Should Newly Married Women Only Hang With Other Married Women?

by LJ Knight 
On the season premiere of LaLa’s Full Court on VH1, Lala’s close friend actor Tyrese Gibson, posed a few questions for LaLa. “Are you a wife?” Lala responded that she felt she was. He then went on to ask her why she wasn’t hanging with other married women?  A valid question that LaLa did not have an answer to.
I know what some of you might have been thinking when you saw this scene. “Does he expect for her just dump her old friends just because she is getting married? So she is married now and that means she is somehow better than her single friends? “No my dears. That is not what Tyrese meant at all. Nor does he expect her to dump all of her friends who are single in search for good, wholesome married ones. This was not him encouraging her to be disloyal to her friends, rather him insisting that she fully realizes the new place in life she is entering.
When you reach certain levels of change in life, then there are certain things that you once did that you can no longer engage in.  There are certain activities, influences, which you must forego, if you want to make the move into the new change into your life a graceful one.  If you are truly serious about the direction you are going in. In the case of being married, there are obviously some things that a married woman can no longer do. There are certain expectations of her that she must meet now that she never had before. This in itself could cause a wedge to be driven between a newly married friend and her single ones.  The current friends are not in the same head space as she is. They are not in the same place in life and do not have similar expectations on them.  So while I do not think that any newly married woman should dump all of her single friends, she should invest time in finding some who are in the same life place as she is. Chances are these will be the friends who can relate more to her new life as a married woman without any feelings of jealousy, animosity, or abandonment on their part. They will genuinely understand her new role and the responsibilities that accompany it.
Think of it this way. We choose our friends based on certain commonalities that we have with them. Often, we are in similar places in our lives as our friends and this is part of the reason why we are able to relate to one another so well. Once one of the people has a shift in life and moves on to a different place in their life then that commonality between the two decreases and there can often be a strain on the friendship. Sometimes our friends can be influential over our decisions and life in general.  One friend now has more in jeopardy to lose than the other. The friendship may not necessarily end but there could be issues between the two involved down the line. This is not just in the terms of one of the friends getting married. This can be applied in many different circumstances.  For instance, if you were once a hoodlum involved in illegal activities, you cannot expect to stay on a clear and steady path and still be so heavily invested in friends who are still involved in a criminal lifestyle. It is unrealistic for anyone to believe it will. You will be sucked into their activities and this could affect what you have.  Newly married woman should consider this when dealing with their single freinds and the activities they engage in with them. You have more to lose than she does.
Again, I am not suggesting that married women dump their single friends because there probably still are some commonalities that they will always share and memories that have bonded them together for life. However, with a drastic new change in life, come changes in your lifestyle. If any newly married women are lucky enough to have mature friends who can accept her changes then I say they are keepers. Meanwhile, there is nothing wrong with finding new friends to build new bonds and memories with based on one of the most important commonalities you both have in your life.  After all, you have just embarked on one of the most intimate, dramatic, climactic, momentous, life meta-morphing institutions you will ever experience in life. Marriage.