When the Bloom of Friendship Fades

When I was pregnant with my first child and tried to imagine all the ways my life would change once I became a mother, I didn’t think about my own friendships. I worried about the inevitable loss of independence and freedom, about the impact, positive and negative, of a child on my marriage, and about silly vain things like getting fat and my boobs shrinking. Yet I didn’t really give much thought to the role that friendships play in my life and how much my relationships with my close friends would evolve and change in the coming years.

Some changes come with the territory of being married—we do (appropriately enough) turn more to our husbands now than we do to our friends for advice and solace. As a result, we share less with our friends, and consequently our friends are less in tune with the nuances of our lives. Some of it has to do with age—we go out less, have quiet nights at home more, and socialize less. But a lot of it has to do with having kids.

For one thing, uninterrupted conversation is a thing of the past. The way that most of us are able to get together now with our friends is with our kids in tow. If you’re lucky enough to have children similar enough in age and interest, then a hike or swim or a playground visit can afford some chances at conversation. But they’re not deep conversations—they can’t be, because it’s impossible to finish more than three sentences in a row. It’s not just the kids interrupting us, it’s us interrupting ourselves to parent, intervene, or save a life whenever necessary. All of us want to connect and have conversations, but we also all prioritize our children. Who wants to have a mom who was always too busy blabbing to play or watch the latest handstand, somersault, or bike trick?

What I miss the most, what I yearn for, are those meaningful, and connecting conversations I used to have when I would walk away feeling like I’d learned something, grown in some way, discovered something new. A lot of those conversations used to happen over the course of long runs; two hours on the trails affords every kind of imaginable analysis for anybody’s upset. Plus it was safe out there—you could run and cry, hash it out in the open space with the green all around you, and eventually land back at your car simultaneously rejuvenated and exhausted.

But over the last five years, life has gotten more and more in the way of those weekend runs; coordinating the schedules of four or five mothers on a weekend is nearly impossible, especially when you throw in the pregnancies that make running up those hills so tough. More often than not, most of us still run, but alone.

Enough time has passed now that those old, deep friendships have really changed, mostly because we really don’t know what’s going on in each other’s lives anymore. New friendships have sprung up—friendships with mothers of kids in my children’s schools and activities. Every now and again I’ll stumble upon the rare occurrence—a kid who my child connects with who has a mother who I connect with. I know there will be more of those occasions, especially as my daughter enters kindergarten and I’m plunged into a whole new world of kids and moms.

I wouldn’t change any of it—clearly, since we’re now intentionally and blissfully pregnant with our third—but oh how I do miss those old friendships, and the power, strength and satisfaction of them.