5 Signs Your Friends Are Being Too Judgmental About Your Relationship

Let's be honest: We all judge other people's relationships.

Certain standards of behavior have been deemed essential for a healthy romance, and we all judge other people's partnerships to see if they align with our personal criteria.

But what do you do when it's your relationship that's being judged? Do you listen to the criticism? Or do you chock it all up to jealousy and a simple difference of opinion?

All relationships should be judged on a case-by-case basis, but there are certain red flags that indicate your friends are being a little too critical in their assessment. Keep scrolling for five signs your friends are being too judgmental about your relationship.

Your Partnership Is the Topic of Gossip

If your friends are genuinely concerned about your well-being in your relationship, they're not going to run and tell the first person they see about all the problems they've perceived. Instead, they'll likely bring them up to you, confide in one other close friend for advice or simply keep quiet about them. If your relationship has become the new hot topic to gossip about, your friends are being judgmental simply because they want to judge, not because they're looking out for you.

(Pretty Little Liars via Freeform)

 

They're Focused on Their Own Opinion

We've all been in those conversations before—you're trying to confide in a friend about your situation, only to have them cut you off midway through a sentence and launch into a totally irrelevant story about themselves. If you find that's how most of the conversations about your relationship tend to go when you're chatting with your friends, you can't really take their opinion seriously. First, they're likely talking just to hear their own voice. And second, they didn't really listen to what you had to say, which means they can't have a very well-developed opinion yet.

 

They Haven't Spent Any Time With Your S.O.

If your friends haven't spent any time with your S.O., they can't really have well-developed judgments about your relationship. That's the problem with introducing friends and significant others—you're trying to mix two groups of people who you know really well, but who don't really know each other. It's easy to make snap judgments about another person, but it's also easy to misunderstand a person if you haven't gotten to know them at their core. Give your friends a little time to get to know your S.O. before you take their concerns too seriously.

(Mean Girls via Paramount Pictures)

 

Jealousy Has Been a Problem Before

Although it's not always the case, jealousy can be a big factor in your friend's judgment about your relationship. It can either be jealousy of the fact that you're dating someone and they aren't, or jealousy that someone else is soaking up the valuable time you used to spend together. Whatever the case, you can't take the concerns of the jealous friend seriously, as they're trying to push their own agenda onto your relationship. If jealousy has been a problem in the past, you can likely assume that their current concerns are stemming from fear about their own position, and not any valid fears about your relationship.

 

They're Too Invested

At the end of the day, your relationship is between you and your S.O., not your friends. It's more than okay for your friends to care about you, but if they seem way too involved in your relationship, there's probably something else going on. No friend should need to know every single detail of your romance, nor should they have an opinion on each and every thing you and your S.O. do. Friends who are too involved in your partnership are looking for drama, which means their opinions should probably be taken with a grain of salt.

 

Looking for more advice on combining your romantic world with that of your friendships? Click HERE for tips on what to do if you feel like your friends are ruining your relationship.