Friendship and Marriage

Welcome to Episode 6 of Six Voices, One Story.

In this honest and heartfelt conversation, six lifelong friends, Dee, Shaneena, Stephanie, Rhonda, Theresa, and Bisea explore the relationship between friendship and marriage, and how both can flourish together through intentionality, communication, and grace.

Hosted by Rhonda, this episode dives into the joys and challenges of maintaining meaningful friendships while navigating marriage. The ladies share how their relationships have evolved through dating, engagement, marriage, and the many seasons in between. They discuss creating healthy boundaries, honoring their spouses, making space for lifelong friendships, and embracing the reality that relationships naturally shift over time.

Together, they reflect on supporting one another through life's transitions, learning to communicate changing expectations, and recognizing that healthy friendships don't compete with marriage—they strengthen it. Through honesty, laughter, and faith-filled wisdom, they remind listeners that both friendship and marriage thrive when rooted in love, respect, and intentional care.

This episode is a reminder that marriage doesn't have to mark the end of meaningful friendships. Instead, it can become another season where both relationships deepen, grow, and reflect the beauty of God's design for community.

In this episode:

• Navigating friendship through dating, engagement, and marriage
• Creating healthy boundaries that honor both friends and spouses
• Supporting friendships through changing seasons of life
• Communicating expectations with love and grace
• Letting friendships evolve without losing connection
• Why healthy marriages and healthy friendships can strengthen one another

Reflection Question:

How do the friendships in your life support the important relationships you have?

If this conversation encouraged you, be sure to subscribe, share this episode with a friend, and join us next time for another honest conversation on Six Voices, One Story.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:12

Hello. Welcome back to Six Voices, One Story. I'm your host today, Rhonda.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

And listen, we have an awesome episode for you today. Today we're going to discuss the intersection of friendship and marriage. How female friendships support married women, how different marital statuses can shape friendships, and why our group, this group, has been able to navigate these differences successfully. But before we get any go any further, I'd like the ladies to introduce themselves. Share a little tidbit about yourself. I could start. As I said, I'm Rhonda, and I'm a spin instructor.

SPEAKER_03 0:56

Hello, this is Dee, and one of my favorite hobbies is volunteering.

SPEAKER_07 1:02

Janina and I love to cruise. I'm Bicea and I am a missionary. I am Teresa and I love to cook.

SPEAKER_06 1:12

Hi, I'm Stephanie, and I have committed to reading 15 books this year.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

So all right, so let's get started. As each of us know, our friendship includes women in different life stages. Some are married, some single, some are parents, and some aren't. And over the years, we've learned how to support each other through the different experiences. So let me reach out to Stephanie and Shanina. You two are part of the three, because I am the third women, married women within the group. And I believe and I believe that we can agree that marriage is a unique covenant relationship. But friendship also plays an important role in supporting and strengthening.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

How do you see your role in marriage, both as a spouse and a friend? Janina, I'll let you go first.

SPEAKER_05 2:27

I'm sorry. How do I see my role in marriage? Can you please elaborate on it?

SPEAKER_02 2:40

As a married woman, and being a part of a group that everyone is not married, how are you able to differentiate or be a part of both of the groups? Being married and being in a group that everyone isn't married.

SPEAKER_05 3:03

So I will say that it takes communicating with my husband to tell him the importance of our friendship. And I share with him our calendar of events ahead of time to make sure that he is very aware of how important our friendship is. As I stated in our last episode, I, for one, feel as though Ladies Accord is my family. And to have to for that, I showed it in the wedding when you all had a special seating. So my husband, he knows for sure that Ladies Accord is definitely a part of my life and will continue to be a part of my life. So that's how I support the is it says like covenant is a covenant within the sisterhood or covenant with my husband? Well, being in both roles, it's not it's not it's not difficult, it's not difficult at all because we don't meet as often as we did before. It it may have been a potential issue when we were younger because we did spend a lot of time together. But I think now, because even though we don't have the star events as we did prior, I think it's I think it's okay. I think I can maneuver. I've been maneuvering pretty well, as I stated before, communicating to him well in advance. Like this is what we had, this is our time. You have to figure out what you're gonna eat for dinner. I think that's key. Yep. Communication, Stephanie?

