The only child free friend in the group, always asked to compromise or organise for others.

[RooRooRu]

I sadly don't have kids. I have 2 close friends who have young and young(ish) kids. We have been friends for roughly 10 years. I completely understand that when you have kids your priorities change, and things don't stay the same as when you had less ties. We have always been pretty good at making an effort to see each other, but I feel the effort is now resting firmly with me to organise our catch ups and for me to compromise on where / what / when we do it to fit in with family life.
The time we meet always fits around nap / routine / weekend sport, I'm often asked to rearrange any pre-existing commitments to accommodate them.
It's often left to me to arrange and book what and where we are doing, because after family life and work they 'just need someone to make the decision for them'
The location is always closer to where they live to make it convenient, not close to where I work or live. Never early dinner in the city after work for example, because that's too hard for them but easy for me.
AIBU and I just don't get it because I've not had to manage the juggle?

You shouldn’t always have to be making the compromises for sure. Don’t cancel things any more - you are allowed to say ‘that doesn’t work for me’ just the same as they are.

When kids are small people do tend to be more restricted - and getting out of those restrictions can often be a monumental effort. If I wanted to make an ‘early dinner in the city’ for example I’d have to get my husband to take a half day and come home early so that impacts us both. It’s not undoable but it seems a bit of an overcompensation to do fairly regularly, or without a special occasion.

This won’t last forever, but it’s whether you’re prepared to wait I suppose. You shouldn’t be rearranging your plans, that will only breed resentment. But it’s possible the friendships will falter, that’s just a reality.

We had this for 10 years with a group of friends.
It took us that long for our dc to arrive due to fertility problems while everyone else was popping babies out all over the place.

Always the ones who had to travel or compromise. Always given the crap rooms when we went away together ( we were made to change rooms three times on one trip when all the families gradually turned up and declared their rooms not suitable for a baby)

I went along with it all thinking that when our time came they would do the same for us.

I was wrong.

Eventually had to accept they were just crap friends and we drifted.

We had toddlers when they had teenagers - we had to get babysitters whereas when they had toddlers we always had to travel to them for a night in with a takeaway. They never once came to us for dinner as they were too busy enjoying their new found freedom.

We found better friends.

well yes, dinner on a weeknight miles from home is going to be challenging for a lot of people with young children. Maybe weekends and more spaced out meet ups would be better for now.

Picking up from childcare etc just isn't optional. Children do introduce new genuine constraints that can't always be "juggled" and they take a lot of energy too. Maybe they need to do occasional weekend meet ups instead for a while. It's not forever. I don't think it's unreasonable actually to ask you to go to theirs more while they have young children. Obviously you don't have to do so but sometimes it's just what's possible.

Of course. We all have commitments, some moveable some not. The OP can just say no in that case.

I think the pertinent point is that for parents, it's often organising / reorganising many people, whereas for the OP it's just organising / reorganising her plans.

I felt like this until I had children and then found out just how difficult it is juggling everything.

The thing is, my partner really did do his share, he worked flexibly and even now does the majority of before and after school care.

So in many ways, asking him to do extra induces guilt. He does it, of course, but for me to then ask him to do the bedtime and bath hours which are normally shared feels a bit off , especially as I've barely seen my child on those days. It also means things like asking him to swap his office days, which are set to work around my non-work days, and like someone else said, means him factoring in changes to his long standing meetings and client plans.

So yes, he can do it, and he often encourages me to, but that doesn't change the fact that several people's schedules need to be taken into account for something like an early city dinner.

And let's be honest, if the shoe was on the other foot and I was doing most of the childcare and working and my husband expected me to change my work plans semi-regulalry to fit in with his golfing plans, people would fully support me in saying that he has a family and needs to out them first. And OP won't be the only person the mum friends want to see, so if they did it for all friends, it would quickly lead to a disproportionate situation.

I’m sorry this happened to you. I had fertility issues too. 💐. Must be very hard when you finally have a baby at a time your friends have long left the baby stage behind. I’m glad you had your baby and found new friends though.

I’m in my 50s now, but when I was younger I had a similar experience to you OP. I gradually saw less of those friends over time - even when we did meet, a lot of the conversations were about the kids.

Apart from one friend, who was my closest, I drifted away from those friendships and made new friends that had similar interests to me. My closest friend is still in my life (friends for over quarter of a century now), and I also have a mix of older and younger friends who don’t have kids. I realise I may end up ‘losing’ some of my younger friends once they start having kids. Some people aren’t meant to be forever friends, and that’s okay. Maybe it’s time to make some new friends who have a similar lifestyle to yours.

We’ve just moved our DC to a school that is further away and in the middle of nowhere with shorter wraparound care hours. Yes if it was absolutely necessary DH would rearrange work to do pick up but frankly it would need to be for a medical appointment I simply had no choice but to attend, not to meet up for an early dinner.

What about weekends? I find missing a weekend bedtime to go out for dinner much easier.

Maybe ask them what evening is best for their partner to do the childcare so they can have dinner in the city

It's a phase of life disconnect - which may not be resolved for 5-10 years.

Life is totally different with kids. If there is no nanny on the scene, you are time poor.

Maintain your friendships but understand that they are under a massive strain - physical, emotional, financial, and marital - so if you can accommodate them, and the input when present is reciprocal, it's fine.

It's a bit like having a friend that has a car accident who sustains a serious injury with a protracted recovery cycle affecting mobility. You would travel to see them without question.

Well, you've proven a point here really. You prioritise your husbands feelings rather than meet your friend - that's totally fine of course as people can do whatever they like. But it does show the friend that the friendship is no longer something they will make an effort to keep going.

As I pointed out in my post, if things/people are important to them then they do their best to find a way.

