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If, like Maura, you find that your friendships no longer have emotional value, you must move on. If you feel that your friendships, like your marriage, have a pathological elementif they are somehow abusive, or overly dependent, or demeaningit is time for you to leave your friends, too. |
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In the best of all possible worlds, the newly divorced will maintain their most valuable friendships and forge new alliances, too. It is true, after all, that our friends are life's traveling companions and provide a mirror for who we are. |
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When Marla left her first husband in her early thirties, she counted among her friends a group of young, married, professional women like herself. Interested in spreading her wings and exploring her inner resources and talents as a single woman without a man for a while, she developed a second group of friendswomen who lived more solitary lives, haunting the poetry workshops, fiction readings, and university lectures around town. Finally, when she felt ready to date again, she made friends with a couple of very social, single young women. Together they went to parties and clubs. Through it all, her very closest friendsthose she had sustained throughout high school and collegeremained ensconced in the background, supportive and loving, even if at a distance over the phone. |
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Married Friends: Friends Just the Same |
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Often, the newly divorced fear that their married friends will have no further interest in them now that they are divorced. Most of the time, nothing could be further from the truth. The world is far more diverse and varied than it was in the 1950s, and these days, groups of singles, marrieds, and other categories mix and match with ease. |
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