Are all mum friendships just temporary/useful?

[user1480954406]

Feeling really rubbish about this actually.

I'm a SAHM and plan to be so for a good while. I love it, but it can be a bit lonely at times, and everything is much better with mum friends. I have different and much deeper I think friendships with other mums, I think we support each other through so much, and lean on each other a lot. I've had friends who have been right at the end of WhatsApp on many a sleepless night from poorly kids or pregnancy stuff etc.

But a lot of my friends have gone back to work or their kids have started school or they have moved or had another baby and they seem to just kind of stop needing you as much and that's rubbish. It's life o guess and nobody's fault really, but o guess what I struggle with is a really involved friendship when you see each other multiple times a week to just like "we must plan something" and then it doesn't happen for weeks and weeks. I feel a bit like when it's convenient to other mum's they want to spend loads of time together and then when life changes you get dropped.

And it's actually made me really wary of making new mum friends. I notice how quickly mum's open up to other mum's and want to meet for coffee all the time and it's lovely, but I just don't want to make another really good friend and just be used for companionship/a shoulder to cry on (or vent about terrible twos) and dropped when they no longer need you

I think when dc are little you do make friends with people where the main thing you have in common is being sahm. I had lots of those and, as you say, they were a great support.

As dc get older though, if dc were the only thing you had in common, it's likely you'll drift apart. I did make 2 really good friends at that time (dc now teens) but kits if friendships have drifted off.

Isn't there some deep saying about people passing through life when you need them?

'Using' seems a bit melodramatic. Aren't you 'using' the other people too, in the sense of a mutual exchange of support? It's just that your need for that relationship has outlasted theirs..? Honestly, OP, lifelong friendships are as frequent as unicorns. Just enjoy friendships for however long they last. That they are finite doesn't invalidate them.

Also, have you ditched all your friends who aren't parents?

I agree - I have a small group that I met having DS and then we had 2nd babies all at the same time too. Was great, had some hard days but we helped each other through and I thought were genuine friends outside of the 'mum' thing too.

I went on to have a 3rd, am on mat leave now and my DD1 is the only one of the group not to be at school this year as she is the youngest by enough weeks to miss the cut off for 2016.

I haven't seen this group at all since school started in September and barely even heard from them just to say hello! It's like we've been totally ditched now we aren't needed for play dates. The mums still work p/t so are around at least a day or 2 in the week but nothing...

It does upset me to be honest when I think about it, it's like they have no interest in my DD2 despite being so excited when I got pregnant and I thought were good friends.

I think that the mum friend relationship is essentially the equivalent of friends at work. If you change job (or in the case of mum friends go back to work/have kids at school) then you don't see them in the same incidental ways - you won't be having lunch together twice a week, for example) but if there is also actual friendship there then you will continue to have a friendship, even though you will probably meet up a lot less often. But the meeting less often is pretty inevitable. I haven't seen one of my old mum friends since last summer - we have to keep cancelling on each other for work/health/sick child reasons, but she's still someone I care about a lot.

They are situational friendships - as PP said, like work friendships, or neighbours you are friends with. They exist because you are in the same situation, and that situation lets you spend time easily together. However theres nothing deeper to them than sharing the same situation, so once out of the joint situation it ends. There's no ill will to it, no ones pretending - its just how it is

Some of the 'mum friends' I met with DC1 (now 13) I would now count amongst my best friends - we do stuff independently of the children like drink wine. But - and this is what I picked up from your post OP, this whole 'multiple times a week' thing would make me want to run a mile once you have to get on with things and aren't in a baby blur!

When you are working again and the kids are getting older then statements like 'we must plan something' and it being weeks and weeks is pretty standard and not insincere or 'being dropped'.

Honestly it won't be anything personal though, just life being full on- and with real friends it doesn't matter how long it has been since you last saw them, just pick up where you left off (and understand that if the shit hits the fan they will no doubt still be there) & they don't mean any less to me, if anything having that kind of bond where I know that they are there & we don't judge each other on who called who last or count the days means more. Sounds like you need a bit of perspective if I'm honest - or to try and meet other people who actually want the kind of intensity that you describe. But no, in answer to your question in your post OP - not at all, I have never been 'temporary or useful' friends with someone, just a genuine friend with constantly evolving friendships that move with the times.

As children get older, go to school etc friendship circles alter. It doesn't mean that the times you saw them more often, weren't good friendships. It's just that life changes and it can be tricky to fit everything in. I have friends I saw when my children were babies but I don't often see now as they are at different schools. I still regard them as friends.
Are you sure though that they were happy to be on WhatsApp with you in the middle of the night? I'm not sure I'd have liked that, but each to their own if it works for you and them.

I WOH full time and after work and parenting, housework etc DH and I have very little time or energy for any kind of social life!

Friendship is nicest when it's reciprocal.

Whatsapp... I don't mean all the time. Specifically nights when their or my children were very poorly or they or I had had an argument with their oh etc. I had one friend who was pregnant at the same time as me and we were both at the sleepless stage together so we did chat a lot. And she was on maternity leave at the same time so we did do a lot of play dates, spent New Years together as families, Christmas Eve etc. Since her son has gone to school though she's very involved with the school mum's, which I expected, but it's more recently the "we've made other plans for New Years" and it seems like I'm making way more effort than she does so I've stopped to be honest and taken the hint that she's moved on. I know this is all not personal and just tents to happen and is situational, I just think it's a bit rubbish because I wear my heart on my sleeve a bit and i think a friendship is a proper friendship and then it dwindles and I feel like I'm chasing something that's gone.

And no, I haven't ditched my friends who aren't parents. In fact I've come to appreciate them a lot more recently because although we don't have kids in common and sometimes I feel like there isn't much common ground, pur friendship isn't dependent on a shared situation.

Used is a dramatic word, what I mean is perhaps, convenient or available at the same times.

I also think your idea of friendship is extremely intense and involves an awful lot of talking and seeing one another very frequently -- that clearly works for you, but it wouldn't, for instance, suit me at all. I don't have time to talk to my closest friends in the entire world, whom I've known and loved for 20 years, anywhere near that often, and I honestly wouldn't want to, even with far more leisure. It would stifle me. It sounds to me as though having small babies at the same time has fostered the kind of extreme communication that you like for temporary periods with these people, but when other people have moved on from needing or wanting that, you are expecting it to continue in the same way.

You do emerge from your posts as not being someone who is entirely happy with her own life, and happy spending time with herself, and who is desperately chasing friendships out of a need for something. If you could identify what that is, and perhaps be happier in yourself and your own situation, you could relax into seeing friendships, eternal or situational, as lovely additions to your life, rather than the ground it's based on.

Most friendships are though - based on being the in same situation. Whilst at school, college, university, work, maternity leave I have had loads of friends all within the same situation and moving in the same circles as me. As we have move on (from University to work etc) some of those friendships have simply faded away to nothing or facebook friends and the odd one of two remain. At each stage of my life the odd friend has remained so I have now a collection of friends to whom I will forever (I hope) be friends. But life means that we only see each other a few times a year and contact each other over email for them. We still know we are friends. The people I spend most of my time with at the moment are my children's school friends but over time that will fade (as will my children's friendships with them)

Yeh, I think you've hit the nail on the head a bit hard shoulder 😟, but being a sahm is quite lonely and my partner works really long days 6 days a week so I guess I
Just crave a bit of adult company... and toddler groups are great but small talk gets a bit boring. I guess the thing is other people are moving onto different stages or going back to work and I'm not which Makes me feel a bit left behind.