[Ask April Masini]

Your best friend is unhappy in his life and he is acting out his personal anger and aggression on you and your marriage because he can’t get the results he wants by acting out on his own wife. Your instincts are right that your marriage is not safe with him in the picture — even as your wife’s platonic friend because he does not have her best interests at heart or yours. He’s not a true friend to her, but she doesn’t see that for some reason. There is something in her life that is allowing her to accept and foster whatever it is she gets from him, whether it’s saving someone who’s hurt, getting attention for herself, or something else.

Your marriage has bumbled along without incident and you’ve sort of fallen into it — YOU being the one to make the move and the adjustment to a new country. Now, the dynamic needs to change. This is grown up stuff.

My advice is that you tell your wife that your marriage is being compromised and that her friendship with your soon to be ex-best friend is going to be come a deal breaker. Explain to her that while she thinks this you’re being silly, you’d rather not debate that. Instead, you’d like empathy and loyalty within your marriage. You want to be a united front, which is what a marriage is at it’s best, and that this friendship she’s forged with your friend is driving a wedge in the marriage and it’s hurting you. It’s time to get him out of both of your lives until a time when he’s emotionally healthy. Right now, he’s not. But don’t make this too much about him. It’s about you and your wife.

Marriage and relationships require sacrifice. As a single person (which is how your friend is functioning in his open marriage) you can be selfish and do what YOU want to do at pretty much all times. When you’re in a committed relationship — whether it’s a marriage or parent/child relationship, you have to do what is right for the relationship and often, the other person. If your wife doesn’t understand this, she doesn’t have the maturity and wisdom to see this marriage through.

If her friendship is more important than your marriage, then you have to understand she’s choosing him over you and your marriage is on it’s way to the finish line. 😳

Get in there and talk to her and fight for what is yours — your marriage — and if it’s no longer yours, let it go. She has to see how serious you are about this. If you are a doormat, prepared to be walked on. This is a turning point in the relationship for you.

I wish you good luck.

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