In the past year, it seems that I have “lost” countless friends. It happened very quickly, yet subtly.
As background, I’m in my early 30s and recently married but no kids. Most of my friends are married, have kids, and demanding careers. Once kids arrived in the picture, keeping up with friends became increasingly difficult.
At first I let them off the hook because of being new dads (it’s tough, I get it), but as the years roll by I see them less and less.
Their social lives now seem driven by their wives and kids. They appear to mostly socialize with their wives’ friends and husbands, who happen to be dads too.
I rarely see my old friends doing “guy stuff” or having hobbies away from their family. Getting them out of the house and away from their families is very difficult.
Is this a normal progression of life?
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yes it is.
Pick the best, ditch the rest. it’s hard but the way.
sorry :/
“Without change, life itself is impossible” — Mr. Spock, First Officer
Yes, but keep in mind that it doesn’t mean they don’t like you. It’s kind of “out of sight, out of mind” for them because you are not in that group of parents and spouses.
Have you tried doing something with them where they can have kids with them and still talk, or are you pitching activities that involve them needing to get a babysitter or leaving the kids with their wives? Since it’s the summertime, you can organize a cookout with them. The kids can play with each other with some parental supervision, and you get to hang out with your friends.
Yes, it’s the normal progression. You need to continually reinvest in friendships–both in old friendships and in cultivating new ones. It’s hard, and if you don’t work at it you can find yourself alone.
I’d say it’s pretty normal for a number of reasons. You won’t get along with all of your spouse’s friends nor will she with yours.
But when you get married you’re essentially committing most of your free time to that person. That varies by couple of course, but you are getting married presumably because you like that person.
So now take into account that your friends’ spouses might not all like you and they might not like your wife or you or your wife might not like your friends wife.
So now it’s a lot harder to do stuff with that person because of personality clashes on top of just familial time commitments.
Then throw kids into the mix and maybe the kids of your friends are not the same age and or don’t get along with your kids.
Then your kids start having activities and taking up more time.
My wife and I got super lucky after losing most of our friends that we found some that had kids the same age as one of ours and did similar activities and all the spouses liked each other and we all get along.
It was like winning the friend lottery because for the prior like 7 years we just never found friends that we really jived with.
So yeah, it’s normal and it’s hard and it’s frustrating, but you can make new friends as long as you try to be open with the new people that you meet that are around you.
In a word, yes. I try to carve out time for myself and friends. But with regards to friends…like, i cannot overemphasize the degree to which people without kids don’t understand how hard it is to get a night off without, like, two weeks notice
My two best friends have kids and we still kick it and imma pump some out soon too so we’ll do dad shit together, but yeah, your tolerance for bullshit goes way down as you get into your 30’s. I just cut out a lot of people who didn’t grow up, who had clouds of dysfunction swirling around em 24/7. It’s all about peace these days
Some friendships, relationships, and even family member relationships have an expiration date.
It’s not always that something went wrong, but a different path that you or they take.
I think it’s extremely common to lose touch with once close friends as you reach a certain point in life. I certainly did in my early/mid thirties.
Aside from the obvious blow up fight or fallout, it happens for a number of reasons:
Doesn’t make you or them a bad friend. It just comes with the responsibilities, time constraints and maturation through adulthood. You get less time, you feel more tired, you’re better at prioritizing what you want to spend your limited free time doing. Inherently you just lose touch with people for no other specific reasons.
The ones that ditch their own friends usually end up divorced within 5 years.
Unfortunately it is. Been studied enough in developmental psychology that I remember seeing diagrams of the different stages of social development from childhood to adulthood in my psych textbooks in undergrad. Getting married or coupling and having kids is usually the point where things break from “hanging out in small groups of friends” to “mostly hanging out with your partner and your kids and just whoever is in that circle.” Now imagine the difficulty when you are one of the last single friends in all your friend groups.
I think the main thing is seeing who matches your energy in terms of reaching out and staying in touch. You’ll never see each other or hang out in the same frequency but who is willing to continue to engage with you in conversation. Who will at least reach out to say hi or check in with you occasionally. You yourself should also continue to stay engaged and not just lean into your wife and leave it at that. There will be some pruning of friends through the natural progression of life but you don’t have to accelerate it yourself either.
Yeah man I went thru it as well. I keep in touch with a couple but the rest cut ties with me about 3 years ago when I got a German shepherd dog. I have no kids so I treat this dog like she is one. Once I stopped wanting to goto bars the rest cut their ties with me.
