To resent having to pretend I don't have a child when around a certain old friend?

[jeckadeck]

Old, very dear, childless friend hates listening to people talk about babies. To the point of neurosis -- she tunes out any reference to kids at all and makes ostentatious claims to anyone who will listen about how bored she is by it all. Don't really know whether she hates children, is envious or is just bored by the conversation, suspect a combination of all three. Up to a point I sympathize, there's nothing duller than being sat in a room full of young mothers banging on about the contents of their offspring's nappies if you don't have kids yourself and if you can't have kids it can be quite painful. I have a 12-week old baby and I try my hardest to be sympathetic and not to talk endlessly about my kid when I'm out with her or other childless friends. But she recently said she'd love to get me and another mum friend out for a night out "on condition that you don't talk about your children." I just think that while its one thing to expect that we don't go on about them all night, she can't expect us not to discuss our children at all. But am I being unreasonable? and if not, how do I get this across to her without hurting her? We've had this out in the past when I was pregnant and she temporarily seemed to get better but apparently is now back to insisting that any reference to children be erased from our friendship.

If her job is so intrinsically fascinating to all, I wouldn't switch off radio4 at 7:15 to avoid listening to the pretentious twaddle show - sorry, I mean Front Row, the creative arts show. You might point out to her that people have different interests and she might not find a discussion with DH about computer games and people (his industry) as a 35 year old man might. It's ridiculous to ban talking about a member of your family, assuming you aren't going to spend all night talking in baby language about nappies and washing. (I am assuming you have more sense than this!)

Before this happened, did she genuinely allow you to talk about things that were currently important to you, even if they were seemingly small and unimportant to others? Or has she always blocked any avenues of conversation that she considers dull and trivial?

I think you'll find, op, that the friendship cools naturally, it'll pick up again in a few years but for just now it's better not to try and keep it going as it once did

its a shame, most childless women don't have a clue about how much they are needed by their friends who have just become mums, how they need an ear to talk to and a hug from their old pals to make them feel like themselves again

the childless friend often takes the huff that she's not centre stage anymore and wastes the opportunity to be a real pal to a struggling mum

I had a friend like this too - she was my best friend for years but once she found out I was pg she never once asked how it was going and even when DD was born early she never acknowledged her. I felt that she knew this was important to me and maybe she was jealous - she would never admit it though. It was like she just wanted to pretend things were as they used to be. They aren't they change massively.

I am not friends at all with her anymore.

Your 'friend' cannot just pretend that your baby doesn't exist. They are a very important part of your life and if you can't talk about them with your friends then who can you. She is being extremely selfish and also a bit arrogant if she thinks her job is interesting to all.

Sadly I think that having children does change you and your relationship with childless friends for whatever reason. You need support and it seems your 'friend' won't give you that.

Congratulations BTW

I have a friend like this. DD is now 2 and if she makes any noise or runs around (i.e. enjoys herself) the friend's shoulders are up round her ears in tension and she ignores DD totally, or makes remarks like 'she's running around again'. She also swears (the c word?) in front of DD and makes a fuss if I say she needs to watch her language, I'm being precious apparently.

This has upset me greatly, but this friend is single at 41, and I believe feels very insecure that her friends have children because she feels she is losing out. She doesn't realise that people can have friends and have children too. This kind of behaviour doesn't come from a happy place! Instead of enjoying the small people around and making an effort to adapt to your new situation (which is a mutually done thing, which I'm sure you're keen to do as well) she sees children as a threat and this way of dealing (badly) with it is a defensive gesture

I have to say, I avoid this friend as much as possible now. I much prefer being around a joyful 2yo than a self pitying negative nitwit.

Tell your friend that you don't need to apologise for having a child and if she has issues about children she needs to address them because they're not going away! You can also say that her attitude to your child is boring, see how she deals with that. Tell her, she needs to be aware that she's BU!

