By Maybe Lady Liz
My college roommate and best friend cried her eyes out the day I told her I was moving to California after graduation, more than 2,000 miles from her final destination of Chicago. We’ve done a relatively impressive job of keeping in touch over the last 8 years, and I think our bond deepened even more when we discovered we were the only people we knew who weren’t sure we wanted to have a baby. The topic dominated our phone conversations for years until I got the call that many of you probably remember receiving from your own best friend as they delivered those two fateful words: I’m pregnant.
Everything changed, of course, but after blogging on these sorts of topics for over a year now, it certainly wasn’t unexpected. She did an admirable job of giving me the non-sugar-coated truth about her unplanned life as a mom and carrying on conversations that weren’t interrupted every 10 seconds with baby cooing. I had high hopes that she’d be one of those parents who remembered and appreciated Life Before Baby, so I waited a respectable six months and planned a trip to meet the latest member of the fam in her new house in Nashville.
This was not an easy affair. Drama at work and sky-high plane tickets ($624 each!) made actually pressing the purchase button on Expedia a real knuckle-biting moment. But I was committed to making sure that my cheapness and laziness wouldn’t be responsible for our friendship not persevering through major life changes and cross-country moves.
Despite having discussed the trip for months ahead of time, my friend’s entire response to the forwarded itinerary was: “Yay! But you do understand that this isn’t going to be like old times, right?” Oh, you mean we’re not going to bong Bud Lights between breastfeeding sessions and subsist entirely on Taco Bell cheesy fiesta potatoes? What have I done?! Of course I knew it wasn’t going to be the same, nor did I want it to be. I’d have some serious concerns about her parental fitness if it was. But this mantra persisted throughout every conversation and email leading up to the trip (“You know we’re not going to be out till all hours, right?” “You know we’re not going to be livin’ it up like before, right?”). Yes, yes! I’ve received the memo, in triplicate!
I’m not sure what bothered me more: the fact that she thought I truly couldn’t process what a monumental life change she’d made and that it might affect our fun levels, or the fact that she didn’t even seem to want me to come or believe that we could now have fun in a different way. I would have been just as content to stay in and play board games while the baby slept, but instead we went out to dinner where my friend propped her cell phone up and touched the screen literally every 5 seconds to see if the sitter was calling until her husband told her she was being rude and we shut down the whole night.
And you know what? That’s okay, I get it – she was nervous leaving the baby with a sitter. I don’t think I would have even blinked about it if she hadn’t spent the month leading up to the trip promising me how much fun we weren’t going to have. I know she was just trying to temper expectations and make sure I wasn’t disappointed. Nobody likes to over-promise and under-deliver. But a little bit of faith in our friendship, a little bit of hope that that we could still have a great time under any conditions, would have left me with a better taste in my mouth, no matter what the outcome. Was that too much to ask?
Maybe Lady Liz is blogging her way through the decision of whether to create her own Cheerio-encrusted ankle-biters, or remain Childfree. You can follow her through the ups and downs at MaybeBabyMaybeNot.com.
I have a friend that I have known for 20 years. We grew apart when I was going through infertility and could not talk to her about it while she was still single and trying hard to get married. I had limited contact with her for about 5 years and then she got married and had a baby within a year. During the pregnancy and after the baby, I was suddenly the person she wanted to tell everything to you. I got the courage to tell her how painful it was for me, and that she shouldn’t share all the baby information with me. She said she understood but I haven’t received a call or text since. I think she only wanted an audience for her good news. If we had still been friends, she would have something to say to me other than baby. Don’t feel bad about your friend – time has a way of pulling people apart and sometimes the baby is just part of the timeline but not the cause.
A perfect example of you (the childless person) trying to do the right thing. So sorry for you that the trip wasn’t even half as good as you anticipated. What a let down.
I have a friend who refuses to get a sitter for her kids. Most nights when we go out with her and her husband the kids are in tow. We “get” this and understand that they don’t have a lot of family support and she doesn’t feel comfortable finding another responsible adult to watch her active children. We think it’s silly she can’t find SOMEONE to trust but then again, we aren’t parents so we try not to judge.
