This is such a strange thing. In every other period in our lives, we’ve had people our age, with similar interests, handed to us on a platter with a sign that says “this is your friend pool. Play nice.” We had this in elementary school, middle school, high school, and even college. When we got to college we were able to be a little more selective about who we chose to be our friends. Even in a sorority, you weren’t close with every single girl. But in college, we were able to meet our dearest friends with whom we shared some of the best times of our lives.
After college, I moved here to Columbia for grad school. I made another fantastic friend during that year and we have remained close. Unfortunately, she moved away and I stayed. I met Todd. We have made our life here in Columbia. But my best college friends aren’t here and my one good grad school friend isn’t here. It was a tough transition.
As a newlywed, you want to have couple friends. You want to spend time with your spouse and friends that you both share. But isn’t it so hard to find friends that you can equally share? Where you both love both people in the other couple?
It’s so common for the wife to hit it off with another wife, but the husbands can’t find much that they have in common. Or vice versa.
We found a great network of friends in our Sunday school class. We’re surrounded by wonderful couples who love each other and are the most kind, loving people you’ll ever meet. It was like being a kid all over again. We walked into a room full of couples our age and we instantly had 8 couples that we couldn’t wait to get to know!
The next challenge has been finding friends who have children. We were the first couple out of friends to have a baby and I would be lying if I said it hasn’t been hard to not have another mom or another baby to hang out with and have play dates with. TC and I both grew up spending all of our time with one other family who had a child our age. Our parents were best friends with their parents and our moms had been pregnant at the same time as their moms. It sounds perfect, doesn’t it?
I was fortunate to meet so many bloggers (who are now some of my best friends) who were pregnant when I was pregnant and we got very close as we swapped pregnancy and birth stories. And now we swap stories about our precious babies. I’ve also met some great women in Hudson’s Little Gym class, so we’re coming along slowly, but surely!
I know a lot of wonderful girls through the Junior League who are also moms and I’ve made some great friends there, but I’m talking about family friends. Mom, dad, and children.
But even though none of them have kids of their own, our friends have been wonderful to us and have loved our little boy in a way that we could have only prayed for. And I know that when they do have children that we’ll do the same for them and Hudson will be a good older playmate for them! *I usually keep their pictures off of the blog because not everyone wants to be on the internet! But this picture from when some of them visited the hospital is so sweet that I had to share it.
Has anyone else experienced this? Did you think it was hard to make friends as a couple? How about as a parent?
My husband and I have experienced similar challenges. We were fortunate that two of our friends married the week after us, so we’ve always had married friends to spend time with. We have a lot of friends now who have children, and we don’t have children, so it’s been a challenge making new friends who have time to hang out. When we bought our house over a year ago, we knew my family members and some of the older neighbors, but nobody our age. A freak incident introduced us to a couple our age who lived down the street (I rescued their cat from a sewer one night) and over the past week, we’ve finally met three other couples who are our ages…now we have to wait and see if those couples like us enough to be friends!
It’s times like these that I wish my parents would force friendships on me again – I’d rather let them do the hard work of introductions!
I definitely feel your pain, and Nick and I have experienced the same problems! Moving to a new town is really hard, and where we live is mainly people 50+, so we struggled big time. Finding a couple to hang out with is so hard because either the wives mesh, or the husbands do. It’s rarely both! I can only imagine that it would even be harder once you throw babies and chilren into the mix!
Literally just had this conversation this morning as I had breakfast with a dear friend to say good-bye. Beyond college, we had med school and residency where we were basically handed people with similar interests and easily made friends. Now we’re both done with residency and moving to separate cities and we wonder where we will find our friends. Church will be the first place we start, but a new city where we don’t know anyone will be challenging!
I still struggle with this. I lost most of my “friends” when I became a single mom years ago. I no longer had anything in common with my friends. I don’t have close friends with kids and even the married ones can’t really relate. I can’t spontaneously go to dinner at 7pm when I’m getting the kids ready for bed.
I definitely think it can be hard to make “couple” friends, especially if you are among the first to get married. B & I are lucky that our close law school friends stuck around, but we are definitely on different tracks as some of them which can make getting together hard. My husband sails so we have friends through that (our yacht-friends) but we have discussed moving and I’m nervous about finding friends outside of work and sailing!! I agree that blogging has really opened up some new friendships for me – even if they consist of lots of email, they are still wonderful.
