Lovers greater than friends? How Mumbaikars are navigating friendships after marriage

Illustration/Uday Mohite

When Sarah Serene Ravada, 30, got married to her college sweetheart Joshua and moved to Mumbai in 2018, they shifted in with two of their friends from Coimbatore. In a city where the couple had no other connections, their college friend Matthew and his cousin Ronald, became their chosen family.

"Joshua and I set clear boundaries before our wedding. It was important to both of us to give each other the space to maintain those bonds outside the marriage," says the digital marketing freelancer from Goregaon East.

So she had a rude shock last year, when Ronald shared he was getting engaged and then ghosted them. "A month later, he got married and there was still no response. We asked Matthew what was wrong, and he said Ronald's wife may have forbidden him from keeping contact with us."

By this time, Matthew too had gotten married and moved to Hyderabad with his wife, and Ravara could see the same story repeating. "Whenever I invited him home, he would say his wife was not okay with it. Last month, he called Joshua and me when he was drunk and said he missed us and wanted to visit us. The next day, he cancelled."

Sarah Serene Ravada

Ravada is not the only Millennial taken aback by the breakdown in friendships after marriage. Recently, author, sex educator and content creator Leeza Mangaldas, 35, posted about how her friends, particularly those from the opposite sex, had disappeared from her life after they got married. She attributed this to not only society frowning upon opposite sex friendships, but also married men viewing friendships as "a waste of time". What seemed to surprise many was how this still remains an issue in this day and age, when we're no longer battling the same social restrictions that our parents did.

Take "velcro spouses"; you know, that one friend who always turns up to hangouts with their spouse in tow. It's what caused a rift between Bani Shukla, 28, a chartered accountant from Kandivli, and her best friend since childhood. "I never got to meet or speak to my friend Ravi without his wife around. It's not that I
disliked her; we'd grown to become friends. But there were things happening in my personal life that I wanted to share with Ravi, but I couldn't tell his wife. When I requested him to meet me one on one, they ended up taking it the wrong way, and we fell apart," she says.

Vidhya Thakkar says after her friend got married, they can barely meet for more than hour, even on birthdays. Pic/Nimesh Dave

It's not always an issue of opposite-sex friendships. Vidhya A Thakkar, 30, a book blogger, had thought her friends circle would expand as her trio of girlfriends got married and brought their husbands into the fold. That's not what happened. "Since one of my friends got married, she now has to somehow squeeze out time for us amid all her responsibilities," says Thakkar.

For Harshad Pawaskar, 45, it was about the responsibilities that came with marriage. From meeting several times a week to now gathering a few times a year, he does feel the change keenly, but doesn't know what can be done. "Now, meetups involve checking each other's schedules weeks in advance. And even then, someone or the other won't be able to make it," he rues.

Harshad Pawaskar

"The other day, I was passing by a cafe where we'd hang out almost every day. I couldn't remember the last time we had been there," says the Charni Road-based photographer.

Sulabha Subramaniam, a Thane-based psychotherapist specialising in marital counselling, makes sense of it. "Relying solely on one's partner for emotional and social needs is too much burden to place on one person. It's important to have friends outside of marriage."