EightiesChick she's always been a bit of a primadonna and prone to dominating the conversation. And she's always considered her career superior to mine and looked down at people who don't do "creative" things. But she has always had a grudging respect for my life, career and interests and was previously happy to talk about them if only as a way of comparing with her superior career. I think she thinks of motherhood as the death of intellect or something pretentious like that (that's the kind of phrase that could have come out of her mouth). She certainly seems to think that in 9 cases out of 10 women are better off not having children than having them and also thinks they should never have children unless they have the absolute optimum environment (wealthy father who has been trained in the arts of being a new man, big house etc). Very intolerant of people deciding to have children on their own or in not perfectly stable relationships. And people who have had kids young.

YANBU
this is a bit of a weird friendship
I am the only one out of my school mates to have had children, and all of them are very happy to be child free. but they are my mates, and know my dc are important to me, so ask after them, and even bring little gifts sometimes. the same as i am interested their jobs (yup, even the one who's an accountant ) because these people are special to me, so i care about what matters to them.

jesus, jeck, she sounds like a barrell of laughs

I take it this is a friend from school or uni and you have that history together? It doesn't sound like you have a whole lot else in common

Before dd I had no interest in babies at all. I had no intention of having any and thought they were tremendously boring. However, when friends had babies they were exceptions. The babies were interesting because they were my friends' babies and I was interested in my friends and their lives. I didn't find it particularly boring if a friend was talking about sleep problems, baby poo or anything else. If your friend is not getting enough sleep because their baby is not sleeping through the night then I think it's quite normal to be concerned about your friend's sleep deprivation. It's quite possible to find these sort of conversations interesting and engaging if you're concerned about your friends.

I think she's just selfish, and doesn't give a shit about any of you. She sounds like she just wants 'ordinary' people to show off to about her frightfully interesting job dahling.

This is not even about her like or dislike of kids imo, it's about a total disregard of you and your thoughts and feelings. At 12 weeks old like it or not your life is more or less entirely about your baby, so if she doesn't want to know about that, then she is effectively saying that she doesn't want to hear about you. If someone is utterly uninterested in your life, can you really call them a friend?

ssd she's an old friend, put it like that. We go back about 20 years. Its not quite true to say we don't have a lot in common -- we do have a similar sense of humour, shared history, like talking about some of the same things and despite everything I still generally enjoy seeing her, as long as we don't argue. But increasingly I find myself looking at her when she's mouthing off about something like how irritating mothers are and thinking to myself "are you for real?" Libellulle and jux yup, you have a point. A lot of is is about having an audience.

Jeck I think we have the same friend.... wide and berth are the only two words appropriate here

It is amazingly arrogant to be "bored" by someone else's topic of conversation.

We are all boring sometimes. And we maintain our relationships and connections by knowing how to manage the "boring" moments and to "fake" social interest.

I am very when they say that people talking about x or y or z "bores them to tears". What makes any of us so amazingly interesting that we can pass judgement on how interesting/relevant/worthy someone else's topic of conversation is just by mere reference to the content? Of course conversations about kids can be boring, conversations about work can be boring, conversations about the weather can be boring... but so can conversations about travel abroad, festival-going, celebrity, clothes... all the topics that some of my single friends think are "intrinsically interesting".

Don't most people have a "travel bore" friend? "Oh, that reminds me of when we were in Korea, they had Colgate Total there too..". The topic doesn't define whether a conversation is boring or not.

working9while5 thankyou, spot on particularly about the travel bores. It ain't what you say its the way that you say it. Or it should be anyway. Some topics are sensitive and difficult and I totally understand that. I just think it would be easier for all concerned if she fronted it out and said "I find talking about babies difficult for x reason, please just be a bit sensitive and don't wear it out", rather than snorting with derision about what a bunch of pathetic Stepford wives we've all become. Which tends to get people's backs up, funnily enough...

She doesn't have a point about her career. I would probably find someone to worked "in the creative arts" (BabbleFish translation: administrator in a local arts centre) and considered it to be of intrinsic interest to everyone to be tedious in the extreme.

I agree with everyone who said she sounds selfish and just resents the competing demands for your attention.

Ha ha!! Is she my SIL?

