me.

I am grateful for the friends I could vent to and the friend that talked some sense into me.

Boy, am I bummed; two good friends of mine divorced and they did NOT fight over me. Instead they each said that it would be better if they bowed out with me as I was the better friend to the other!

My suspicion is that if there is a fight going on over who keeps the "friends" that the designation of "friend" is a questionable label.

Chances are good, that you are less of a friend in this situation, and more like a pawn on the battlefield between the two waring parties, You are analgous to the family pet that neither individual really wants, but takes a great deal of satisfaction in denying posession to the other party.

My husband and I socialize with other couples, but these people are acquaintences, not friends, because friendship to me implies a basis of shared interests to maintain the relationship. I have many friends where I have no relationship at all with their spouse, and it matters very little to me whether they are married, single or newly divorced, other then to be suppportive, if they are distressed, which is what friendship is for.

The divorce wave hasnt hit my circle of peers yet so i dont know a lot of divorced people my generation but I have observed my parents circle.

For the most part they stayed friends with both. There was ine party where he showed up for the first part and she for the second. Many friendships just faded out as people moved or if the friendship was really more with one half of the couple, but there were no actual breakups. Barring a reason like physical abuse or other extreme behavior I cant imagine such a request from an adult.

When I divorced about three years ago, my ex said a lot of really unkind and untrue things about me to our mutual friends. I don't often say this out loud, but he is one of the most selfish, narrow-minded, controlling, cruel, impossible-to-please people I've ever met. He's also very charming and successful, so nobody, including my own family, understood why we were divorcing.

We didn't have a lot of mutual friends, but he ended up with custody of them all. In the long run, this is fine by me. I wasn't interested in defending myself against the things he kept saying, on top of justifying a divorce to people who believed he could do no wrong. Also, we had no kids and so no reason to maintain contact--having no mutual friends means less likelihood of running into him or hearing conversation about him.

There is a downside though. This past Thanksgiving I looked up a mutual friend and discovered she died of lung cancer.

I decided that real friends don't try to tell you who you can be friends with. Request maybe, but he who tries to dictate my social life will quickly find him/herself removed from it entirely.

Shannon's got it right. I wouldn't presume to tell any of my or his friends that we/they couldn't socialize or still be friends. If someone else tried to tell me such a thing, I'd question the validity of the friendship at all.

Thomas Wictor,
Your mom sounds like she was a truly gracious and courageous lady who lived her faith to the fullest and reaped the rewards. Thank you sharing her story.

My ex's friends were all people who, like her, never mentally graduated from high school. So losing them was no skin off of my nose.

About eight years ago, a couple who was close to my wife and I divorced. We were in a qualm for a while about how we were going to remain friends with them. As it happened, they both changed after the divorce and became bitter, joyless people. So we wound up dropping contact with both of them.

Wasn't a problem for me - she hated my friends anyway, and her friends abandoned her (given her behavior they were probably trying to protect themselves).

The fact that her friends were backbiting Lutheran church ladies and sleazy stockbrokers kept me from expressing any interest in a friendship with them, thank Gaia.

Now she's a lawyer, and the misery continues!

Two people (who were already in our friend circle) ended up dating and broke up after 2 years together.

Neither made any demands to my boyfriend and me about staying friends/not staying friends with the other, but they did make a very annoying request: "If you host a party, can you let me know if [ex] will be there and when, so I don't have to see him/her?"

Yeah, because while we're planning a party, we're going to make extra calls to both of you to ask when exactly you're coming, and when you're leaving. Right.

*Truly* mutual friends should not be expected to take sides or cut off either party. (If one half of the couple did something one-sidedly awful to the other--like sleep with his brother--then the lion's share of sympathy and support should go to the aggrieved.)

People who are primarily friends with either "half," though, should politely distance themselves from the other--at least early on. I had a very close girlfriend who in the months following my divorce announcement shocked me by reaching out to my husband and attempting to cultivate a relationship with him and his new girlfriend. Her decision, the motive, the timing... everything about it seemed horribly disloyal--like why would she go out of her way to do this NOW, when she was never close to my ex?

Our friendship ended over that.

When my best friend had an ugly divorce, I stopped all socializing with her ex, not because I didn't like him, but because I was "her" friend. She didn't have to ask. She /shouldn't/ have had to ask. Maybe if things aren't as raw after a few years, he and I can be friendly again.

Many years ago, I had a particularly difficult breakup with a guy with whom I shared a large circle of good friends. I did not ask them to stop being friends with him, or not to invite him to things. However, it was quite a while before I felt OK being in the same room with him -- especially since he immediately (within the week, at least, or quite possibly before we broke up) began dating someone else at the fringes of our circle. Hanging out with him (and her) every weekend would have been very painful, and delayed my process of moving on. I think that's pretty normal, actually. I don't know too many people who are immediately ready to be good buddies after a painful breakup.