I agree with you and I couldn’t have said it better. We are in the same situation with friends and being the first to have a baby. It is amazing how once your family expands your social circle shrinks. In college it was easy to be friends with so many people. Now we find ourselves almost interviewing new people to see if they will be the type of friends we are looking to meet. So many friends we have made are still in a different place in life than we are. I’m always looking for new mommies to be friends with at least we have one thing in common our babies. Hoping to start some mom groups and baby activites to expand my circle of stay at home mom friends.
Great post I’m glad to not be the only one!
I have this same posted drafted up right now. We’ve been having the same conversation lately about how to meet other couples that we are both interested in hanging out with. I’m scared to see what happens when we throw a baby into the picture. I’m glad you were able to find some friends along the way though! Hopefully it happens more and more.
I don’t have kiddos yet, so, I can’t relate on the children front, but, yes, we’ve found it very hard to find that perfect balance. My husband’s best friends family is fantastic–the wife and I are close friends, but, because she has 3 kids and is a SAHM we don’t have a TON to relate to each other on, but, I do adore her and am so grateful for their family. If they ever move away, I will have a total breakdown.
To that point, not having children yet, but seeing my friends that do, they are great examples to me and for that, I am grateful. Hopefully I won’t be totally clueless when I do have children! (but, I still probably will be!)
Being a grown up is hard!!
We haven’t experienced the parenting yet but as a couple, we really struggle to find friends that have similar interests, values, etc. We just moved to a new city and we try to be open and patient. We have met people through our church and imagine that’s where we’ll find our best friends. But otherwise it’s really hard especially when there aren’t folks at work that are potential friends. We don’t need as big of a circle as we did in college, but a few couple friends would be nice!
I can definitely relate. After we got married and moved to MS, I struggled a lot with this. We got plugged into a great Sunday School class and have developed some of our closest friendships through that. We’re actually on the opposite side of where you are in that the majority of our friends are now expecting or are new parents.
I’m not married (nor do I have children) but I’ve found it hard to make new friends after grad school. A lot of my friends moved away for jobs or spouses and there aren’t many people my age at work. I’ve had to be super friendly and outgoing and also get used to doing stuff on my own. It can be hard!
I can totally relate to this. After college I moved up to DC with friends from college. One by one people started moving back down south — for jobs, for significant others, for grad school, to be closer to home…it was so nice to come up here with an established network but once that network started to slowly disappear I realized how truly hard it is to make friends in that mid-20s, “working professional” phase of life. I’m not married but my BF and I are always on the hunt for couple friends. We talk about it all the time. DC is such a transitional city – it makes it very hard!
Ok, you must have read my blog post about this last week because it talked about the exact same issue. I gave alot of the same reasons you did. It is hard to meet couples around your age, who both spouses like both spouses. My husband actually has a harder time with this then I do because I do have a great group of girl friends, who for the most part of great husbands, we as a group do great but one on one is sometimes alittle harder.
we don’t have a lot of couple friends… my husband and I have only found one couple that we both get a long well with, and we spend most of our time with them!
Woah! So Random… but my friends in Dallas read your blog and sent this one to me. And they said, “Cindy isn’t that Nelson’s sister and husband!” I’m going to be Emmy’s new sister in July and we will be up there to visit soon! Random! But so happy they have a friend like you!
I normally don’t comment on blogs but this is exactly what we have been going through lately. We got married, had a baby and moved to another state and that left us “friendless” locally. I figured I would make most of my friends at work and I have made a few but most are much older and in different “life stages”. Its sad sometimes and I miss my friends who are else where in the country.
I have this issue too! My husband has always been so good at keeping and maintaining good solid friendships. He has some from Elementary School through High School who still live in our home town. I on the other hand have friends move off, get married, go to grad school etc so I am often left friendless. I have enjoyed co-worker friends and neighborhood friends but I miss having “all the time” friends. It’s also so hard to blend his old friends with new friends I try to make.
Sounds like I went off on a tangent but all I meant to say was “I agree”!
I’ve been drafting a blog post in my head on this very topic. My husband and I recently moved to a new town and commute to our jobs in opposite directions. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much of a “young professional and married” population in our town, but we’re doing the best we can do. Right now we’re befriending men and women of all ages and stages in life. I think the best thing to do is get out there and get involved.
It is hard to find couple friends, especially now that we are pregnant and the only parent friends we have live out of state. It’s tough to relate now honestly. I still have some friends from college who are single/ dating and it’s like Mars and Venus with us.
