Agony Hound: My close friends' marriage ended in a bad way - who should I side with?

More lives ruined by the Hound's bad advice. Once again this is from Coleen Nolan

Dear Coleen

I’m still close friends with a group of people I went to university with more than a decade ago. Two of this group are married to each other and have two young children. Recently, the husband walked out and started “dating” another woman in our group of university friends.

Naturally, his wife is angry and devastated, as she says there were no warning signs and no conversations about how he was feeling – he just upped and left one day and then called her to say the marriage wasn’t working.

Soon after, it transpired he was seeing this other friend.

I don’t know what to do in terms of my friendships – I feel stuck in the middle. I want to support the wife, obviously, but I’m also very close to her husband. In fact, I used to live with him in a shared flat.

Is it possible to stay friends with both of them in the circumstances?

I think what he did and especially how he did it was horrible. I don’t know if he was seeing our other friend before walking out on his marriage, but the intention was obviously there.

We’re all very shocked about it. Can you advise?

Coleen says

I think in this situation, he’s clearly in the wrong. People fall out of love – that’s life – but he left without warning and with no explanation, and then immediately took up with one of his wife’s close friends.

It’s hideous and, of course, his wife is going to wonder how long this relationship has been going on for.

I guess it depends on which friend you’re closest to, but at this early stage when it’s still very raw, I think his wife needs all the support, love and kindness she can get.

You shouldn’t cancel someone for falling out of love with their partner, but the way he handled it is wrong and cruel, and I think everyone in your friendship group will probably be of the same opinion.

It’s up to him and this other woman to build bridges.

It’s not up to you to make him feel OK with his decisions.

I’ve been in the situation of losing friends when my first marriage broke up and it’s a horrible feeling when you’re already hurting.

The Hound says: There are several things that spring to my eye in your situation.

The first is what an incredible friend you are, in fact what an incredible group of friends if you are still supporting each other a decade after uni. You personally are obviously a very valuable friend. 

The second is that you say that you are all shocked by the husband's behaviour and this is obviously a difficult situation because you're asking for help. What specifically are you worried about here? I do see that it's a nightmare with the potential for the whole friendship group to split down the middle.

Thirdly assuming what you say is the objective truth, the husband is being a total turd. If you want to, you could try to be supportive to both sides, but this will end up with him being spat out of the friendship group. I sense that you wouldn't like that to happen however when you marry in a friendship group and do that, the only consequence will be you end up out of the group.

I have thought about a couple of ways to approach this but I honestly don't think it's up to anyone else in the group to fix this. I would say go with it now and a resolution will come out of the group (Goddess, I sound like Starhawk).

As always I would suggest thinking through what you're going to say in all possible scenarios (him asking you to side with him, her ditto, other friends asking you to speak to one of them, etc) even if it's only being ready with a script that you're going to have to go away and think about it. It is actually okay not to have the answers and to say so.

There is also nothing wrong with picturing what you would like to happen in an ideal world!

I am totally not suggesting going to his new girlfriend and telling her the wife has Chlamydia, because that would be horrible and totally satisfying.