BFF over HUBBY.

Liz Hurley describes former lover Hugh Grant as her No. 1man, giving husband Arun Nayar the second spot. Can amarriage work when your spouse is not your Best Friend Forever?

BRITISH MODEL and actress Elizabeth Hurley talks about ex- lover Hugh Grant far more than she does about her husband Arun Nayar in most of her statements to the media. In an interview to a magazine recently she went so far as to declare Grant as her ' No. 1 man' with whom she shares the highest level of comfort.

Not a very comforting thought when it comes to Nayar's feelings. In a marriage, a spouse would never want to be the second important person in his partner's life.

There's nothing unnatural about wanting to be No. 1 in your life partner's life -- it's just human. Even if a husband is magnanimous enough to feel that previous relationships cannot be discounted, there will always be that inner desire to surpass that ' comfort level' shared by his wife with her ex boyfriend in a previous relationship.

Relationship counsellor Anu Goel says, " I have come across quite a few couples who are caught in this triangular web. The problem is that we tend to look for all the perfect traits in one person, and that's not humanly possible or we would be married to robots." Three people in a marriage can be a tricky situation. Remember late Princess Diana's famous statement in a television interview when she spoke for the first time about her marriage hanging by a thread? " There were three of us. It got a little crowded," she had told a stunned Britain. The Prince of Wales could not get over his long- time companion Camilla Parker Bowles and it put a huge strain on his marriage. It may be history now, but it establishes how devastating past dependency can be.

When two people stay together, there's bound to be some friction -- that's the case whether it's a long or a relatively short relationship.

What you have shared over a long time with one person can never be replicated by another in a shorter time. But if you keep going back to the earlier person in your life, or continue to share your feelings with your ex, or even get too involved in his life, it's only natural for the current partner to get irritated -- even lose trust in you.

Author Smita Jain feels it's a double betrayal if someone believes in involving the ex too much in sorting out life's problems.

" Men don't like their wives discussing personal problems even with their girlfriends, forget ex- boyfriends. And it is completely wrong on the part of Hurley to make a public statement and announce her feelings to the whole world," she says.

A S FOR comfort level, that's built with the passage of time but not all of us are patient people.

Goel says, " It's human nature to go back to fond old memories and compare the new with the old.

But if you keep on doing that, you'll never find time to actually discover the good things about the new one." In India where companionship is not always the reason for tying the knot, a previous relationship that tugs at the heart can make you extremely disappointed with the one that has arisen out of an arrangement.

Counselling psychologist Dr Sweta Chowdhury says, " I had this case where the wife had an affair with a man but it ended well before her marriage to someone else. Two or three months into her marriage she decided to bare her soul and tell her husband about her ex. He reacted to the previous affair so violently that their marriage almost ended before it began. Emotions can make people do weird things." Commenting on Hurley's statement, Dr Chowdhury says, " If she decided to declare to the world that her ex is her No 1, she obviously wants to make a statement not just to Hugh but also to her husband Arun Nayar." Maybe she wants to get even after a fight. Or maybe she really has a husband who has a high level of tolerance. " Why in marriages, even while we're young we make comparisons. Don't children say things like ' But my friend's father does this, why can't you?' to their father? They aren't comments meant to make a person feel good, are they? It comes with a certain level of dissatisfaction.

Same way, in a marriage when you begin to trust a person outside it more than the one in it, it's bound to create problems," says Dr Chowdhury.

Pop star Madonna, too, has said in several interviews that the comfort level she shared with her first husband Sean Penn, despite their falling out, is irreplaceable. There is always a tendency among all of us to think that the one we didn't have a shot at ( for whatever reasons) would have been the most perfect one. But would it have been, really? " Only until you start living together again," says Tanu Khanna ( name changed), who married her childhood friend after the failure of her first marriage, thinking that's all she needed for life to be a bed of roses. " When a relationship between two lovers does not reach its logical conclusion -- marriage -- you think you've missed out on the one that would have made you happy, only to understand later that friction and disappointments are a part of every couple's life," says Dr Goel.

It kind of reminds one of what Penelope Cruz's character Maria Elena said in the film Vicky Cristina Barcelona : " Only unfulfilled love is real." But who wants real when wanting to escape disappointments in a marriage?

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