Where did all the Friends Go?

We all know that as we get older finding and keeping up friendships is harder, it’s just a fact, and one of the things that sucks about being an adult.  I file it right up there with taxes.  When you’re a kid, even into the college years, friendships are easy because you’re constantly surrounded by people, mostly by your choosing, at a common place in life experiences, etc.  After college you keep in touch with a few friends, take a few with you, make some new ones in whatever city you find yourself moving to or not.  The college mentality of going out and packing your weekends full of activities remains strong for a while and then things eventually start to taper off…. People start getting married, moving to different suburbs and hanging out with different people but you still try to keep in touch…. it’s work but you do it with the people you really care about for the most part.  Then, someone has a kid, maybe you or maybe someone else, and it starts to get harder, and then you come home on a Friday night and realize you have no plans or even the possibility of plans for the entire weekend, and you wonder, where did all the friends go?

 Ok, maybe it doesn’t happen exactly like that or perhaps not that quickly after you or one or more of your close friends has kids, but it certainly felt that way to me.  During pregnancy it was still good, aside from having to skip a night at a smokey bar or another late night here and there, I still hung out with most of my friends pretty regularly.  They gave me baby showers, my besties were at the hospital when T was born… hanging around for the long evening of waiting, waiting, and more waiting, and came to visit me and baby T after we were at home too.  At some point I just started feeling left out of everything.  admittedly I am sure that many of those feelings were self-inflicted and hormone induced, but still it felt like in a blink I was going it alone.

S assured tried his best to assure me that motherhood had not instantly made me a boring companion that nobody wanted to spend time with I was just going to have to work harder on my friendships.  It took awhile, and many hormone fed hours of contemplation but I did eventually come out of the mom cloud and realize that he was right.  I hadn’t morphed into a mom-blob that nobody wanted to talk to I had just be focusing WAY too much on ME and hadn’t considered all the other factors at play… in the time since T was born my two best friends were 1) planning her wedding and 2) very new in what ended up as a serious relationship.

I can’t help by wonder how many other women, moms or not, go through similar crisis where they question their friendships and their validity as an interesting person after they have a baby.  Having a baby certainly does change a lot of things but just like any major life change your true friends will still be there for you, however, you might have to remind them that you definitely DO have time for them still and need them in your life.