SPEAKER_06 4:39

Yeah, uh, Shanina, I'm glad you mentioned the time span of our friendship and that brought it into perspective for me. So when we initially started our group, we were very busy and I had young children and a new marriage. And so I did struggle, I think, with navigating that journey and making sure that my husband did not feel isolated or neglected. It was not overwhelming, but certainly required a lot more mindfulness from me and time management. Now, as someone who's been married over 18 years, it is a lot easier because my children are older. In the beginning, I felt like my home was a lot more open. I had I was able to have you know events at my home, but now that my children are older, my children have friends over the house. So it's it's it's different, even though they don't require so much of my attention. So for me, navigating the friendships in the beginning, my husband understood the importance of it. In fact, he actually celebrated it because he recognized when I came back home I was a lot more relaxed and you know, I was able to be more fluid in our relationship, and I didn't feel so isolated. Like he knew I had a space to go to to just support Stephanie.

SPEAKER_05 6:04

Yeah, and with I have been married for almost 10 months now, but my husband and I often have conversations on the fact that I had friendships before we got married, and he understands that. So he also celebrates it as well, too, because he knows how important Lady's Accord is to me.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

That's good. I want to say, Stephanie, thank you because you were the first within the group to get married, and so I came behind you and I was able to see how you navigated, you know, being married and being with the group. So I took a page from your book, and communication was key. And my husband also saw the importance of this group for me. He knew, and actually, he envied it. He wanted to, you know, I don't have anyone that I meet and I've known for the amount of time that you've known these ladies. So I've never had an issue with my husband and meeting with this group. So let me turn the tables and go to my single sisters, Basia, Teresa, and Dee. How did you see your role as a witness to the marriages and as one who supports that government?

SPEAKER_03 7:31

Well, I will this is Dee. I would first like to say I'm so very happy for the blessing of marriage. Inside and outside of the group, each of the sisters that are married have displayed admirable traits of being godly and loving. So as being a single for now, I'm just excited, I'm excited about their roles as wives, and I'm taking notes for my future husband.

SPEAKER_07 8:02

Um well, I have a mentor who's been married for about 50 years almost. And so I have a particular way I am when it relates to marriage. Like, don't interfere. I pray for my sisters and their marriages. I'm talking to one of my friends who's married and I hear her husband in the background. I say, Well, okay, I'll talk to you later. Even recently, Shanina said she's been married for 10 10 months. I went to her house because we were supposed to meet up at a specific time and I waited outside on the step. She's like, Why are you outside on the step? I'm like, because you're married now. She's like, what does that mean? You know, you can still come in out. So, you know, I'm very respectful and mindful of that. And also, you know, as we do devotional sometimes, and we talk about the fruit of the spirit, and I think it's a good thing for the women that are married to so they can, you know, have solid marriages, marriages that display the fruit of the spirit, and so just encouraging them in any way in every way that we can, being a space for them to be able to let their hair down and not have to be on all the time. So, whatever it is they need, I try to be that person.

SPEAKER_04 9:11

And for me, I take marriage very seriously. It's the first covenant God created. I love the idea of marriage, and there have been weddings that I've been invited to that I did not go to because I did not want to be a witness to that covenant for a host of reasons. So I think when you are invited to a wedding, especially a Christian wedding, you say that I'm going to be just as committed to this marriage as the two people who are entering that covenant. So I try to support my married sisters through prayer, at times fasting, being a listening ear, supporting them, creating a safe space where they can tell their truth, whether it's about their marriage, about their husbands, about life in general, and at times holding their hand through a season if necessary. I think those are the big things for me. Prayer is a big one, is a huge one for me to pray for marriages because I believe that without prayer, marriages just aren't going to be strong.

