✼ Family Matters
Who Gets the Friends? WHEN FAMILY FRIENDS DIVORCE By Tony Hicks
W
endy Allard received about 200 cards the last Christmas she spent married to a longtime sportscaster. The next year, living as a single parent, she estimates she received five. “Maybe eight … call it eight,” says Allard. “Now, I’m not sure how many he got …” Either way, life changed dramatically for Allard in 2000, the first holiday season she spent single since marrying. Her kids were 5 and 3 when the marriage broke up, and, like so many in her situation, not only did her marital status change. Her relationships with her friends changed, as did those of her kids. “You realize you’re married to a bunch of people and you don’t know it,” says Allard, who has since tied the knot for the second time and added a daughter to her family. “A lot of people eliminate everybody. You’ve got to keep everyone together. It’s work.” Breaking up a family is, of course, rarely easy. The obvious effect is two people who vowed to stay together through sickness and health did get sick – of each other. Then there’s the children, affected by the breakup, which sometimes can take years to recover from. But one factor few participants consider is how their split will affect their friends.
14
Boston Parents Paper | December 2018
“We socialized three or four times a week,” Allard says. “It was work-related, but those people were my friends, and we didn’t really socialize after that. It stopped.” Divorce rates have dropped by 18 percent since 2008, according to Bloomberg News, citing a study done by University of Maryland professor Philip Cohen. But between 1990 and 2015, the divorce rate doubled for people between the age of 55 and 64 and tripled for Americans 65 and older, according to the same report. Bottom line? Plenty of families still split up. And while there’s plenty of numbers thrown around concerning divorce, there’s so much quantifiable data on the nonfamily members around them. Things can get awkward, and family friends often feel as if they have to take sides, which can lead to hurt feelings. “Friends who I thought were my best friends turned their backs on me,” says Tracey Fordahl, of Concord. “It was very difficult not only for me, but emotionally difficult for my kids because, along with my husband, (the friends) decided to trash me socially. Which resulted in me constantly trying to defend myself to my kids and the social circle in which I was part. Things got so bad that I had to move away in order to stop all the nonsense.” We have therapy and courts for couples and families, either to save a situation or negotiate a peaceful way out.