Mourning The Death Of My Single-Girl Friendships

hawaiianpeach
wrote on May 12 2009 @ 11:29 am: [report]

I can relate! The beautiful thing is that you have your single friends during your ‘single times’ and without them singledom I believe would be rather dull and lonely. If they are true they will always be there (OMG shoot me in the head for sounding so campy). They will get on a red-eye when you have a crisis, drive or fly in for your wedding, and still share their single stories with you like old times. Embrace this new part of your life journey and know that they are behind you all the way. KUDOS for the analogy of ‘romance’ in referring to your single friends. That is precisely what it is.

Erin Amy
wrote on May 12 2009 @ 11:39 am: [report]

Thank you for articulating that feeling.  I agree 100%.

Fla_girl
wrote on May 12 2009 @ 12:05 pm: [report]

This is where couples get it wrong in my opinion… moving in with your S.O. or getting married for that matter shouldn’t put an end to late night “wine-drenched” girl talk, or having your single friendships. Being an indiviual is what attracted him to you, not your ability to mold into his life…

retro chic
wrote on May 12 2009 @ 12:16 pm: [report]

Yes, it is sorrowful when that grand chapter is closing. And this is also how you find out who your real friends are, and how good a friend you are to them, too, after marriage.

HitOrMissJudy
wrote on May 12 2009 @ 12:36 pm: [report]

I live with and love my boyfriend, but I would be seriously unhappy if I didn’t have a lot of girl-time. It’s a different kind of love that I have for my man, but every bit as important.

Wendy Atterberry
wrote on May 12 2009 @ 12:53 pm: [report]

@Fla_Girl, it’s not about NOT having girl time anymore, it’s about it not being the center of my world anymore. Yes, I very much still have individual time with my friends, but it’s just different now—the time I spend with them is a much smaller amount that it used to be. You also have to understand that I MOVED away from my friends, and although I keep in good touch with them and we all visit frequently, the distance makes it even that much more of a challenge to keep the bonds as strong as they were. Plus, making new friends in a new city is a much harder when you in a serious relationship than it would be to make new friends as a single gal. Where I used to invest 100% of my free time into creating and nurturing new friendships, I’m no longer available or interested in giving that much time…so naturally, the firendships I’m making now are quite different—much less intimate—than the ones I had when I was single.

pornqueen
wrote on May 12 2009 @ 02:03 pm: [report]

OMG I missed my girls a lot when I was married.  Not that I didn’t see them bc they were there all the time when I needed them.  Thing is that husband, kids, work take a lot of your time.  Now I am happily separated and have some free time that I indulge in their company. It feels like we picked up where we left off when we all got married and started our adult, grown-up, resposible lives.  We can talk about the same thing over & over, laughed at the same joke.  Having your girls and boys (3 in my case) or any friend for that matter is a must in our lives.

marshmallows
wrote on May 12 2009 @ 04:41 pm: [report]

This is very true! My boyfriend and I are semi-long distance for 9 months out of the year while he completes his law degree. It’s just close enough where we can spend practically every weekend together. I love him beyond belief, but both of us definitely have a shrinking group of close friends because we have to devote Saturday and Sunday to each other. I wouldn’t change a thing, but it’s true that a lot of my female friendships have taken a very big backseat.

Shasta
wrote on May 12 2009 @ 04:45 pm: [report]

I’m prepared for harsh responses, but must speak.

As I single girl this all sounds so self-absorbed.  “When you’re married you’ll find out who will take a red-eye to be with you in a crisis”????  It’s like high school all over again.  You find the husband, dump your girlfriends when marriage is fun then complain that we aren’t there for you when marriage becomes real because you ignored us.

We singles aren’t morons.  We realize that your marriage will always come first, but throw us a bone and don’t treat us like an employee you call only when there’s a crisis to tend to. We truly are happy for our married friends, as like as they’re not married to jerks). 

I guess I’m bitter because I never imagined the friend who chose me to be her maid of honor would turn into a jerk herself.

erikasf
wrote on May 12 2009 @ 06:01 pm: [report]

I have been married for a few years and have a small child, and I still manage to hang out with my best girlfriend about once a week.  The funny thing is, many of my formerly single girlfriends are also married, and I didn’t so much lose them to marriage and babies as I lost them to the suburbs!!  I live and San Francisco, and the high cost of living in the city has driven so many of my friends elsewhere.  I envy the SATC gals, because they always seemed to be just a 10 minute cab ride away!  Miranda moving to Brooklyn was a big deal, and Brooklyn is much geographically closer to Manhattan than most of my gal pals are to me now.

