Staying friends with former couple proving difficult

Dear Carolyn: My husband and I have had a long and wonderful relationship with another couple that had marital problems, which eventually led to a divorce. They were both unfaithful through the years.

Now, however, both have remarried. My husband and I attended both weddings.

Now the woman is angry and not speaking to me because we attended her ex’s wedding. She says he has a “win” because now he will say we are better friends with him than with her.

We flew across the country to attend her wedding, but barely crossed the street for his — it was in our hometown. His children invited us to his wedding and really, we are planning to continue to be friendly with him, even though I am closer to her.

Were my husband and I wrong to attend his wedding? I have tried to talk with her and she keeps claiming hurt feelings. Now I am just angry and thinking I am being used as a weapon against her ex-husband.

It’s possible you’re being used, but I don’t think you’re a weapon against the ex. At least, that’s not at the root.

A grown woman angry to the point of ending a friendship because her ex got “a ‘win’” is not thinking clearly. When you’re faced with anger that doesn’t make sense, it helps to think of the anger as useful in some way to the person feeling it. Presumably she wouldn’t manufacture and maintain such a grudge otherwise.

So maybe this anger ... helps your friend feel vindicated in the divorce? Keeps her connected to her ex where she’s not ready to let go? Keeps alive her hope of getting the apology or restitution or revenge she thinks she deserves? Satisfies a need to blame?

Or does it serve as a simple alternative to a more complicated anger she hasn’t reckoned with yet? Getting angry at you, after all — and through you getting angry all over again at her ex, nice bonus — is a lot easier than getting angry at herself.

That’s not to say she should (or shouldn’t) be angry at herself; her current tantrum notwithstanding, she might long since have reckoned with her part in the marital failure and served her emotional time.

I’m saying only that anger turned outward is a lot less complicated than turning it inward for people who aren’t ready to face themselves. It’s both a convenient distraction from uncomfortable things and a form of self-soothing.

This is all to help you understand your friend’s reaction better; it doesn’t really affect what you do about it, because her not speaking to you (right?) takes care of that. You have two friends who divorced; you have chosen to remain friends with both. Stand by the decision and, hopefully, she cools off.