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We all have heard the saying, "Birds of a Feather Flock Together". This is why, I believe, we sometimes resort to this saying when we are in relationships.

We sometimes try to equate what the friends of our partners do to what our partners are capable of doing. This is something we’ve all encountered. All of us have been in this situation on either side, both sides for some of us. We think that our partners must act like their friends.

My friend Lisa is going through this right now. When she took a trip to Catalina, she met a guy named David. They ended up exchanging contact information and continued to court each other. It’s been some months now and they are involved in a committed relationship. Lisa knows all of his friends and their wives or girlfriends. The problem is that sometimes when they go out, his friends have different females (not their wives) with them. They act as if nothing is wrong.

So, Lisa is now thinking differently about David. She’s starting to wonder what he does when she isn’t around. Her argument is “your friends do it, so you must do it too.” When she was telling me about it, I had to admit that I’ve had that conversation before. The only difference was that I was on the receiving end. There was a man in my life that would always question a certain friend of mine.

He didn’t like the fact that I would hang out with her. My justification was “just because I’m her friend doesn’t mean that I’m her.” His reply was always “you hang around her, so you must be like her.” I would always try to explain to him that, yes we do have similarities – that’s why we’re friends; we have similarities but we are also different. “If that was the case I wouldn’t be with you” is what I would say. He would always say, “That’s probably what she says to all those guys.” Needless to say, this relationship didn’t last.

Yet, it poses a very important question. Can we really judge our companion by the actions of their friends? Think about it for a second. Would you really want someone to judge you by the things your friends might do? I mean, we love our friends to death but we want to be judged by our own actions. You might have a lot of similarities but there are certain things that you wouldn’t trade.

That’s why we have to keep in mind that our mates have certain things that they wouldn’t trade either. We have to realize that we each are our own person. If you’re dealing with someone who knows who they are and isn’t easily influenced by others - you should be okay. Now, if the person is easily influenced - that’s another story in itself.

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