If we meet up ( rare) the children are ignored or shuddered at and she spends the entire time boring us all shitless about the people she works with and her shitty little fascinating secretarial big important career. When she isn;t sneering down her nose at us country bumpkins

Absolutely jeck and though I know kids are a sensitive topic for some, why we're all sensitive in some respects. I never managed the travel thing because there was too much sad/difficult stuff going on in my family during those years so when I hear people wax lyrical about the wild times they had in South East Asia/Bora Bora/the Outer Hebrides sometimes I feel wistful... but I can still differentiate between a rollicking good travel story and detailed cataloguing of a two year travel itinerary in all its excruciating minutiae and I don't feel the need to be snide that others have had opportunities I will now likely never have.

I don't think that - with some rare and notable exceptions e.g. people suffering ongoing infertility, in a grieving period etc - that your feelings about your own life make it understandable that you would be dismissive of other's feelings about theirs. In any case, even if some people do feel conflicted about their friends having children when that's not a path they've chosen to travel, there has to be balance and "live and let live".

Hi jeckadeck - this reminds me of my aunt's partner, who was a friend of my dh's before he met her.... dh and him have worked together and have known each other for years. Things are better now, but when our children were born (they are now 5, 7 and 9) he too would not mention them / ask about them in any phone conversation with dh. He is childless and I think does feel some kind of sadness about this, but he is also very brainy about lots of different things and in some ways I think, just didn't know HOW to ask about them. Brainy but perhaps not very emotionally intelligent? Not suggesting that people who do ask about others' babies are not brainy of course.
I think it is good manners to ask about your friends' lives and of course if they have children, this is part of their life. Your friends sounds a little pompous and boring herself - does she have any other friends or does she alienate them as well? I think you are being very magnanimous and it's great that you want to talk to her about this instead of just agreeing not to see each other...
Now that my kids are all at school I have "moved on" in a way and find it difficult to have conversations about naps (which my kids no longer have) etc... with friends who have younger children. However I am sure my current concerns (eg how tidy my house isn't) can be pretty tedious as well so I think, as somebody else said, we all have to agree to be bored some of the time if we want to keep our friends!

quite apart from the fact that as your baby gets older, your friend might develop a relationship with her and appreciate all the funny things she does herself - do you think she will interact with her when she gets older?

You say that you enjoy her company so don't cut off your nose to spite yourself. Still see the friend, but keep the meetings short. That way you can have an interesting chat but cut it short before you start irritating each other.

As someone in the creative arts might say - leave them wanting more.

jeckadeck - my friend who decreed all female friends a thing of the past as soon as they entered motherhood, was also in the "creative arts". He was an actor. He was hanging out with performance artist and painters. Mostly gay. Mostly smug, self congratulatory, superior smug tossers.

I dont understand why you put up with this conceited primadonna.

shocked2 possibly. Tbh I don't think it has much to do with the baby it's more to do with her expectations of me as a friend. I think she subconsciously had me in the category of "friend least likely to have children" for various reasons, in particular because I was quite ambivalent about whether I wanted children for a long time and discussed this with her, and she feels a particular sense of betrayal that I have had a child. Don't have any hard evidence for this, its just a hunch. But I get the feeling she wouldn't dare talk to other mutual friends with children like this because she's made her peace with the fact that they are mothers. She still has me in a single and childless box.

She needs to deal with it. You can't live your life for her approval and convenience. Real friends would understand and support your choices. She sounds like she has some good points but is pretty fair weather. Would you be able to ring her in the middle of the night for help in an emergency? Would she come and sit with you in hospital if no one else was available? Has she been there for you in really difficult times in the past?

QuintessentialPains yup. There can be a peculiar sort of smugness about people who call themselves "artists". I put up with her because despite everything she's still someone I could call at 4am in tears if I had a problem, because she still makes me laugh and we can still have a good time together, notwithstanding I have to sit through increasingly frequent and vitriolic rants about how dull and unreliable mothers are and what a personal tragedy it is for me that I don't get to go to the theatre any more. And because I believe long term friendships often go through these troublesome spells and frequently come out the other side. But I'm beginning to wonder if this one will stay the course -- its in the balance.

she sounds lonely - has she been single for a long time and would she like to have a partner?