What if you don’t get along with your partner’s circle of friends? Secret meetings are discouraged.
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If your partner doesn’t like your old friends, it can be distressing. Secret meetings are not a solution. But what helps?
Vocently, Carolin Speer had a coffee with a fellow student who, like herself, was a bit older because she was doing a second degree. Speer knew the woman from a joint study group and found her personable and clever. The 42-year-old had agreed with her husband that he should come towards the end of the meeting because she still had an appointment with him nearby. After meeting his fellow student, which lasted less than two minutes, her husband asked her: “Where did you find her? It doesn’t suit you at all, I think it’s totally stupid.”
And that wasn’t the first time he had something against her friends. “When I meet someone new, he always asks, ‘How is she? Why doesn’t she do it differently?’, and goes into a kind of spiral. He’s looking for reasons not to like her by asking such questions.” In Speer’s eyes, these are all excuses.