Can One Person Replace An Entire Entourage of People?

Hey Everyone,

Here is something I've been thinking about for quite some time... Do you believe that a single person (a spouse) can replace the entourage of people you've come to know and look to for advice over the years?

I know everyone's experience is different, and some people would be thankful to have even one person that they could be close to (if this is you, please let us know so that we can pray for you.)

On the other hand, other people I've met have built up quite a support network over the years, and so I've often wondered if one of the toughest adjustments when getting married will be having to shift most of your emotional reliance onto just one person instead of a group.

For example, one of the things I've learned about myself is that I have a very intense personality. I have intense emotions and reactions to the various challenges of life, and I've found that this is often overwhelming if I try to vent it all to just one person. Over the years, I've found it to be much more effective if I try to disperse my emotional reactions among a few core people in my life. I have one friend who is excellent at giving me useful Scriptures when I need them; one friend who isn't afraid to give me a good wake-up call when applicable; and another who has known me all my life and is the one I talk to when I need to reminisce about "the good old days."

I have been single for quite a while, so with the passing of time, it's become second nature to sometimes call one of these friends when I'm going through a crisis.

One of the things I think about is how I would try to condense all of my emotional venting back to just one person, seeing as this was one of the problems I had in my past relationships (my emotions were too intense for one person to be able to handle, while at the same time, I put too much expectation on them to be able to calm my anxiety.)

I know that if I met someone whom I was going to marry, I would need to loosen some of the ties with these friends in order to concentrate on God's plan of two lives becoming one within the marriage. I wouldn't want my spouse to think that I was relying running to or relying on people more than I was talking to him.

How about the rest of you?

* Are you particularly close to family (brothers, sisters, cousins, parents), friends, or people at church? How do you feel about transferring all of the emotional support/bonding you're used to getting from a group of people to just one person?

* Do you think your life will look about the same after you get married, or will you have to back away from some people in order to bond with your spouse? How do you plan to do this?

* Would you be upset if it was your spouse who was constantly running to someone else for support/advice instead of you? How would you handle this situation?

I have often wondered if a good part of the stress some people go through when adjusting to married life is at least partially caused by these kinds of adjustments.

Everyone is welcome to answer, including our married friends who have already experienced this transition and probably have a lot of useful advice to share.

I'll be looking forward to your answers, seeing as I was wondering if anyone else ponders these things.

I would have to back away from at least one friendship if I got into a relationship.

I wouldn't want my spouse running to a lady friend so I wouldn't run to my male friend.

There are some things a man needs to talk to other men about.. It would soon see His relationship with His wife end in disaster if he had no male friends to vent with..

I would say woman need female friends to relate to even more then men need men.. So i would say if a woman ended all her female contacts upon entering a marriage then she would overwhelm her husband especially if she was the type to suffer bouts of Anxiety..

Are you particularly close to family (brothers, sisters, cousins, parents), friends, or people at church? How do you feel about transferring all of the emotional support/bonding you're used to getting from a group of people to just one person?
I’m very close with my family, immediate family and church family. I feel that it might benefit that one person, but I’ll have to ask God about that.


Do you think your life will look about the same after you get married, or will you have to back away from some people in order to bond with your spouse? How do you plan to do this?
I would assume that my life would change if I was to get married, not drastically but moreso around priorities, and consideration for my spouse. Other than that, I can’t really predict what exactly will happen but I hope that I won’t have to lose family or friends over my marriage lol I plan to trust in God with this because marriage life is different to single life (imo).

Would you be upset if it was your spouse who was constantly running to someone else for support/advice instead of you? How would you handle this situation?
Depends, if he had “man problems” that only his close male friends could support and advise him in then I wouldn’t have a problem in that at all. If he was constantly running towards a female friend, then “Houston - we have a problem” 😂 I would be honest with him and let him know how I feel.

I just want to say it’s so great to have you back @seoulsearch ☺️❤️

Im very close with my mother and bf.
My bf has a comepletely different mindset which is why often i barely consider his advice in some things lol
Example
When i took in a sick cat
Mom: gave me food, helped me checka if he has anything and encourages me to help and findI the kitty a good place
Martin: why are you getting into other people's business? Its not your cat...u cantjust take care of a strangers cat just becauae they kicked it out.. thats how people arewho. If theyre old some
As.... kick em out. But its nota ur problem

So im like...meh ill stay with mom on this one, take care of it and bring ita to a safe place

He does tend to give better advice to others which makes me giggle. I dont get upset about it

(In the following questions, please keep in mind I have never been married. These are not rhetorical questions, they are questions about things I have never been through myself so I'm asking about them.)

Why would one person replace an entire entourage? Why is it all or nothing? SHOULD it be all or nothing?