SPEAKER_07 10:27

And you would be surprised because we pray once a week for years, and we always pray for marriages. And you would think that we all marry because you know, the way Teresa be crying about marriages, you know. So it's very important to us that we they be successful in their marriages.

SPEAKER_02 10:42

And that support is very important because, like you said, Basia marriages can and are under attack. So please continue to pray for the three of us who are currently married, as I know that some in our group still has the desire to be married. Amen. Let me ask some questions to everyone. What does that encouragement look like within a friendship? Encouraging the married women. I mean, I know we just spoke about encouraging, but can you give me an example where you have encouraged one of the married ladies? How did you do it? Paint that picture for us.

SPEAKER_07 11:30

Well, but Shadina being the most recent married woman, I I wanted to do something for her as far as their first, was it your first Christmas together or something? Something I said, oh Shina, I want to celebrate something for you. You said, Well, you can buy yourself a ring. Who was that? Yes, yes, it was Christmas. So yeah, it's just I think about it and I said, Oh, this is your first Christmas together. What can I do? You know, whatever it is. So that's something that I did for her. I want to celebrate her first Christmas together.

SPEAKER_05 11:57

Top of Snakes. And when I got engaged, it was a beautiful time that everyone within our group was so excited for me. You all came over and celebrated and decorated my home and brought food over. And you know, then I had my fiancee now, husband, you know, at the time, pick I called him, and you know, everybody was like, Congratulations, congratulations. Oh, I was just I was just in awe of the support and love that you know I had received. It was great.

SPEAKER_07 12:29

Oh, could you give me a picture behind you? Um this is a picture, I'm sure y'all all can't see it, but it's a picture of Shanina at her wedding with her husband and us as a group. And I just look at the picture and see how happy we were. Like we're just so genuinely just happy for her. And so when I see the picture, it makes me happy that she can be surrounded by people who are genuinely happy because you see so many things on social media about friends getting married and everything falling apart, people being jealous, all kinds of things happening. So I'm just grateful that we can have a tender heart, a true heart, a heart of God towards our sister.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

Amen to that. Amen. I support my sisters by having a listening ear. I think Stephanie was the one who mentioned that as a married person, we need to have an outback. One of my gifts is definitely just listening. I will just listen, and you can talk all night, and I will listen. If you want advice, you'll ask me for it and I will kindly get it. But supporting by way of having a listening ear to my sisters, because I get it any turn. I get it any turn.

SPEAKER_03 13:42

D. Yeah, I think that is so many different things that I do for encouragement with my sisters that are married. Listening with a non-judgmental ear and respecting their time, also including their spouses with my concern for them is important for me. Whether I verbally say, you know, house, you know, you know, their spouse, or just, you know, always asking about them, you know, realizing that their spouse is an extension of them and they're equally as important because a two is one.

SPEAKER_02 14:27

And you're faithful in doing that every time you speak with me, D, you always say, How's my brother? You always do that. And I'm grateful for that because it tells me that you see him in the forefront of your mind. When you see me, you see him. And I'm grateful for that. Teresa, would you like to respond? Would you repeat the question again? The question was what does encouragement look like within supporting the mayor focus?

SPEAKER_04 15:03

For me, it is like you said, being a listening ear. So my spiritual gifts are word of wisdom, word of knowledge. And so when people are speaking with me, God will show me some things. So I do tend to be a little bit more vocal when it comes to married people, and that I may say something, you know, and say, Hey, have you seen it this way? Or challenge you all. You know that at least for two of you, not you yet, Shanina, hopefully never, I have come back and and asked some questions that were very pointed to have you rethink some things. And as my C is said, like God has really given me almost an extreme burden for marriages. So I spend a great deal of time on my knees for marriages, and what's really important to me is communication. I feel like most marriages fail because of poor communication. So I am always that person who's going to say to you, How did you say it? Did they hear you? Was it clear? What is their understanding? Because that's just my heart that I think communication, again, why most relationships fail is because we aren't clear in our communication or we don't know how the other person hears it. So I tend to focus on those things, but I'm still always praying. And I'm always asking about my brothers. And I think that one of the reasons why this has been so successful is because all of your husbands understood the importance of the relationship before you married them. Because if not, then I would have had to kill them. I'm only kidding. I'm only kidding.