Great post! I feel the same way. Most of my good friends from high school and college live out of the state, and while I have made some great friends through work, I worry about what will happen with those relationships now that I have a baby. Most of my friends are single with no kids, so my life is much different than theirs right now. The family friends that my husband and I have are friends of his from college. I’ve gotten to know their wives better over the years, but it isn’t the same for me to hang out with the group as it is for him.
We too have this problem. Right now it’s because everyone our age has kids or are still single. We both miss our college friends dearly!
We are going through this right now. My husband just graduated medical school and we are the only ones of our friends staying put. Everyone else is moving away — all of our couple friends that we have known and spent time with for the past 4 years. It is way more difficult than I ever thought it would be!
My husband and I are dealing with this exact same problem- we’ve stayed around and made our town (Greenville) our home and all our college friends have moved away. It’s been such a struggle for us because it is so nice to have a few people/couples who you just really love spending time with. It’s so tough to find that when you’re an adult! I know it must be even harder being the only couple with a little one (I’m sure there’s times when it’s hard for your friends to relate)!
P.S. It also appears that we have mutal friends! I know M.F. and W.F. (don’t want to put their names out there!). They’re definitely a wonderful couple to be friends with!
I think it was HARD AS A COUPLE. My husband and I are 6 yrs apart, went to different colleges, had ZERO mutual friends. And it’s hard sometimes to find couples where we both genuinely like the other couple. Jason may like hanging out with the guy, and I might find the girl kinda hard to take. Or vice versa. And (I think maybe, in part, because of the age difference) I have a desire to go out with other couples and have fun, and my husband would prefer to stay in and just hang out with me.
I would say it’s EASY AS A PARENT… in that, having kids is a great conversation starter. Taking a kid to the mall playground is better than taking a dog to the dog park, when it comes to meeting people. 🙂 But it’s hard sometimes (for me) to find friends who are also SAHM (without a part time, paying job of any kind), living off of one income, and trying to figure it all out.
And as my kids get older, it becomes even more important that I, not only like the parents, but I like the kids. If my kids are going to be playing with this or that couple’s kids, then I want for the kids to be reasonably well-behaved and kind.
I also think that having kids GREATLY opens up the age range of people I’m friends with. I was 25 when I had my first child and could relate to women who were 35 having Baby #1. So your “pool of friends” gets bigger.
i remember my mom telling me that some of the best friends I would make would be when we had kids at the same time, and I think it’s so true. I really think that this point in your life really aligns you with certain people in so many ways that it would be hard not to be friends. Most of my closest friends are women who stay at home and have kids my son’s age. Some are new, some I’ve known since dance class when we were 3, some are wives of my husband’s friends. Its not to say that I’m good friends with every SAHM of a 4 year old in a 20 mile radius, but going through the same stuff at the same time really does form lasting friendships.
We were the first of all our really good friends to have a baby. It is soo hard. There are so many activities we have to miss like supper clubs or nights out. But, slowly but surely, they are all joining the momma and dadda club. And as they do, I think we’ll start doing more family centric not couple centric activities.
It sounds like you’re doing a lot to make new friends and I think that is fantastic!
We definitely have the same issue here. We moved just after we were married and even though we lived here 8 years, I still find it hard to find other couples our age, who have children and similar interests. It also doesn’t help that my husband is a complete introvert. I’m just hoping that when I become a SAHM (next month!) I can join a mommy’s group and meet more people my age with kids.
Love your blog, I read it often, love reading about happy marriages and families and you seem to have one 🙂
I am 23 and am already facing this friendship situation, my BF and I have a wonderful relationship with marriage coming up more now than ever (we’ve been together 4 amazing years) and we are struggling to find friends that can relate. All our friends seem to be stuck in rocky, high school-y relationships that may or may not have futures or are still in party mode so we don’t really connect that well to these people. We’d love to have a few couple friends in solid relationships where he and I both mutually love and respect both people in that relationship. So we aren’t giving up, trying different church groups and what not.
Anyway, I’m sure a lot of people can relate to your post, just thought I’d share my thoughts.
Good luck on you friend finding mission!
It is HARD to make couple friends! Inevitably, you’ll end up liking one half of the couple better than the other half – finding the perfect “we like them both” couple s not an easy thing to find! Husband and I have been lucky to find two other couple groups that we’ve grown close with, but it wasn’t easy…and we definitely met 23456765432 couples that were not “right” for us. It can be a journey finding the Mr & Mrs Right, but you will….and when you do – watch out! Fun times are ahead 🙂
This is definitely hard! My husband and I were talking about this recently. We had really good friends who moved away a couple of years ago and we have not been able to replace them (well, you know what I mean).
