Where-I’m-Stuck: How to Make Couple Friends (w/Shasta Nelson!)

A few words from Shasta Nelson

This is week three with the friend-of-all-friends Shasta Nelson (pictured below) who is answering the third of four “Where I’m Stuck” questions submitted by blog readers. And I just keep saying it because it’s true: I know you might not normally think of friendship as something that requires reflection or skill, but Shasta has got some wisdom that just might change your mind on that.

Shasta, if you don’t know her, is the C.E.O. of GirlFriendCircles –the only online community that matches women with new friends in 35 U.S. cities. She also wrote the book Friendships Don’t Just Happen and writes a column for the Huffington Post. And as I pointed out, in a serious bonus, she has an MDiv to her name as well.

Question 3:

How do people make couple friends? It seems like some people hang out in big groups of mixed gender friends, but we work in two different places and don’t meet a lot of people together. What might we be missing?

Here’s what Shasta has to say about that:

Couple friends doesn’t mean you both meet another couple at the same time, as much as it means you eventually connect as two couples.  In other words, it’s fabulous that you both work in different places as it gives you more opportunities to meet a variety of people that you can then invite into your lives.

So the first step is that you each connect with another friend and eventually say, “Hey, would you be open to a double-date? It would be fun to meet each other’s spouses!” From there, getting something on the calendar is key since we can so often have a tendency of good intentions but never quite get around to offering up exact dates and events to the other.  If the conversation didn’t automatically go there, I’d follow up with an email saying something along the lines of, “I talked to my husband and here are some dates that would work well for us… a barbecue at our house on Saturday, happy hour after work on Thurs, or brunch next Sunday at a cafe of your choice.  Let me know what works best on your end and we’ll go from there!”  Emails with specifics are one of the easiest ways to make sure that each person can more easily bring their spouse into the decision.

And here’s a note on expectations: To be good couple friends doesn’t mean that both guys have to want to spend alone time together, both girls have to be best friends, and that all four of us just adore each other.  While that can happen every so often, it doesn’t mean that anything less than that isn’t still valuable and meaningful.  It’s completely okay if the two guys aren’t fast friends, they can still be friendly to each other and enjoy the group friendship. It’s completely okay if your husband finds the woman a bit annoying, he can still learn to be kind and appreciate the fact that you want your friend and husband to get to know each other.  In a couple friendship, like any other friendship, familiarity comes with time spent together.  There’s a lot of benefit to having a mixed social group even if not every single person can see a good friendship with every single other person.