SPEAKER_03 16:44

Maybe. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 16:50

Well, that's right. So let me guess this. As married women, we can admit we have a unique blessing, and that is our husbands. They serve as partners, leaders, and a source of support. But we also had the benefit of these lovely ladies, ladies who are godly women, full of wisdom. And we can turn to you for encouragement. How is their friendship supported your marriage individually? And other female friendships marry deny.

SPEAKER_06 17:30

For me, it's important that I have another woman who thinks like a woman correct me on how we think like women. So some, you know, oftentimes it's women, whether you're married or not, our emotions, our hormones, our stressors, whatever it may be in life, can alter how we see things. And we need a woman to stand beside us or stand on the opposite side of that thing and say, Hey, did you think about standing over here and seeing it this way? So that is how my friendships with each one of these ladies have supported my marriage and challenging me, whatever I may have, you know, how I may see things and want to protect my point of view. They challenge me and certainly use the word of God, not just their women's instinct, but the word of God to say, let's look at it from God's perspective as well.

SPEAKER_02 18:28

That's definitely important, Stephanie, because as we know, women, we're emotional. And for me, I know I can go to eight, nine, ten very easily. And I will need one of you to bring me down. And like you said, to say, okay, you got that out, look at it from this perspective. So it's very important that we have this bond. Yes, I do have ye and Shanina, and you understand it from a married perspective, but I can go also to any one of you, single or not, and you can take me from my eight, nine, ten and just bring me down to say, you need to calm down and think of it like this. Shanina.

SPEAKER_06 19:18

Can I just add to that too? Because it doesn't require that you be married to understand, I think, oftentimes a married person's perspective. But sometimes you may say, you know what, absolutely, Stephanie, I see it that way too. And so, how are we going to answer it in a godly way? How are we going to respond to edify Christ? And that's what each one of you ladies bring for me, whether you're married or not. It's just to remind me of, and and so because you represent Christ, how are you going to respond?

SPEAKER_05 19:51

You know, this question made me think of the fact that I have a lot of friends, and the ones who are married, it seems like it shifted a little bit, not within this group. So, what I'm stating is that as soon as I got married, now the questions are, how's married life? How's your husband? You know, and sometimes I feel that I lost my identity as Shanina, their friend, and now they're just relating to me as Shanina the wife. And sometimes I struggle with that, but I understand because it is a new journey for me. Because yes, I am a wife, so I know that I have to, it's a continuous way for my mindset to shift, and it's taking a bit. But Stephanie had said something so important to me. She said, It takes time, you know, and I can be influenced by social media, and I can see someone being the perfect wife, and oh, like I'm not doing this, Lord. Help me, Lord. Like, what is it? But Stephanie said, It's okay, Shanina. This is what you're going to, this is what's going to happen. So I appreciated that. And within this group, the prayers we pray every week. You know, people pray for my husband, they pray for me as a wife, and and also just the encouragement that has definitely helped me to know that it's okay, it's okay during this cleaving and weaving process. It's okay, it's okay. God's got us.

SPEAKER_02 21:34

So, for the single ladies, and uh, this might be a little redundant here. What are some of the things you consider or think about when it comes to friendships with the married women in this room? Did we kind of go over that already, Teresa?

