When You Split, Who Gets the Friends?

It's easy to believe that when we marry it's for love. But when we divorce it becomes clear that Tina Turner was right -- what's love got to do with it?

Nothing, because it's all about who gets what.

I know that trips up many people; thankfully I avoided much of that. Deciding to co-parent 50-50 was easy; so was divvying up our stuff -- I was more than happy to have him cart away the Eames chair I never liked anyway and I know he wasn't going to fight me for the hotel silver-plate utensils I'd been collecting for years from flea markets and frenzied eBay bids.

What was harder to figure out was something much more important than our stuff -- which friends were mine and which were his. And that was a decision that neither we nor a judge or mediator could make; our friends got to decide for themselves.

Divorces aren't hard only for the couple splitting or their kids -- they create all sorts of dilemmas when it comes to friendships, and not just when a "friend" is part of a splitting couple's love triangle.

Should friends congratulate one and say they're sorry to the other? Should they be friendly with both or pick one -- him or her? Who gets the Evite to the blowout 40th birthday party or the casual backyard barbecue?

Sometimes you get lucky and everyone actually acts like adults and gets along without playing favorites. But more likely, divorcing couples discover a lot more about their friends than they ever expected.

A few friends will spill their guts in support -- "I never liked him anyway," "You deserved better," "What a jerk!" I know they mean well but let's not forget that I once loved the guy and carried his babies. Did they feel that way all along? What if we got together some day down the road? I know a few couples who split and then she remarried the "jerk."

Other friends will take an emotional inventory of their own marriage and avoid you, afraid they might somehow "catch" the divorce bug. You might "put ideas" into a marginally happy wife's head or now that you're a "lonely" divorcee, you might hubby-poach. In any event, you're just not going to fit well into dinner parties anymore -- who wants an odd number at that Martha Stewart-inspired table setting?

So the newly divorced often need to find new friends, which isn't as easy as it was in college or even at Back to School night; most of the friends I made as an adult were other parents in my sons' elementary school. I just hoped they picked friends who had really cool parents.

When some of those cool parents divorced, too, we new divorcees huddled together and added a stray new single woman or two. And that's when I realized how different friendship can be when you're solo -- it's often tinged with complicated emotions.

Sometimes there's envy over who divorced "better," who's dating more, who found love first, who nabs a new hubby.

And then, friends or not, you could start thinking like competitors; the dating pool for middle-aged divorced women is pretty small. The prettier, fitter ones are bound to get hit on more often as will the ones who know how to flirt better or have no problems being booty calls, leaving those left behind to either feel jealous or insecure, "What does she have that I don't?"

Worse yet, you might discover that you're dating a guy a girlfriend has already winked at on Match, met for a Starbucks date or slept with -- or is about to. I like to recycle as much as anyone else, but the usual glass, aluminum and paper -- not men!

I used to feel bad for men. They typically suffer more than women post-divorce because for many, their wife managed their social circle. Now I'm thinking maybe they're the lucky ones.

How has your divorce affected your friendships?