Grieving friendships

[Happygogoat]

Just wondered people's experience of this.

Am finding that having kids in relative quick succession (and a little earlier than my friends) has created a gulf. Not helped by lockdowns I am sure.

Do things come back around? Is this it now? I accept that times change and some friends come and go in your life but perhaps am feeling a little aggrieved.

I feel like there are some friends who want to maintain friendships as they were but to the extent of pretending my kids don't exist! Never asking after them etc when we chat, not a word. Not that I expect to talk about my kids (I'd rather not in huge detail tbh!) but I find it rude to not ask a friend about something important to them be that job/pets/house renovations - whatever. Let alone the fact my family has grown by 3 people.

These are not friends with fertility issues by the way for which I recognise there should be sensitivity - if the person needs - just quite vocally anti kids/eye rolling.

I feel very conscious that I don't want to bore people and I make the effort to get in touch but it's not feeling reciprocated. I am beginning to think perhaps I need to accept that my life has changed and therefore some of my friendships have too.

To a lot of people, other peoples children just aren't interesting. Particularly if they don't yet have children themselves. However, it's rude to totally ignore their existence when presumably they care about you and your life so I understand why that might be hurtful. A quick conversation about how the family are then moving on to other topics is the kind thing to do so if they're not bothering with that then I'd question whether these friends really care about you and your friendship tbh.

I was the first in my friendship group to have kids and we all drifted apart sadly. I was quite sad at first but it was just one of those things. DD1 was quite unwell to start with so I couldn’t just drop everything to go out for drinks and stuff.

Some of them went on to have kids close in age and we see them at the odd bbq (pre covid).

The ones without kids have lost touch with everyone now tbh.

I am not massively fussed now as have made other friends through school and work.

Two of my friends faded like the morning mist, one when ds was born and one a few weeks later.

Neither have children, like to dine out a lot, drink a lot, throw plenty of parties. Socialising once you have dcs takes a bit of organising, a bit more than 2 hours notice and they got tired of me saying I couldn't drop everything (ds) and go out to play.

It's fairly normal I think.

Once you have kids your focus changes and mostly you tend to be friends with other families. I've stayed close to childhood friends but we all had kids within 3 years of each other in mid 20's

@LagneyandCasey yes I agree. It's the feigning of total non existence I think that hurts. I absolutely do not expect (or want) to talk in any detail as you're right, it cannot be expected for anyone to find interesting. I don't think it's expecting too much just to mention almost in passing but there isn't even that. I've literally paid more attention to helping them choose a houseplant and that's not a joke!!