Still, all that being said it really does stink to have to ALWAYS accommodate the palettes and attitudes of these children. Children who are clearly bored with us and aren’t afraid to show it.
We try to be understanding and enjoy our time with our friends, however, lately we find ourselves distancing from these people. Not because we can’t stand kids but because we don’t have what they have. If we have children it would be awesome to have a couple to do stuff with. But for now it stinks going to a family friendly restaurant on a Friday night when we want to let loose with some wings and beer. We don’t want to have to watch our language (not that we are even potty mouths) and we want to have an adult conversation without the tuned ears of a 7 and 10 year old.
We compromise. We accept that the kids are part of the package and happily welcome the children. Wish they could return the favor and get a sitter every once in a while and not rub these children in our faces.
Maybe Liz, I have found myself having to make an extra effort with friends to define for them what I am and am not comfortable with now that they have children and I will never. I have seriously tried not to give up on the friendships that are important to me even though my friends now have kids. It takes a really conscious effort to establish “clear” boundaries with people. Boundaries are often established but not very clearly. I don’t want my friends with kids to feel that they can never talk about their kids and conversely, I also don’t want their kids to be the only thing they talk about. Sometimes I feel like people who know I can’t have children just don’t know what they can and cannot say around me so sometimes they opt to say nothing at all and not include me in anything for sake of thinking that I am just going to meltdown on them. Sometimes I actually find it easier to have people not know because then I can have more personal control over the boundaries. One other challenge I often find is that some people get so wrapped up in their children that they totally lose their identity to their kids. I think this is really sad because then they give up things that they were really passionate about. I feel like we can actually help balance our friends out by encouraging them to still maintain interests beyond just their children and their children’s needs/interests. Some of my friends with kids don’t have a lot of extra money to pay for a sitter so going out with them for dinner automatically includes the kids. It believe it’s perfectly okay to say to people , “Let’s have an adult dinner out this time around or even to say…how about just having dinner at your (our) place?” My husband and I are looking at going to a minor league baseball game with some friends later this year. This couple are empty nesters. While I know our adopted grandkids would love to go along to see a live game, I will consciously check with our friends as to whether they are okay with them coming along or whether they would rather just have an adult night. And I will be content with whichever answer they give me. I think the better communicators we can be, the better we can coexist with and actually still enjoy our relationships with fertile friends.
I hear ya. I haven’t seen a friend of 30 years in the last 7 years since she has had 2 kids. And, she herself had great difficulty conceiving. A friend told me that I should be up front with my friends with kids about my feelings. I just can’t. It makes me feel too self-centered and I don’t want to rain on their joy. I prefer to avoid certain friends with kids. It’s really hard to be friends with friends who have kids. There’s no common ground anymore. It’s like the years of friendship before baby have been wiped out. It’s a whole nother grieving process. We recently consoled a friend with baby who wants to hang out with us but with her kid. My husband explained to her that our lives have taken us on different life journeys. Hopefully our paths will cross again once the kids are grown (fully grown). She didn’t take it so well.
I have never had a problem hanging out with my friends and their kids. But, once they have kids, my friends have consistently sought out other mother friends to do things with, so that their children can play with other kids. The result is that they no longer make any time to nourish our friendship, or just give a simple phone call and say, “Hey, how are you doing?” I can have a regular conversation about the things we used to always talk about, with the exception of one friend who speaks of nothing other than her daughter. I like the kid a lot, but not the monotony of the conversation. Though what really bothers me is the lack of interest in my life. I can fully understand the immense love and pride that a mother will feel for their child, I feel it for my brother’s kids, what I cannot abide is any tone of motherhood worship: the narcissistic comment about a sector of the population that has accomplished something that the majority of the planet can do: reproduce.
We find ourselves excluded from many things, even in our own family.
