I've lost my married friends.

Professional-Ad-457 · 2021-10-08T08:50:33+00:00

It happens again the other side too when you get divorced! The marrieds only want to socialise with marrieds! Not your good friends tho 💛

__kamikaze__ · 2021-10-08T12:53:37+00:00

The only married women I know who haven’t fallen victim to this are the ones that enforce boundaries and don’t praise men for doing the bare minimum. As an example of what I mean, these women never praise their man for “babysitting” the kids, because that’s his role as a PARENT. Dividing chores, housework and child care provides them with time to maintain their identities and social lives.

musicalistic · 2021-10-08T08:45:44+00:00

I have lost so many friends and relatives because they are all married. Suddenly, their lives involve "I am busy, I have family to take care of". It goes as far as I haven't meet any of my married relatives for several years because we are all losing contact with each other.

It's sucks because there are times I miss them so much but I feel like communicating with them just lead to nowhere. I don't want to hear their marriage life too.

I am literally grieving instead of feeling happy when people I know are getting married.

2021-10-08T13:05:46+00:00

A useful skill I taught myself was learning how to love hanging out with myself. I used to be so sad and embarrased about being alone, but I had to teach myself to not rely on other people to be happy. I recently had to distance myself from my so called "friends" and I moped around for a while until I came to accept that my "friends" didn't value me as much as I did them. If they cared about you they would atleast reach out/give updates on whats up with them.

honeybadgerattitude · 2021-10-08T10:01:52+00:00

I think it’s a cultural thing and part of patriarchal control. Many men know that women get power from other women and they deliberately take up all of their partner’s time and look down on them spending time with friends. They literally keep us too busy to have empowering relationships so they can abuse us and control us more easily. We definitely need friends who are aware of this and put effort into the friendship. Edit: for the scrotes downvoting because they’re mad we’ve found out… 👋Have a nice day!!

kinkardine · 2021-10-08T15:17:53+00:00

Yes, it too happened with me but that is part of people come for a ‘season, reason or lifetime’ case. Some friends are still there despite being married, divorced, widowed, rehabbed, moving to different continents. We still have the same energy and take refuge into each other. No one is too busy, you are just not the priority at that moment. I do mourn the loss of a lot of friends, and I don’t regret that on our time together we had loads of fun, maybe that was the purpose of that relationship- to make some happy memories. Also over the time I started to forgive my married friends and me for having overwhelming responsibilities that comes with running an institution called family, i stopped blaming marriage and kids cause moving to a different city/country, doing a PhD or taking a new job can cause similar situation- there is a lot of transition in 20-30 age period. I do get jealous sometimes of the ‘me time’ and ‘free time’ my solo friends have. Still we all are trying to find and build a meaningful life, as long as they are happy and moving forward I am happy to accept algorithms of time.

katiekat0214 · 2021-10-08T13:49:17+00:00

This happens, and I have some perspective as an older woman.

Although I never had kids, when I got married, both times, a type of insularity happens. You want to protect, nurture, feed that primary relationship, plus usually both people are working full time. If a couple has kids, then for at least 3-5 years, it is just that little nuclear family, bonding, working together, nurturing itself. It can be lonely for them, and lonely for friends who have been left, unless both work on nurturing the existing friendship.

Quite often, friends aren't dropped hard; it's a soft drop, but a drop nonetheless. And it hurts, no doubt about it. I've dropped people (my first husband's entire friend group), and been dropped, especially after people had kids, knew I didn't and wouldn't. Sometimes life moves on. Friendships can shift, especially around major life events.

Second time around, my late husband and I actively worked to keep in touch with friends. About once a month, we'd get a group together and go to dinner and catch up. Good, good times! I loved how he was happy to be the social secretary. It wasn't just all couples, either; we had some singles in there, too, mostly his friends since he had been there a lot longer than me, but occasionally some of my friends, too.

After I was widowed, certain people stepped up that I didn't expect, and certain people dropped out of my friendship tree. I had read a LOT the summer my husband died, so I expected it, and yet, it was still a jolt. Now, as a widow newly moved back to my 80s hometown, I'm being very judicious in who I get to know, and in what context. I'm looking for groups to join, although my introvert soul heaves a big sigh at group anything. I have my family, but I do want a few more people. We'll see. Time will tell.

donttextme_k · 2021-10-08T17:42:49+00:00

I would like to know everyone’s thoughts against this but I don’t see what is wrong with only hanging out with your husband. Yes, I think it’s important not to center your life around your husband but when you marry someone and have kids, that is your family. We only have so much time in a day and I think it’s normal to only be able to juggle between your family and your career. Life happens and friends are lost along the way. That does not go to say, we ignore our friends and only reach out when we have an problem in our life. Maybe it’s just me but I don’t “hang” out with my friends that much even before i got married. But I still talk to them from time to time.

Your friends are friends for a reason. I just thinks it’s unhealthy to have the mindset of, “she’s married now and all she thinks about is her family.” ??? Does that not sound right? I mean unless that friend just upright pretend you don’t exist then that’s just rude. If she doesn’t have time to hang out, then just find new friends to fill that space..shouldn’t we be more understanding?

Xx_SwordWords_xX · 2021-10-08T14:48:52+00:00

I'm not sure we can make assumptions that this always happens by "force" of a LVM.

I was pregnant young, well before most of my peers, and I could no longer be friends with most people I knew before. The reason? They didn't respect my new life and priorities. So I made new friends or spent time with my little family, where I only had him for a short time anyway (18 years goes by in a blink). I'm now in my early 40s, an empty nester, and have regained the social aspect of myself that sometimes compares to what I missed out on in my 20s. Now, my friends my age seem like the boring, "dead-inside" ones, as they are in the throes of what I went through a decade ago.

That's just how it is... Life has seasons.

Junior-Lion7893 · 2021-10-13T13:10:30+00:00

Yeah, it happens. They disappear off the face of the Earth. One of my close friends ditched me during brunch because her bf scored free tickets to a baseball game and the other time was to a Kanye West concert.

Title	I've lost my married friends.
Author	Sushi_rrito
Upvotes	198
Comments	17
Date	October 8, 2021 8:32 AM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/FemaleDatingStrategy
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/comments/q3tlic/ive_lost_my_married_friends/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/ive-lost-my-married-friends.1076748 https://theredarchive.com/post/1076748

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