SPEAKER_04 21:48

So, one of the things that I learned from another friend of mine who is married, sh you know, I have some by see your value too because of how I was raised. My mother raised me, you know, don't be in a married woman's home. You know, their husband calls or come into the house, then you leave immediately. And so that had always been my mindset. But I had a friend who got married, and she said, You are forgetting about me now that I am married. And I needed to hear that from her because I I did. I said, Well, you have a husband and he needs to be your focus. And I love what she said because I would say, Hey, is that your husband? I'm getting off the phone. She said, He he he could talk to me anytime. I'm talking to you right now. And I was so shocked that she said that, but it made it made me shift my mindset that those friendships that she had prior to entering marriage were important to her. They helped shape who she was. And when trouble arises or arose in her marriage, it was her friends that she leaned on. And I was fortunate enough to be one of those friends. And so I am now mindful to still reach out, still invite. You know what you can and cannot do. So my job is to invite you and not treat you any differently, except for my expectations from the standpoint that you may have to say no, because you now have a different priority and to respect that priority. And on and the other side of that is I had a friend that got married, and I felt that she was saying yes to too many things. So I said to her, I said, I don't care if your husband is saying to you that he's okay with you being everywhere and and maintaining a life that still looks single. I'm going to back in my invitations to you so that you can focus on your marriage. Because I needed to respect the marriage, and I could see from the outside looking in that it potentially was going to be problematic.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

So what I like is when you receive the no, like, no, I can't do that. You didn't take it personal. You didn't say, Well, I knew you longer. Why is it, you know, I understand you're married, but our friendship was here before, but you said, I understand. And as a married woman, we need that. We need to know that it's okay to say no.

SPEAKER_05 24:21

And also as a as a married, newly married woman, I was open within our group to say, I can't make every Sunday, I can't make every weekend. I have to have the to think about my husband and the time because you know him and I both work all week. So I had to be intentional about spending one-on-one time with my husband because he's also a priority, and it's good to, you know, to have that work-life balance. And I was very open with our group and say, I I can't make every Sunday. So we're gonna have to switch it around, especially when you know, for certain things that we all have to, you know, do together. So I was very open about that too.

SPEAKER_02 25:04

So that goes back to that communication. We have to always communicate with one another within our group. So let me ask a follow-up question. Why do you think this dynamic has worked well within our group? And how can friendships, how can friends support one another's relationship and marriages in a healthy way?

SPEAKER_07 25:28

I think we alluded to it a little earlier, but I think it's really important that we plan. And since we plan, we have a plan that the ladies who are married can share with their husband, can discuss it with their husband, and they can prepare. So we don't have a you know necessary the issue with doing things off the cuff. They may not be available to do those things. So I think planning is a really integral part why it works for us.

SPEAKER_02 25:53

Yeah, I like planning. We we all need that, whether married or not, because as I mentioned earlier, some of us have children and some don't. So it's not just about marriage. I mean, we're just at different stages in our lives and married, parenting, but planning is key, if I see it. And I think that's how it works within our group. Anyone else?

SPEAKER_05 26:22

I think the dynamic works so well due to the fact that we all were single prior to the we were all were single at the creation of Ladies Accord. So our husbands knew the importance and valued our friendship. And that's the great thing. Like all of our husbands know Ladies Accord is family, so I think it it makes it easier, you know, because if if if it was different, you know, where you had a husband and always wanted you all the time, you know, that would probably be problematic.

SPEAKER_03 27:01

Yes. I think there's a a variety of things that attribute to why we work so well as far as the balance of married and single women in the group. I think a lot of it has for me, I think it's important for me to call, just to hear, you know, whether it's, you know, something that you're going through or the family's going through or or you know, something like that. I think there's important to connect, to listen, to pray. And for me, and it's important too for flexibility, you know, just to see, you know, is this a good time, you know, to caution, is this a good time, you know, for Stephanie, is it her, is it her lunch break now? You know, is Rhonda off for work, you know, to get the time that you're in a good space to discuss how things quote unquote are going. And that always overflows for the married women and you know, to your spouses to see how things are working.