Example: most of my nieces and nephews participate in sports, school plays, whatever. They are all roughly the same age so their parents naturally gravitate towards each other. A day at the soccer field leads to lunch at the pizza place. No one thinks to include us. A evening softball game leads to a trip to the Dairy Queen. All of them, chomping on their cones and enjoying each others company. Or they might end up taking the kids to the pool and that turns into a cookout with a campfire and lots of fun memories. Where are we? Not invited I can tell you that.
Oh sure, we’re “allowed” to show up and be a part of THEIR life but are we really “included”? No. We’ve called people out on it with pleasant comments like, “oh that sounds like it was a lot of fun. I hope we can be included next time.” His sister (the ringleader in the family) makes snippy comments like, “it’s not like we planned to get together without you. You are always welcome.” (Yeah, like I have a mole that goes out and find out when these kid activities happen and reports back to me so I can crash the events with my uncomfortable presence.”
And it’s not just little events like that. I get that it’s hard to think of including the childless couple when your life is full of work, come home, feed everyone and make it to the game on time. I get it. But now they are planning weekend trips and camping outings. We’re not included then either. We just don’t feel comfortable speaking up and asking (begging) to be included. Maybe we should just to prove that even though we don’t have kids we really do care about family.
And it’s so frustrating because we have tried established those boundaries. We’ve said, “hey we don’t have kids and we get a lot of enjoyment out of seeing YOUR kids in action. Let us know when the next game takes place because we’d love to be there.”
It’s not like our childless is contagious and it’s not like we sit around and cry about not having one of our own. We are a model aunt and uncle. Fun, cheerful, full of gum and quarters and piggy back rides. We’re mostly okay with our life, until we see the people around us excluding us from theirs.
S – I totally understand. I found out by accident that my sisters who have children were getting together for years to do all kinds of things and never told me or invited me. I found out because I dropped by unannounced to see my niece. My niece looked concerned for me, my brothers-in-law really rubbed it in. They are now ex-brothers-in-law and their character was a contributing factor. I don’t know why your family does it but I know my family did it because: 1) they liked to sit around and talk about the rest of our family and complain about their kids — they knew they could not do that in front of me; 2) I was a lot more fun than their parents and the kids really enjoyed being with me so I think it made them jealous; 3) at the time, I was single and perhaps the husbands didn’t want me there because I wasn’t bringing a male companion for them to drink, fart and make sexist jokes with (I now am married but my husband never got along with them because he doesn’t do any of those things). Now that my sisters are divorced, I am much closer with one of them and see all their kids more often. I guess what I’m trying to say is that most of the time, these situations are not about you and more about the dysfunction going on within the adults of the group. I dealt with it at the time by inviting my nieces and nephews to do things just with me and my husband – it makes them feel special and gives us that special one-on-one time.
That must have stung Maria. Glad at least that you are getting to get closer to the children of your one sister. My family members don’t hide anything from me. They are very open about excluding me. For me I think it’s because my SIL (the ringleader) doesn’t like my husband (her brother). In this large family you have certain people you like and don’t like. She is very good at making “casual meetings” just “happen”. These outings include her and her favorite people and no one else. She also influences others to like or not like others. It’s a very high school mentality in this family.
You make some good points. They (she) likes to talk and speculate about others. Like you my husband and I are usually lots of fun and the kids especially flock to my husband.
I suspect too that they might be a bit jealous of my freedom. Once I asked all the gals if they’d seen a popular new release and they all looked at each other and then said to me, “ummm, no, we don’t have TIME to go see a movie.” Once the ringleader made a comment about how I didn’t have a wrecked body due to being pregnant. I told them 36DD do not stay put just because you haven’t have a baby and stretch marks happen to the best of us.
It hurts because I’m a nice person with a lot of offer and I just want to be liked. Even though I tell myself to not take it personally it does make a difference in my attitude. Plus, it makes having a relationship with their children harder. The ringleader really is a wonderful mother and her children are sweet and adorable and happily give their love and attention to everyone. However, if they talk to me too much, or sit on my lap or hug me she will make a point to ask them to do something for her. I’m not paranoid. I’ve seen her in action.
Anyway, I’m geared up for a Memorial Day picnic with these people. Fingers crossed for a good one.