OP I clicked YANBU because you’re not, and it’s hard, and you don’t want to feel taken for granted. How your friends show up for you might have to change when they have kids, but it’s on them to find another way to show you how important and loved you are.

But I absolutely recognise this pattern, I do this too: ‘please just make a decision for me, I make micro-decisions all day for other people and I really value this occasion as a break from family life so just want to turn up and remember who we used to be without the burden of organising it’. I am so grateful to my childfree friends who just decide and book, it feels like such a gift to my swamped brain. It’s not because I can’t be bothered to see them. Point taken though, I will offer next time.

But if it’s an early dinner in the city that’s not always possible even with a really involved partner.

My friend is a dentist, her husband does nursery pick ups. She cannot cancel her last few appointments of the day so that she can be home for nursery pick up so her husband can go for dinner with friends. She just can’t.
Plenty of jobs are flexible. But plenty aren’t.

I agree with you if it’s a case of the partner is around but just being useless and can’t possibly look after the children alone.

Just pull back for a bit. The first couple of years of parenting shake up your entire life and then you can start being a bit more adult human again.

I thought it would get easier as they got older, but now I'm a personal chauffeur! Driving DD14 to gymnastics 4 times a week in a town 25 miles away and driving her to meet friends then picking her up again (bus isn't an option). DD12 does parkour, luckily that's only once a week, but it's still another evening lost. I don't know how people with lots of kids manage!

Look, things shift all the time. I was the first of my mates to have kids and was the only one for a good few years. I had to suck it up and made a (huge and stressful) effort to be present at stuff and not miss out. Nearly two decades later and the ones who've had kids in their early 40s are nowhere near as flexible as I was. They can't possibly do a night away (wow, so glad I went to all the effort and faff of a hen do night away from home when breastfeeding) or take an interest in my life (despite me showing up for their business launches and helping them decorate their new homes with my toddler in tow). But I love them because they're my friends. I smile and bite my tongue when they teach me how to suck eggs re baby, toddler, child info like "you don't know how expensive nursery is" well no I couldn't name the price but I do know it was the same for a day at nursery as my income for a day when mine were babies and toddlers, it was less but my salary was less too.

Anyways, you're always going to get some people who are the organisers and bookers in a group of friends regardless of who has kids.

I genuinely don't think you've got an idea of the struggle if you still think it's unfair to be making things more convenient for them to attend when they've got more responsibilities and less time than you. Things do change.

Even though my kids are teens, I do still have a responsibility to make sure they're sorted before anyone else, and that looks very different to a toddler or primary aged child but it's still bloody awkward to arrange something on a night where I should be giving a lift to a Scouting event or music thing or a rugby game. I can make arrangements for someone else to give a lift but that's another layer of faff so yeah, I would prefer it to be on a day when it's convenient and I've got less of a mental load.

Just set some boundaries for yourself as they have. You won’t bring them round to your way of thinking as they are deep in the head space of family calendars which means their arrangements with you are taking lower priority. So you can resign yourself to seeing them less and in a venue and at a time they choose or drop the baton, find new more available friends and maybe in a few years things may improve as their children need them less.

YANBU. This is something I found when some of my friends started to have children, that everything ALWAYS revolved around children and there seemed to be an assumption that this “was just how it had to be”. They could have asked their partner to look after the children so we could go out for an evening meal just occasionally (as opposed to a child-friendly lunch which I didn’t hugely enjoy but compromised because that’s what friends do) but they didn’t want to. They could have arranged something for a weekend but that was ringfenced as “family time”. They could have done some of the arranging meet-up but they didn’t because they were too busy.

Those friendships fell by the wayside a long time ago because I got fed up of being the one who compromised when they weren’t ever prepared to compromise in return. The friendships that have endured through the years and come out the other side were the ones who realised I didn’t want to always meet up at soft play or with small children in tow, who remembered that kids aren’t the centre of everyone’s world, much as I recognised they were the centre of theirs.

‘Can somebody else organise? I just need a break’
and don’t tell them they’re the reason you’re tired. Hopefully they cop on and help you x (from someone with 4 kids)

This would have been literally impossible for me at this time when my kids were young. It's simply not physically possible, no matter much I would have loved to have done it. I had no family help whatsoever either so its not like anyone else could have helped me.

I am sorry but this is completely unreasonable for you to get angry about this.

Now, if your friends arent reciprocating in other ways then thats understandable why you'd be upset and I agree friendship should be reciprocal but this early dinner thing - no.

I have a very close friend who had her first baby 4 years after I did. We stayed close but it took some effort!

I think it's a bit unrealistic to expect two women with young kids to come and meet you for early dinner in the city after work. That's not something that fits with family life- can't you do that sort of thing with your colleagues instead?

They shouldn't expect you to rearrange other commitments though.

But if it’s an early dinner in the city that’s not always possible even with a really involved partner.

THIS. My husband runs his own business and there is no way he'd have been able to leave work early to accommodate this, why the obsession with an early dinner in the city???

No one is really wrong here. A lot of kids stuff can't really be moved around. Like they can't skip kids activities because they want to go out for dinner. However, you are in your rights to also say when something doesn't work for you.

I have 3 young DC and work full-time, and there is absolutely no way that I could ever make a weekday dinner after work. Between DH and I, getting the 3 kids picked up, home, fed, and in bed every night involves both of us. I’m away at school camp right now (I’m a teacher) and in order to make this happen, we’ve had to involve both sets of grandparents + a paid babysitter to arrange a complicated web of pick ups/childcare. No way would I ever do that for something that I’m not contractually obligated to do.

It’s difficult to understand until you have this kind of responsibility on your shoulders. I don’t mean to be rude or disrespectful when I say that, it’s just the truth. To have one (or three in my case!) tiny humans completely dependent on you, means that things like an after work dinner become impossible.