SPEAKER_02 28:04

I think the dynamic worked because there's respect. There's respect for each one of us, and again, where we are in our lives. I respect Bassi, I respect what she does, all that she gives, who she is, her prayer life. I respect all that. So the dynamic has to work. It can't do anything but work. So it works because of respect, love, and a whole other things.

SPEAKER_06 28:42

This is Stephanie, and for me, I think it's the value. I think that we all value marriage and we value singleness, right? Like it's not that being single is something to be frowned upon. And so I encourage, you know, even through my Instagram things, I'm always sending, sending the single ladies, like, you know, you go, girl, you you got this, and you know, I'm so excited that you can just pick up and and travel and please do it, you know, do it for all the ladies who are wishing that they could. So we we value each one of our stations in life. And we see it as something to be commended and not frowned upon. Or, you know, while you may aspire individually for marriage, that's that's my dream for you because that is your dream for you. But if that were not your dream, I would dream the same dream that you had because I value you and I value the idea of you uh feeling special and feeling free and creative and in whatever you find that you want to put your hands to. So it's it's the value. I think that we all value marriage and singleness, and more importantly, we value wanting to be used in any way that the creator chooses.

SPEAKER_04 30:04

I just wanted to say something about being single and how I get supported in relationships. So I always make sure that if someone is trying to find me, that I have an accountability person to who I can tell all my truth to. Sometimes when you are trying to be found by someone, or someone's trying to find you, uh, you can put blinders on, or other people in your life can see what you can't see. And that's been important to me. There have been different people in this group who have picked up the phone and called me. On occasion, someone has made threats to some people, but that's still being supported, right? They saw that the relationship probably was not a good one and brought that to my attention where there were concerns, and I do believe that when I am in a relationship, which is not a word that I throw around, it takes me a long time to get there. I try to make that public. I just haven't been in a relationship in a very long time, so that's why I have not needed that level of support. But I think it is important to have someone in your life or a few people in your life who can even in a relationship that may be heading towards marriage, that they can support you through that or be another set of ears and eyes.

SPEAKER_07 31:37

I remember that Teresa, it brought back to memory years ago when Teresa was dating someone and they were really serious, and I I like the person, but I just thought it was gonna be a really big mistake. And I remember being in nursing school crying tears to my teacher. My friend's gonna make the biggest mistake of my life, you know. What am I gonna do? You know, and so that's how much we love each other. That, you know, I'm at school, can't focus because I'm like, if she marries this man, you know, and so thank God she didn't.

unknown 32:09

Praise God.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

So I love the fact that it's just not about the young, the singles just supporting the married, the married support the single in this group. So we support each other in everything. Like I said, there's mothers here, there's motherhood, there's there were individuals who went through school and became nurses and they came they became so much more. So we just support each other. So, ladies, I think that was a great episode. Great and awesome episode. I do want to leave the audience with a reflection question, and that is we like to leave you with this. How do the friendships in your life support the important relationships he had? I'm gonna repeat it again. How do the friendships in your life support the important relationships you had? Think about that. And while they're thinking about that, I'm gonna have Teresa close us in prayer.

SPEAKER_04 33:11

But we thank you for the opportunity to share with our listeners on today. Father, we thank you because you created marriage. In fact, it was the first covenant that you created. We understand how deeply important it is to you and how difficult it can be to navigate marriage and friendships. Father, for those who are out there who yearn for friendships in their marriages are or are concerned on how to navigate friendships and marriage, Father, I pray that you would meet them where they are and that you would guide them and that you would give them clear direction. I lift up those who are supporting marriages from the outside. I pray that they find a way to support their friends who are newly married. Father, I just ask that you continue to strengthen marriages, continue to strengthen friendships. And as always, Father, we ask that you do this in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. Amen. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 34:26

Thanks for listening to Six Voices, One Story. And if you'd like to continue the journey with us, subscribe and walk with us through the next conversation. Join us next time for episode seven.