Wendy Atterberry
wrote on May 12 2009 @ 06:14 pm: [report]

@erikasf Your story also speaks to my point about the difficulty of making NEW friends once you’re married or in a serious longterm relationship. Where you can maintain a close bond with a best friend you’ve had for a long time by seeing her once a week, it’s a challenge to form new friends you see that same amount.

hereshestands
wrote on May 13 2009 @ 05:02 am: [report]

@ Wendy….

Very well said! I don’t know where I would be without my girl friends. You need them. They give you a different sort of love. I mean what straight guy can you talk with about dresses and nails without them getting bored?

All the best for your wedding!! I can’t wait till my sister gets married.

Kathls
wrote on May 13 2009 @ 09:28 am: [report]

I have to say I’m a bit perplexed after reading this article and some of the comments.  Who says you have to give up your close girlfriend friendships (excluding those who have moved away)?  Just because you have a spouse, does not mean they should be the all-encompassing person in your life.  Not that I’m advocating going out 4 nights a week to hang out with the gals. 

I mean, seriously, you can’t find the time and motivation to invest in these friendships that have gotten you to this point in your life—where are with someone who makes you happy.  Marriage doesn’t have to be a in-your-face 7-days-a-week kind of arrangement.

Cutting off or diminishing your supportive and formerly important relationships sounds like a recipe for disaster, to me.  Who will be there for you when you’re frustrated that he or she is not doing their share, always sits around in their underwear, etc.  You and your significant other are two different people, not a robo-unit.  You fell in love with a person with their own, likes, personality, and life.  Why would you expect yourself or them to give that up—so you can stare at each other every day of the week?

After so long you’ve heard all of each other’s stories and what’s gone on at the offices.  And I’m not talking, ‘we’ve been married 40 years and have heard all of each others stories’.  If you’re newly married, yeah you want to spend copious amounts of time with your love, but if your relationship isn’t strong enough to bare the weight of you going out once a week or so for spur of the moment pedicures, brunch, or spending a half-hour on the phone having girl-talk, you might have bigger problems.

Maybe I just have a different idea of the support roles that girlfriends and friends play.  Even in the most perfect of marriages, there are days when the sh*t hits the fan.  Do you think your once wonderful girlfriends are going to muster any sympathy for you after you pulled ‘the fade’ on them.  They’ll understand that your spouse is number one in your life now, but to leave them high and dry because you have to invest in someone else 24-7-365, is a lame excuse.  Just my 2 cents.

Wendy Atterberry
wrote on May 13 2009 @ 11:25 am: [report]

@Kathls If you really paid attention to this essay, you’d understand that it’s not that I have given up my girlfriends—I MOVED AWAY FROM THEM. There’s a difference. My whole point is that making NEW friends when you’re invested in a serious relationship is much more challenging than when you’re single and have all the time in the world to invest in cultivating other relationships. I hate when friends disappear once they’re in a serious relationship. That’s not what I’m talking about here. It takes more than “going out once a week or so for spur of the moment pedicures, brunch, or spending a half-hour on the phone having girl-talk” to really create a deep bond with a new friend.

EarthGoddess
wrote on May 13 2009 @ 08:16 pm: [report]

I can see a lot of the points Wendy makes in this. I married for the first time shortly after I turned 21, and we had a 3 month old when we married. So, I never did the whole SATC thing or anything even close to it since I’ve been a mom my entire adult life. I watch Carrie & Co and enjoy it, but I cannot relate to it at all. However, I experienced a clear separation from a lot of friends (of both genders) when I married my ex. Since we were so young, and most of our friends still were in college and/or living at home with their parents, very few wanted to be bothered with a married couple who had a baby to worry about. We could rarely go out, so our friends would have to come to us to see us. We quickly realized who was a true and loyal friend and who wasn’t.