It seems to me that relationship dynamics would alter if you got married - some would change naturally, organically, without any intentional effort to change them and some you would need to make a conscious decision to change - but how could you know how each relationship would need to change until you got to the point where you needed to change it?

Looking at it from the spouse's point of view: Would the spouse think he or she was even up to the task of replacing a whole group of friends? That seems like a heavy load.

Personally the whole prospect seems to me like taking out a lot of little stores and replacing them with a Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart tries to be a bakery, deli, optometrist, shoe store, car repair... it tries to do it all, but the bakery food is meh, the shoes are cheap, the turkey is not real turkey, the car care is not very care-ful and I always hear people complaining about their eyeglasses not being adjusted right. If one spouse tried to replace a whole network of friends, it seems that spouse would have to become a lot of different people... and either outright fail in some respects or render shoddy service in all areas.

But again, I have never been married. So this is just what I can see from the outside looking in. It seems a bit dubious to make one spouse replace a lot of friends.

I think it's hard to give a universal picture for how this would look for every single person, so I'm basically just going to mention some guiding principles that I plan to try to follow when it comes to this topic.

-I really believe that one of the keys to success in dating and marriage is to have a solid support base. When you are dating, having a strong support base of people who love and care for you well will go a long way toward helping navigate the dating world with a level head so that you don't end up rushing things or getting so caught up on Cloud 9 with the wrong person that you end up making a poor choice. The more you lack a support base, the more power someone will have over you when you enter than infatuation stage with them, which obviously isn't healthy.
Having a strong support base heading into marriage is so important too because marriage is hard. If you don't have anyone that you can go to for marriage advice, prayer, encouragement, etc. then you are going to be in a really lonely place when hard times do come. So with that said, I don't believe that your spouse all of a sudden takes the place of your whole support base. The hope is that as you get serious in dating, engaged, and eventually married, you are establishing a mutual support base among both of your families and friend groups that you can carry with you into marriage.

-Close friendships especially do change when you get into a serious relationship or get married, but that doesn't mean that they have to be abandoned. I think it is obvious that any close friendships with the opposite sex that you have are going to have to change. Relationships never remain stagnant--you are always either growing closer or further apart--so it could be difficult in that you will be growing further apart from this person who was once your close friend, but you just have to look at it in perspective. You have hopefully a best friend in your spouse now so there's just a bit of a changing of the guard there in your life. But yeah, opposite sex friendships that you have apart from your spouse are something you do have to give up for the sake of your marriage, and it would be wrong to go to someone of the opposite sex for advice unless it is a counselor or some kind, but a couple should always have a strong support base of family and friends around them as much as they can. We were created as tribal beings. We were created to live and thrive in safe, loving community. We should always gravitate toward that however we can.

The topic of this thread is yet another one of the many Catch 22's of single life I find within the Christian community.

It feels as if we are told, "Enjoy your single time! Join groups, participate in things, make friends, get off your lazy duff and go out there and meet people!!!"

But at the same time, even if we follow this pat-answer advice, we are THEN told that once we find someone to marry, we are then told that we must cut off or lessen the ties that we've worked so hard to build during our single time. I get so frustrated because it seems like you can't win either way. I mean seriously, what can you say to people? "Hi, I want you to be my friend... Unless or until I get married, and then I need to conveniently let you go. Thanks for helping to take up some of this idle time before my REAL life starts to happen..."

One of the reasons this subject is important to me is because one of the friends I mentioned in my original post is a guy whom I've known for 15 years and has been there for me through literal life and death situations, so there's no way I would end our friendship once we got married. We live across the country from each other, and have already discussed the fact that if either of us does get into a relationship or get married, all of our communication will be out in the open--such as on speaker phone--and in the presence of any involved significant other(s.)

I'm actually hoping that it would go like other experiences I've had in the past, in which my future husband would in fact become buddies with this guy friend of mine, and it wouldn't even be an issue.

So I wouldn't see it as a lose-lose type of situation. I might be a bit of an idealist, but I think the best situation would be that you meet someone and you gain friends rather than losing them. Once you get serious with someone, you no longer just have your friends, but theirs too. Opposite sex friendships are definitely more complicated, but the hope would be just what you said. Hopefully your future husband would come to know him as a friend as well. Obviously there will be a need for boundaries there where there wasn't before, as you said, but hopefully your marriage would be worth that sacrifice.

IMHO it's unwise to cut yourself off from all your friends upon marriage. As Pipp noted, there may be certain opposite-gender friends from whom you may need to withdraw, but otherwise, friends are a gift from the Lord and should not be tossed. The only caveat I would suggest is that if there is an issue about your marriage that troubles you, choose very carefully with whom you share it. Recount every little disagreement on social media to hasten your divorce.