Better in their words…

By KATHERINE ROSMAN

When our older child was about six months old, Joe said to me, “I miss having friends.” This surprised me — he always has had a ton of friends — and I pointed this out.

“I know,” he answered, “but I never spend time with them.”

Here’s what I realized: My three sisters and I grew up within a few miles of my dad’s three siblings, their spouses and the combined nine first cousins they provided us. Together, we had dinner at our Gran and Papa’s most Sunday nights.

But my sisters and I live in three states separated by thousands of miles. In a contemporary society where geography is often incompatible with Sunday night dinners, friends become our family of choice.

That conversation with Joe compelled me to put a premium on forming friendships with couples we both liked. It was one of the smartest things I’ve ever done for our marriage.

* * *

I love summer. I love the warmth. I love that I don’t need to deal with boots, parkas and mittens every time my kids step outside. Most of all I love that those additional hours of daylight let us spend more time with friends. In my town, backyards become communal and the formality of entertaining disappears.

Last weekend, we sat around the patio table of neighbors and close friends Anne and Sean. We were joined by another couple, Julie and Eric, to whom we’re also close. Among us we have five kids. A baby was asleep in a car seat at the corner of the deck. The other four kids were playing on the lawn with Eric. Joe and Sean were laughing about something that happened on the golf course earlier in the day. I cooed over the baby (as Joe shot me the occasional “don’t get any ideas” look). Anne and Julie bustled, bringing salad to the table and filling glasses with white wine. If I didn’t know us all better, I would confuse us for a postcard of marital ease.

“Why is time spent with friends so good for marriage?” I put to the group when we sat down.

“Economies of scale,” Sean said instantly, meaning that when the job of dealing with the kids is spread among many, everyone is left a bit more relaxed. Sean has a knack for punctuating his points with metaphors drawn from Econ 101 and Yankees games. It’s clear why he, Joe and Eric are so close, sometimes even referring to one another as “Bro” without a hint of irony or embarrassment.

While Joe and Sean met a couple of years ago, and have come to know each other as grown men, Eric and Sean have known each other since college. Eric says that spending time together — in the presence of his wife and Sean’s, or not — can give him a feeling of autonomy and self-confidence. “You can become defined by fatherhood, marriage and work,” added Eric. “Sometimes it’s kind of a relief to be seen as just one of the guys, just as Eric, by your friends. It can give a sense of independence which I think makes me a better husband,” he said.

We all agreed that friends help you gather perspective on your relationship to your spouse: When you’re inside a marriage, it’s easy to focus on the points of friction and the minutiae of daily life. It can be difficult to find time to gaze into one another’s eyes lovingly (forget lustily) when you’re potty-training one kid, trying to sound out words with another and hiding from an editor who wants to know when your already-late column will be turned in.

But friends draw you toward life’s big picture. When a friend says to me, “I saw Joe and your daughter at the park and she has him wrapped around her finger,” my focus is drawn past dirty socks left on the floor and onto the fact that I married a terrific guy who is loved by many.

Anne and Sean have one of the great marriages and just being in their presence is good for ours. They are a solid team, but also have a good sense of humor about forever-after. As she served the salad, Anne pointed out that even casual acquaintances have brought her closer to matrimonial harmony. She says there have been times when she and Sean have been bickering in the car en route to a social event. But as she engages in cocktail conversation with a blathering bore, her affection for her husband reignites. “I’ll look over at Sean and think, ‘OK, he’s not that bad.'”

We all laughed at this. Joe squeezed my knee under the table. I turned to him. He looked good: backlit by the sunset and through the eyes of those who see him just for his goodness and best intentions, free of the impatience of someone who wants the trash taken out.

* * *

When I first got married I had a vision of a union of two people who realized that they needed nothing in the world but each other. As I’ve grown older, I see more nuance. A full life, which is what Joe and I each aspire to live, is a complicated life. I have a career, kids, a home, siblings and all the attendant dramas. I can’t rely on Joe to be my sole counsel for all that, just as I cannot be his.

Some weeks ago, I faced an upsetting situation related to a story I had written. Joe and I talked it through. “I’ve got your back,” he told me, and I knew it to be true.

But I needed to vent further. I called my friend Lisa. It was a warm day. We took a long walk around the lake by which we live. When I got home, I began to make dinner. “Thanks for being a good wife amid this chaos,” Joe said. He probably should have thanked Lisa.

—Katherine Rosman writes about pop culture and technology for The Wall Street Journal; she and her family live outside New York City. Email: checksandbalances@wsj.com. Twitter: @katierosman