I’m now very happily remarried, and my daughter and I moved to a different part of the state when I married my husband. The few friends I had from home I rarely see, and all of my new ones are married or close to it. So, we only do things as couples, which I don’t mind since my hubby is my BFF. They’re also all friends of my husband, since making new friends as a wife and mom in a new town is SO hard. I sympathize with Wendy ... good luck, girlie!

freddymerckx
wrote on May 14 2009 @ 10:02 am: [report]

That’s fine. If I was a girl I wouldn’t want to hang out with girls. They mostly just talk about themselves and their lives are paralyzed by a sort of adolescent narcissism.

og217
wrote on May 14 2009 @ 12:32 pm: [report]

I love this article!  I also moved to a different city (and left NYC) when I got engaged.  And it is different.  There is no way now that I can go out all night dancing or spend an entire weekend shopping with my girlfriends.  Not only am I too far away but the reality is that marriage requires time and I love spending time with my husband.  I also have a job (a real one, not a waitressing gig) and a house to maintain.  Also, a huuuuge part of my friendships was based on the single status.  We were single girls, going out to meet men, discuss men, console each other over men, celebrate singleness, debate breaking up with our men, and to escape from our men.  Before I was married, my friends were fascinated by my stories of “does he love me?” and we dissected everything every guy said.  Now, I’m married and no one cares.  I mean, they care but its not really interesting to them that my husband and I had a tiff about laundry, and they don’t really think I “get” their single-girl stuff.  It’s just different.  I’m a little sad, but I chose this life and I at least could not have it both ways and I’m ok with that.

alexa77
wrote on May 14 2009 @ 03:23 pm: [report]

Lovely Article. It speaks to me. Though I think that one should make an effort to be
with their friends as they are important. The article mentions that you are in touch with your fiance’s friends.If he has maintained his friends while being in a relationship, why shouldn’t it be the same for you?

Thank you.

Kathls
wrote on May 14 2009 @ 05:26 pm: [report]

@Wendy.  First off, there’s no reason to be so hostile—going to the all caps.  I read your article and derived from it what I did.  If the point was talk about how difficult it is to make new friends in new cities and keep up long-distance friendships while having a SO, you missed the mark.  It came off implying that in general it’s not possible to balance a SO as well as deep friendships.  You did not *emphasize* that you were losing your friendships because of location restraints.  You mentioned it and moved on to it generally being difficult to cultivate good friendships “Now that I’m fully immersed in “coupled life.”

My point is that despite being in the throes of coupledom, you can still make the time to keep up old ones as well as develop new solid ones.  Being married doesn’t mean you have to be tied at the hip, and if friendships are really important to you, your SO should understand that you’re investing time to develop them.
:D

og217
wrote on May 15 2009 @ 05:19 am: [report]

I think the myth of “you can be married and still do everything you did before you were married, and everything can be exactly the same” is ridiculous.  There are 24 hours in a day and in order to fit in a big, time-intensive thing like marriage you have to take something out or trim off a lot of other things.  People who constantly demand to “have it all” end up frustrated that nothing works.  Sorry, but you can’t have it all and life is about choices.  You cannot expand time or continuously take on more and more and more.  Some friendships last and endure but lets face it - our inner circle of 4 or 5 people we will make time for, but I am just not going to go hang out with the girl from high school I sort of kept in touch anymore.  When I had nothing else to do, sure.  But I’m busy and there are relationships that are just not worth maintaining.  If you have nothing to do and I have nothing to do, sure lets go catch a movie.  But if I’m really busy, I’ll only go do stuff I really want to do and not do all the things offered.  Maybe single people just don’t understand that, I didn’t before I was married. But really, priorities, interests and availability changes.  If you want to lead your old life with your girls, don’t get married.  It’s not fair or even possible to be out with all your random “friends” for “girl time” all the time and have a close marriage.

RunnersHigh
wrote on May 16 2009 @ 09:26 am: [report]

This article is so pathetic.  First, most marriages, close to 60% in fact, land in divorce, so this writer’s assumption that “her single life is changing” is flawed.  There are no guarantees that this lovey-dovey relationship with your current man is going to last.  Just ask the hundreds of women that have come before you.  Second, since when is there a great divide between being single and being married?  Who exactly made this ignorant pathetic “rule” of living?  A bunch of 20-something brides to be?  LAME.  There is nothing wrong with either lifestyle and there is nothing wrong with actually having a life outside any committed relationship.  It is actually healthy and encouraged by psychologists and psychiatrists who help dependent women find themselves after a mid-life crisis breakdown when they realize that marriage and children is not all that it is cracked up to be.  Again, the divorce rate is close to 60% which evidence of this fact.  Finally, even in Sex in the City, which many single women try to emulate, if nothing more than for the fashion, all of those women have had less than healthy relationship and even Charlotte was divorced.  Getting married is not the end of your relationships with your friends.  If it is for the writer, then the writer is not much of a friend to begin with.

erikasf
wrote on May 17 2009 @ 09:03 pm: [report]

I still have that kindred spirit with my female friends, even though I am married with a small child.  Modern life ties folks up so much with work and the chores of every day life.  Even when I was single, I was so busy working, sometimes 2 jobs, to pay the bills.  The security of my marriage, in some ways, allows me more freedom to be with friends.

hms2488
wrote on August 18 2009 @ 10:54 am: [report]

It’s all too true.  Once you’re in a serious relationship, even the strongest friendships fizzle (A LITTLE).  It all depends on how much effort the now-coupled woman puts into the already existing friendship. 

