Living with friends who are a couple

Thursday | May 30, 2024

Love Letters Relationships

Living with friends who are a couple

Hi Meredith!

I have no love life whatsoever but I’m tangled up in my friends’ love lives because I live with them. They’ve been a couple for a long time. I’ve been single for a long time. We all moved in together in the pandemic.

Things were great for a while, but I always had the inkling that they invited me into their home to fix their relationship. And one of them actually told me once, maybe a year into living together, “I don’t know if we could stay together without you.”

They’re both pretty headstrong and self-involved so they fight a lot. I’m more of a non-confrontational listener type. But I’m at the point where I feel like I’m just totally lost in them. It’s not good. I’m moving soon, and I have two dilemmas:

1. Is it terrible to wait until I move out to unpack my issues with them? I feel like if we’re to continue being friends, I need to finally be heard. But it’s a bit scary because…

2. One of the people in the relationship has anger issues. She drinks too much, which I think might be part of it. I don’t like the way she talks to me or to her partner.

For a long time, she didn’t get mad at me and I flattered myself that is was because I was soo emotionally intelligent or whatever. But now I just see that I was making myself so so small and getting into whatever shape she wanted. I don’t do that anymore, so we don’t get along anymore. I do think healing could be possible there. She has some awesomeness in her. But a lot would need to change. I’m def willing to not be friends anymore.

But my friend who’s in the relationship with this person… I’m worried about her. And I guess this is my second question: How do you talk to someone who’s maybe in some kind of abusive relationship? I’ve tried to bring things up gently before and she always jumps to her partner’s defense.

– Tangled

Thank goodness you’re moving. That will change a lot, I think.

Wait until you’re out of there to process the experience. After you have a break, you can make better decisions about what to say and to whom. It sounds like you do need to unpack all of this, but not while they’re on the couch staring at you. Get comfortable in your new spot. There’s no deadline.

One thing you might want to tell them as you leave is that you look forward to sending time with them separately. That’s not an insult to anyone, just a fact. When you’re around a couple a lot, you miss out on one-on-one, intimate conversations. Asking for that – especially from the friend you still like – might make it easier to get a real snapshot of what’s happening.

Please know that I’m not a licensed anything. If you want to know how to talk to a friend about possible abuse, there are resources. I find that some sites designed for teens (like this one) are incredibly helpful to adults – because it’s not like all of us grownups got a great education about this stuff.

Again, take your time with this. You will get to it. It’ll feel easier, I hope, when you’re not, quite literally, in the middle of it.

Congrats on the boundaries and finding a better place to be.

– Meredith

Going through it? Send your own question about relationships (dating, divorce, breakups, singleness, and friendships) to the anonymous form or email [email protected].

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Featured Comment

“Move out and leave your hosts with a simple ‘thank you so much.’ There’s an old saying: “Don’t burn your bridges.” Keep your relationship with them friendly and conflict-free. You never know when you might need them in the future.”

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