This post resonates for me. I considered myself lucky in college to find a friend group and felt for the first time like I had a group. Many of them got married, and now have children. My wife and I haven’t had kids going on 11 years in. Now when I meet other guys, they’re like, “you have kids?” Since I do not, and chance of a friendship seems to fizzle out.
Can’t lose friends if you never had one!
Yes. As we get older, our selection of friends become smaller because we don’t have as much free time.
Best thing is to never stop reaching out if you truly care. Confidently calm persistence always wins. [+]
New fatherhood is extremely demanding. Having a kid in and of itself is like a hobby: it’s the thing you want to be doing with all your spare time.
I’m definitely a guy who fantasized and all my friends being my family when I got older. Like we would all raise our kids together like cousins. But once the kids come along, people tend to get pretty focused on the nuclear family, and also they have real extended family they spend their time with.
If you want the time you have to make the time. I have friends who I can feel pushing themselves to reach out and schedule things, just a few hours to chill when we’re all free, it doesn’t have to be an all night party. And casual chats like group texts are nice. Or if you have something funny to say just shoot it over to a random irl friend instead of saying it on Reddit. Dumb jokes and casual meme sharing can keep friendships alive and functioning when schedules are too busy.
Seems to be the norm. It’s pretty lonely for those of us who aren’t fathers.
Having kids shrinks your social opportunities drastically for awhile. Years. You need to take special attention to see them if you want to keep the relationship up.
This is very common for a certain type of beta male. The same type of guy who disappears from his friendships whenever he is in a relationship. This kind of crappy friend and weak minded male is the type who post on Reddit about how they are now in their late 30s or 40s and have no friends. They screwed up all of their friendships because they became pussy whipped.
Most guys become a bit less available once they marry and have a family. But, they value- and therefore make time for- their friends. It is essential to continue to have quality time with your male friend group in guys only activities. Poker. Golf. Fishing. Hunting. Attending sporting events (football/basketball/hockey/NASCAR/whatever).
Yes it is, but as your kids get older you will make new ones 🙂
It is normal, and you won’t understand it deep enough to make peace with it until you yourself become a dad. I held some hard feelings for a few friends that fell off the map quickly when they were the first to start families in our friend crowd. It seemed so easy to just get away for Monday night football once in a while or a beer or something. Then I became a dad 5-6 years later and that was me and I realized it wasn’t always that easy.
This is life man. Everyone has priorities and at the end of the day. People are just stressed and to busy with thier families to have energy to enjoy life like they use to.
The pruning is real. I’m so much happier with several great friends than with a whole crew I cannot tolerate
It happened with my friends. But we maintain contact with a group text. Also we recently started doing one guys trip a year. Not everyone can make every trip but that’s fine. Also around Christmas we meet up for some drinks when I’m back in town.
I wish it wasn’t but it is, and honestly if the friend isn’t putting in effort there’s nothing you can do to reverse course.
Will get downvotes for this but not everyone wants to have kids, and regardless of family structure humans are still social animals who need fulfilling connections with people who prioritize them.
As the demographic of childfree adults continues to grow, this polarization between people without kids and those who devote 100% of their emotional world to them is only going to become more of a societal issue.
As the cool unc, I can see it with my family, yeah Dadship is it’s own thing. Interactions formed around kid-play dates or parties. Which creates a whole nother dynamic. There are playgroup, school, workers, extracurriculars. So the kidless ones tend to get left out or not invited unless you’re family. The parents hang out while the kids hang out. There are separate times for separate groups, but this gets everything done nicely.
It’s normal. It’s the way she goes, bud.
You can try to get uncle status as not family. That would be your in. That might mean spending some money on toys and shit or buying pizza for everyone.
Not all friendships will become old friendships, and some of your 20’s friends will slip away. Probably everyone knows a few guys where they say “wow, last time I saw him was at so-and-so’s wedding…wonder what he’s up to now” and it’s been 20 years. Natural.
But losing most of your friends is normal because too many men allow it to be normal. Far too many men fall into this trap of having their entire life revolve around a wife and children and in the process, their friendships wither and sometimes die. The problem is that longer term male friendships are very important to men’s wellbeing, in the same way that friendships between women are important to them. Far too many men wake up one day, kids grown and gone, and now divorced, and realize that they have no friends. Don’t let that happen if you can avoid it. I am at 50 very fortunate to have a number of friends from all over but that’s because I made it a priority to maintain those relationships. Try to carve out hobby or other time, or even just a regaular meetup at a restaurant, and keep those friendships strong. Do stuff as dads with the kids along even…when I was growing up going canoeing with my dad and another friend with his dad are fond memories. keep those friendships going. You will want them in future.