I’m currently single, but I have experienced so many friends in and out of relationships.  Some handle it great, while others alienate those who were there for them in the first place. 

Most of these girls make time for me (and my other single friends), even if it’s less time than we used to spend together.  The efford alone is what keeps our bond strong!

Wendy - weekly phone calls or Emails, or even once in a while visits should give you the kinda female companionship you need to feel as though you haven’t given that part of your life up! 

There’s nothing wrong with friendships changing as new people enter in and our of our lives, it’s the way of life.  Just make the effort to keep those who mean the most to you in your life.

ootie
wrote on August 18 2009 @ 02:50 pm: [report]

I think its pretty hard to deny that being in a serious relationship can take a toll on outside friendships. I don’t think anyone advocates cutting yourself off from your friends and hobbies because you have a SO, but its natural that the time you spend on them might change.  Thats because, when you enter a relationship, you have a whole new priority in your life that you didn’t have before.  A priority that takes a lot of time, energy, and that you really enjoy.  The time you spend on it has to come from somewhere, so it ends up cutting into things that you used to do when you were single.  I’ve been in a relationship for a few years, and I have a lot of close friends that I spend a lot of time with.  I don’t feel like I ignore my friendships at all, and I still put a lot of effort into them.  However, I was single for a few months at the beginning of the year, and there’s no denying it was different.  I hung out with my friends every single night and got a lot closer to people that had been “fringe friends” when I was with someone.  I wanted to go the bar every night and then get up and get brunch and then go shopping, etc.  Now, its not that I don’t want to do those things or value them any less, I just have less time, and on weeknights I would sometimes prefer to skip dancing so I can cuddle up and watch True Blood.

FreeSpirit
wrote on August 18 2009 @ 10:31 pm: [report]

When life changes in any way, your relationships are thrown off balance.  Sometimes they can be salvaged; other times it’s easier to move on.

HardSix
wrote on September 6 2009 @ 11:27 am: [report]

At least the comments have some reality to them, thank goodness.

Women who focus too much on the romantic side of their interpersonal relationships deserve everything they get when later on down the road the divorce happens and the only friends she had at the time were his, or his friends’ wives… because you know where that’s going.  Or, if there is no divorce, the utter hopelessness that comes from realizing you dumped all the girlfriends that had been there for you and gave you so much joy before you ran into someone with a different appendage and decided that he should be your one true priority above anyone else in your life.

Co-dependency is a disorder.  Look it up.

You absolutely MUST be an independent person and maintain your independent relationships, especially if you’re in a romantic one… to do anything else is unhealthy.  Unfortunately, seems like the author is backtracking in the comments.  The article DOES read as if the thrust is that due to her having a romantic relationship now that she doesn’t want to make as much time for friends outside of her little love bubble.  It’s sad and I feel sorry for her.

“I’d rather spend most of my free time with my fiance. And soon that fiance will be my husband, and one day he’ll be the father of my children, and as we continue building a life and home together, I’ll have even less time to devote to other relationships.”

I’d pity you, but you probably wouldn’t understand so the effort would be wasted.  I just hope you see the light and realize that you, too, can be a vital, independent, wonderful person without having to devote 90% of your time to your sex partner.  Don’t cast others aside so carelessly.  We may live in a world of disposable packaging, but we still should not live in a world of disposable relationships.

ellie1202
wrote on October 2 2009 @ 10:29 am: [report]

i totally understand where you’re coming from as well. my move was much smaller (only an hour away from where i lived before) but moving has changed the dynamics of a few of my friendships. i also lived with a friend and that relationship has changed the most. there’s no more we’re both home with nothing to do moments. we have to plan to meet up and that takes some adjusting to. my ex-roommate in particular has not taken to the planning of lunch, dinners, etc as well as other friends. it’s definitely been a learning experience!