I feel the same way. We have so many different “groups” of friends. Work friends, JL friends, college friends, etc etc. I hate when I find a good friend and my husband doesn’t get along with the other husband. It stinks! Also, totally random, but I think I know some people in your picture. Did any of them go to Wake Forest???
🙂 Turner
I totally understand where you are coming from. I have really struggled with this since college. You go from being surrounded with your closest friends, to having everyone spread out all over the country. When we all get together it is amazing, but in the meantime it would be really nice to have equally close relationships with people where I currently live. It’s just tough when we are at the time in our lives when our friends are experiencing so many different life stages. I have single friends, friends who are dating, married friends, friends with children, etc. Now that I am married, I have a hard time connecting with my single friends who are going out every night. It has definitely been a transition!
As for couple friend, my husband and I have tried to be very proactive lately about making new friends. We invite new couples over for dinner or make plans for a night out whenever we can. So far this has worked great and there are a few couples we have really hit it off with. Unfortunately, this is not the case with everyone but at least I know we made the effort. Great post!
Kyle and I were just having this conversation a couple of nights ago. It’s very hard finding another couple whose company you both enjoy. My two very best girlfriends/sorority sisters from college both live over an hour away and all of our husbands get along so great. They have small kids too, so we always enjoy getting together with them during the summer and for all of the birthday parties throughout the year. It’s so hard, though, and I miss them so much…wish we lived closer.
We have two couple friends with kids and one great couple without kids here in the town where we live. One couple we both get along with so well and Jake loves playing with their two boys. They also have a baby girl who is exactly one year older than Jacy-which will be great when she’s older. 🙂 The other couple with kids lives across the street from us. He is great but she is just ok. Our husbands get along so well and I enjoy his company when he comes over…but she is very hard to talk with and we have two completely different personalities. Our boys have fun playing together, and they are good kids, so hopefully they will remain friends once they all start pre-school next year. We love spending time with the couple without kids…they are longtime friends of ours since college and I know we will always remain great friends. I have lost touch with a couple of good girlfriends since having Jake. We just didn’t have much in common anymore and it was difficult for each of us to find time to get together. They wanted to go out and have dinner/drinks and I didn’t have the desire to do that anymore (drinks, anyway). I just wanted to spend time with my new baby…so it wasn’t long before they moved on, and that’s fine. Anyway, I think it’s easier sometimes to get to know a complete stranger when you both have children to talk about. Kids are the perfect ice breaker. 🙂
This post really resonates with me. My husband and I have a lot of friends but after we got married we found ourselves wanting to hang out with more couples. We often joke about the stress of “dating other couples.” You get “asked out” by another couple (or do the asking yourself) and, afterwards, find yourselves debriefing and talking about how it went and if they’ll call again.
All kidding aside, we’ve made some really great friends by putting ourselves out there bit — married and other couples alike. It’s been really nice to spend time with people who value committed relationships and also like to have fun!
Throw into the mix living in a college town that is very ‘cyclical’. You meet some great friends but every year there’s a bit of turnover. Friends leave. New people enter. Sometimes friends come back. It’s a small percentage of the population that has deep roots and are here for the long haul!
I agree that making friends as an adult married couple is harder.
I’ve struggled with this as well – even with just finding good “girl” friends!
Usually, we have the opposite problem that you guys do… we are one of the last couples our age to have kids. I love kids, and we’re planning on having some one day, but it’s hard to relate to a group of women who are the wives of my husband’s co-workers and who all have kids. Most of the time I feel like I don’t have anything to add or contribute to the conversation.
But we’re working on it! And this is just another reason for me to bug Chris about joining a church.
I’m pretty sure I went to high school with the guy holding the baby. I mean, I live in Aiken, so it isn’t such a small world, but what a small world!
Did you read my mind and write this post?? I am pretty sure you did (well, not the baby parts, but everything else!). This has been SUCH a big struggle for me since college. J and I went to different colleges, so we don’t have mutual college friends, and it’s been so hard meeting new couples that we both enjoy spending time with. I’ve lived in my city for close to 3 years now, and I hate to say it, but the only “friends” I have made here are coworkers. I work with some amazing women, but other than them, I can’t say I’ve made other friends.
I know that the Lord is using this time in my life to help me grow, and He hasn’t left me, but it really is hard. I grew up with dozens of friends, always an extrovert, and I’m quickly seeing that that isn’t the case anymore. I love my husband to pieces, but I miss having close friendships.
