Staying Close to Friends Without Kids
Your thoughts on friendship shifts after babies, how they made you feel, and how to keep the fire burning with friends at different life stages.
Whenever I think about a close friend that I haven’t seen in a while, I wear the guilt like a heavy coat. It weighs me down and that weight feels like all mine to bear. It’s my fault, isn’t it? I chose to have a child. So, I was pleasantly surprised then, when I had a phone call with one of my closest girlfriends the other day.
I live an hour away from the city, and she lives in the thick of it. I work part time while mothering and growing my second human, she works full time in a busy marketing role. I was feeling terribly guilty that I hadn’t made the effort to see her, and because my head was perhaps so far up my own guilty and growing ass, I didn’t even consider that she might, in fact, be harbouring similar feelings.
I was pretty flexible before my second pregnancy. I would stay in the city, having sleepovers and dinners and cocktails after work and on weekends and leaving my son at home with his dad. It didn’t happen all the time, but I kept up, to an extent. And it felt good. An old part of myself remained alive and conversations weren’t centred on the beautiful but demanding tiny humans in our lives.
But, when that second pregnancy hit, things shifted. I cancel a lot of lunches and dinners with friends in the city now, with the extra layer of the one hour commute on top of a far more tiresome second pregnancy making things more complex. And while it feels necessary in avoiding completely burning myself out, it doesn’t feel good. I want to be at those lunches. I want to enjoy a cocktail and an oyster with the people I spent every weekend of my twenties with. I want to prove that I’m still here, that the invisible cloak of motherhood hasn’t totally swallowed me.
And if I wasn’t yet a parent, I wonder how much I would understand. Two cancelled lunches, two weekends in a row? Will the bitch make any effort?! We’re all B-U-S-Y! We’re all tired!
The truth is, that friendships change after kids. And they particularly change with your friends that aren’t parents.
In fact, in a recent Instagram poll, 75% of you noticed a definite change, 22% of you noticed somewhat of a change, and only 4% of you said your friendships didn’t change with your non-parent friends when you became a parent.
The fundamental foundations on which a friendship was built may, with some hope, stay the same. But the day in, day out stuff? The random Tuesday night dinners and Saturday morning brunches and all of the spontaneous phone calls and catch ups? Those things can shift. Tuesday night dinners are replaced by Tuesday morning coffees in a shitty cafe that accommodates toddlers that those who work full time ultimately can’t attend. Saturday morning brunches are replaced with Saturday afternoon park visits.
For some the changes can be subtle, for others it’s dramatic.
When you become a mother, you ultimately blame yourself for these shifts that occur. But in telling my friend how shit I was feeling for not being at these two lunches that I was so looking forward to, what I found was that not only did she understand, but she was wearing her own version of guilt, too.
Sure, you might argue that you’re busier and that it was you who ultimately changed your life, but remember life before kids? Remember full time work and a busy social schedule that included mid-week dinners and not leaving the office until 7pm because you could? Remember spending more time going for early morning walks and dance classes after dark and staying out late on a Saturday night because there’s no babysitter to relieve?
That was all pretty busy too, come to think of it. I ran on very little in the years of working as hard as I could at work and partying as hard as I could with my best friends on weekends. Come to think of it, what’s the postnatal depletion term for running yourself into the ground in your twenties? Burnout, I guess.
And while my friends without children mightn’t be partying in the way that we all used to, their lives are still full of beautiful chaos; it’s just a different type of chaos to early parenting.
So while the monumental shift of a tiny person – literally relying on you for survival – may occur on your end, there’s a good chance that your friend who misses you isn’t placing the guilt solely on you.
When I asked the Ready or Not community – both on the parent and non-parent side – how these shifts made them feel, there was loneliness on both sides:
“Feels like I have less to contribute to our friendship. I’m time poor and boring now.”
“As a non parent, I sometimes felt like my experiences/challenges were less valid.”
“I felt very lonely, like my non-parent friends just forgot I existed.”
“I found the shift in friendships really difficult once I had my first. I felt so lonely.”
I felt these sentiments deep in my bones, and it had me wondering what we can do about it. While friendships among parents matter, my friendships with my non-parent friends matter, greatly, too. So, here, the Ready or not community share their tips in making friendships between parents and non-parents work:
Stay in touch. Try to be understanding when your friend becomes a parent. Maybe you can’t catch up in person for a while and that’s okay.
Check in lots and find ways to be there for them without being in their face by dropping off coffee and food, for example.
Schedule in something you can still share together like going for a walk.
Be realistic with your expectations. Know what your parent friends will be able to understand and give you is different to what your non-parent friends will give you emotionally, because it’s impossible to understand something you’re not going through personally. Especially something as big as parenting.
If catching up in person can’t happen as often, can you schedule a phone call or send each other voice memos to bridge the gap?
Book something regular in the calendar – whether it’s fortnightly, monthly, or bi-monthly. Have something locked in (that can then be shifted when required) so you’re not playing the never ending game of “when are you free?”
Know that as children get older, in a lot of ways, time will open itself up. Sure, Saturday morning sport might be something new to contend with, but as your kids require less of you (or your parent friends) physically, hopefully those beautiful friendships with people in different life stages will receive more nurturing.
Don’t be condescending toward your friend who doesn’t have kids. I know, you might’ve had an hour’s sleep last night. You might be running on fumes and emotions and mum rage. But their feelings and their problems matter just as much as yours. Don’t be an asshole. Don’t be that parent. Be a good friend. And if you start a sentence with “just wait until,” you honestly deserve to be thrown in the bin.