Two People Asked The New York Times For Relationship Advice. I Have Honest Answers For Both.

Love is hard.

In today’s edition of “People Sent Questions To Advice Columnists And I Am Answering Them,” we have two letters that were published in the New York Times SocialQ’s column.

Should We Stop Being Friends With A Couple Because They They Yada-Yada’d My Wife?

My spouse and I were invited to a wedding. Actually, I was: The invitation was addressed to Mr. John Doe and Guest. But the bridal couple has known my spouse and me only as a couple, and they’ve been guests in our home many times. My spouse, having been erased from the invitation, views this as a friendship-ender. I do not. Thoughts?

JOHN DOE

Of course, you don’t have a problem with it. They like you more!

Well, they might like you more. 

There are two possibilities:

1. they like you more and your wife needs to get over it because this isn’t some Maoist work farm where everyone starves equally.

2. they didn’t think about this at all and your wife is reading way too much into it. They have lots of invitations to send and they don’t have time to be incredibly hyperconscious about every little idiotic thing one of their loser friends is going to take from it. They probably invited you by name because you’re a man and in the old days of the Oregon Trail or Mad Men, women were just the et al in an invite. So your name was probably on some list because you have a dick and the wedding planner saw the +1 and didn’t know anything about your wife or the deep details of her relationship with this couple and just called her “guest.”

In general, you’d imagine the second one here is more likely—that you and your wife are reading too much into some innocuous nothing—but the fact that your wife thinks this nothing would be a “friendship-ender” makes me think it is actually very possible they just do like you more.

Ending a friendship because of something like this is not a thing people do if they value that friendship. The foundation of friendship is generously interpreting the other’s actions as they pertain to the integrity of the friendship. Indeed, it is the rock on which the church of friendship is built.

Your wife isn’t doing that, and if she doesn’t value the friendship, why should they?

My advice? Tell your wife to grow up and stop making this other couple’s wedding about her, but if she can’t do that and be polite at the reception, she shouldn’t come, and you’ll just use your plus one on someone else.

Why Won’t My Boyfriend Skip Family Vacations To Travel With Me?