I will say though, thank goodness for the internet! Blog friends (like you!) have helped me with that sense of community with other women my age, in my shoes. But it’s still tough.
Truthfully, we too have had to deal with same issue… It seems as time goes by so do all of the friendships we thought we had for a lifetime that seem just take off… My hubby and I joke all the time about how people we know always seem to say “oh we should get together soon” but that soon always turns into weeks, months and mostly years.. So at the end of the day who wants to be the one always calling, always leaving messages and always inviting people who just have no interest in getting together..
Or….. take the othe friendship dilemma and that would be when one of us meets someone and their significant other is just not compatable with the other.. ( like you mentioned) although, we seem to encounter strange version of this…. Take the time we invited one of my hubbys friend and his wife over to stay with us for the weekend while he ran the marathon.. The wife walked in , said hello and that was about all she said the entire weekend.. Then during dinner which consisted of me slaving over a hot italian stove for 6 hours, she just made horrible facial gestures at her hubby because he kept commenting on how delish the food was.. When it was all said and done and they were packing up, she asked for the leftover cookies she had brought for the weekend for us back so they would have them.. “ah excuse me I think that might be a little inappropriate”…
Anywho, point is I think it is very difficult to find quality friends in the late twenties and into thirties simply because most people are very into their own thing. It seems like a blessed and delicate balance to find endearing friends in a church type setting. Finding other christians to fellowship with oor have a bible study with seems to always be the same bet because more than likely your beleives and actions are more on track with living a life of faith versus a life of self ego-centricism (if that could be considered a word)
Evs and I have discussed this SO many times! I am the “social one” (by far) so it’s usually up to me to plan social activities (unless they are related to his firm) and even I don’t know too many people in Dallas. Two of my best Dallas friends are (or have already) moved after getting married… and I obviously have my lovely SlynnRo and Mojito Maven but as far as really close “couple friends” go, we don’t really have anyone local since it takes Evs a long time to warm up to “newly introduced males” (its like an episode on Nat Geo!). Luckily, my 5 best friends from college and their S.O.’s are very near and dear to both of us… but I still really crave local couple friends! The CT Crowd (sans Maggie and T… boo hiss tear!) just needs to FORCE OUR HUSBANDS TO LOVE EACH OTHER. 🙂
I’ve talked to my mom about this phenomenon… my parents have lived in Austin for over 37 years and they have very few Couple Friends… it’s just HARD to find people you both “jive” with! Which makes me feel a bit better, since it seems to be a regular occurrence with married couples – at least we’re not total freaks that no one wants to hang out with! 🙂
Erin, I love your blog and the refreshing honesty in which you always share with your readers. I definitely understand where you’re coming from in regards to this post and find myself feeling the same way, even though I’ve lived in this area my whole life (with the exception of college/grad school). I find myself meeting great girls through various olunteer organizations, church, etc. and want to do more social activities with them, but am sometimes scared to ask them to do something outside of the volunteer/church setting. Why? I don’t know — fear of rejection, maybe? I have found it a little easier to meet other couples in similar situations as ours now that we have a sweet baby girl, but honestly, I miss good old girlfriend time too. I have some great friends in the area, but many of them don’t have children and/or just have very different schedules from mine. I guess this is the age where we all have so much going on that we sometimes think others either don’t want to or don’t have the time to hang out with us one on one or as couples. So, I guess I’m writing to say to say that I agree with you completely and at the same time I am glad to know that I am not the only one who finds herself in this situation.
My husband and I have a big circle of friends who just happened to get married / have children at the same time. He went to college with most of the guys and their wives and I have just become close because of all the husbands. I hang out with some of them on my own but usually we only get together as couples and / or with all the kiddos.
That said, I find that its really hard to make friends as a SAHM. Not only do you have to find mutual interests amongst yourselves, but you also have to make sure the kids will get along and that your styles of parenting at least semi-mesh! I have met many moms and we have a lot of fun together with our kids but I can’t help but wonder how our relationships will be after the kids grow up and start kindergarten at different schools, etc. I suppose it just boils down to making time to fuel those wonderful friendships that are out of my circle of motherhood, its just hard to make time for that in the midst of the everyday craziness!
Josh and I talk about this all the time! We live in a great neighborhood, but everyone around us is either in their 50s-60s or around our age (mid-late 20s/early 30s) and have kids. We want so bad to have relationships with our neighbors because I grew up with amazing neighbors (who are like my second family), so it’s weird when you really don’t even talk to them. Hopefully in a couple of years, after we finish grad school, we will start having kids and feel like that is another thing we will have in common with our neighbors.