I might have incurred sofar's annoyance, had she been part of my circle. I let my friends know that I needed to separate myself from Mr. Ex for a while, and therefore was going to stay away from events if he was likely to go. I also let them know I would not be upset if they invited him, I understood he was their friend too, but that I'd prefer to socialize with them at other times, when the ex wasn't going to be there. For a while, that meant that I didn't go to too many parties with this group of friends. I just hung out with them as individuals, which was fine with me. As it happens, gradually most of the friends started to distance themselves from him, and eventually, I got full custody of the friends. (Of course, by the time that process was complete, I'd moved on anyway.)

I get your irritation, sofar, if your friends are really expecting you to keep running back and forth reporting minute-by-minute on details of each other's RSVPs. But maybe they're simply finding it too painful to be around each other. (Moreover, it's probably not going to be too much fun for anyone at the party to have them there together.) Why don't you just say, "Yes, I've invited X. I'm not sure when or if he'll be there, but I'll totally understand if you don't want to come. We can get together some other time." That's all I wanted from my friends. Maybe that's all your friends need from you, and I honestly don't think that's too much to ask.

No one has ever requested this but I have seen it happen a lot. The worst for me was the girl I dated my freshman year - when we broke up everyone in shared friend circle went her way - I sorta understand she was the popular cute blonde who was in one of the better sororities. She had some wierd things that as came out real quick if you started dating her.

I see it has a significant issue when potentially dating someone you know and already share friends with. What happens in the breakup?

✔ Gail at December 6, 2013 7:22 PM

I see Sofar's point, but would trust that any (closer) friend of Gail would have been happy to consider the sensitivities.

(I may be wrong about this. There are certain kinds of rudeness and petty plays for social dominance in public setting which amuse me not at all, but which transfix many. See also, reality TV, etc.)

Again, I have problems with the concept of splitting friends as one would possessions. It's hard to put that into interesting words. Any metaphor harkens to Solomon so quickly that you'd think I was wasting your time.

Sure, yeah, some people collect friendships and party chats as you and I might sort and index business cards after a conference... But if such a person complained of losing friends in a divorce, could you grieve on their behalf?

Seeing as my mother still to this day gets visits and has lunch with my dad's brother, I just can't get the rage divorces.That uncle still spends holidays with his ex and her new husband so they and the kids can all spend time together without making it out to be some huge ordeal.

Honestly sometimes people can be friends and just not live under the same roof. It does not work for everyone but it can work for quite a few, if not a majority, of people.

Several years ago I was blindsided by my then-BF's cheating and subsequent moving out. He actually disappeared for a couple of weeks, to the other woman's, and his mother and friends were calling me asking where he was. I was totally shocked when quite a few of our friends considered me the villain and made it plain that their sympathies lay with him. I found out later that most of them, including my closest girl chum, knew about the other woman--I was the proverbial last to know. I had always thought that fighting over custody of the friends was silly so it was awkward and painful. I ended up retreating from everyone, pretty much in self-pity. A couple of my former gal pals took a turn at him in the years that followed.

Later it was obvious to me that I was not, in fact, a very nice GF--bossy, critical, contemptuous, and entitled. Of course he should have given me a courtesy breakup call before taking up with the other woman, but we were not destined to be a happy couple regardless. I took difficult steps to remedy these defects of character. As I changed, I saw that these "friends" and I had supported each other in behaving immaturely and selfishly, providing cover to each other for douchey acts. They stayed the same, and I got better (slowly). If I met them now, I wouldn't want to befriend them, nor they me.

You still married?

Be in touch.

I have been on different sides of this equation multiple times. I agree with others that you cannot "call dibs" on people. However I will say I have very close friends that I have been friends with since childhood(about 5 maybe we are from a small town) So if I ever broke up with someone or someone broke up with me they distanced themselves as in my social circle retreated to me his to him and so forth and so on. Truly "mutual" friends will fall where they may in my opinion. If I am having a hard time I don't go where he likely to be. I had an ex one time go on a smear campaign against me after we ended things many of our "mutual friends" sided with him and tried calling me to confirm the dirty details. I just simply said "it saddens me he wants to air our realtionship's private business but two people were in the relationship and two people ended it. Believe what you want I won't get in the mud with him sorry" I repeated as necessary. Eventually everyone saw him for the sad pathetic person he is and I kept a majority of the friends. I just refuse to get in the mud with anyone I AM better than that. My ex husband also went on a smear campaign and I really wasn't at a loss from our mutual friends. The ones that sided with him were not people I missed anyway. Not to mention when he went to jail 2 months later for pulling a gun on his new gf it pretty much showed everyone who the "crazy irrational one" was I didnt have to "right" fight just let him have enough rope to hang himself.