Great post!
J and I are very fortunate. We have a group of 3 other couples that are our closest friends. Some combination of all of us have had dinner out every Wednesday (a few exceptions here and there) for 3+ years. We celebrate NYE’s together for the past 3 years etc. I also have a group of very close gay male friends who J gets along with well–we hang out with them once every week or two. There are other couples that we see individually. It’s hard though and I know people who are knew to my town struggle with meeting new friends since there are a lot of “established” groups.
Terrific and thoughtful blog post. Thank you for sharing!
omg, I can see by all the comments that you aren’t the only one! DH and I are exactly the same, we have quite a few lovely couple friends but I really do wish we had more that were in the same stage of their lives. It would make things SO much easier. But where are you meant to meet these couples with similar interests etc? Anyway, yes I definitely understand your pain!
Ugh, what a tough subject. I struggle, and struggle, and still continue to struggle with this. After college my husband and I moved back to our hometown (Lexington – close to you!), but only had 3 “couple friends.” Then, we had to move to Greenville. We had such high hopes for making new friends, exploring new things, etc. And it was just plain hard. Our first “couple friends” were a woman and her husband that my husband worked with. Always tough to have friends that you work with – kind of mixes the two worlds – and the girl and I just didn’t have that much in common. Then I met some great girlfriends – all in different areas of our life, and never have our husbands interacted at all. We have very, very, very slowly met a few other “couple friends,” but certainly not many. We have since had a daughter, but because we chose not to put her in daycare and she won’t start preschool until next year, we haven’t really met friends through that. Two of our “couple friends” now have children and that is always fun to have the kids together – but they aren’t really girls that I would call up and do something with, and their husbands and mine don’t really do things together either – we only really do things as families with them.
We have struggled to find a church home – our church in Lexington was AMAZING, so wherever we visited had a lot to live up to. We visited for a year, then found a place and tried to stick it out for a year and even ventured out to try to get more active. With each situation no one ever made me feel comfortable, I sometimes I just plain felt left out and out of place, and I finally put an end to it. We have since found another church that we already feel more comfortable with, and we are trying to make ourselves more available to meeting people there. I’m praying and praying that it works out and opens lots of doors for us.
As you can see, this is a topic so very close to my heart. It hurts so bad to have just been surrounded by friends and have anyone and everyone at your disposal, and then the older you get, the less you have. And it hurts even more when you do see or read about great groups of friends that get together and do everything together and how wonderful all of that is. It makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong. It is at least nice to know that I’m not alone, but I sure wish there was a way to make it easier to find them!
I think the hardest transition for me has been losing touch with my friends who are still single. And the crazy thing is rather than me being too busy for them, it’s them that are so hard to get intouch with. I’m almost to the point of giving up.
Luckily, most of our couple friends we all get along really well. That parts been surprisingly easy!
Hey! Had to stop by the blog after we got our mail yesterday. Love what we got! Will be in touch…
As for this post, let me tell you I was in the exact same boat until HG started preschool. If Hudson goes to preschool you will have lots of other moms with children the same age to “choose” from!
Wow. So funny you talk about this because my husband and I were just discussing it. We’ve had a hard time finding people we can call “couple friends”. I have several girlfriends and he has a number of guy friends (many single). But, we don’t have many that we can hang out with together. We used to in our old town, but it’s been hard to meet people now that we’re back in Atlanta. We’re starting to get involved in things (i.e., League, Sunday School, etc.), so we’re hopeful we’ll soon have couples we can call friends!
I think it’s difficult to make friends as an adult period. Like you said, your pool of potentials decreases significantly. If you’re not involved in an organized activity…like church…it’s super difficult to make new friends. Throw a husband in the deal, and it’s even harder to find couples we both mesh with. I think it’s a lot easier when you’re a mom because you instantly have something in common…the kid. Obviously just being a mom doesn’t make you compatible with every other mom, but it’s a leg up that childless people don’t have. Thanks for bringing this topic up. It’s so nice to read that so many people struggle with it as well.
It is SOOO hard to meet a couple that matches both husb and wife!!! We’ve had a few couples that we have both hit it off and then they have either moved away or seperated! Makes me so sad!I really treasure the few couples we both love!!! I’m glad I’m not alone inthis struggle! 🙂
I totally agree with you. My fiance and I are the first couple out of our friends that have had a baby and I hope that someone has a baby soon, so that my son will have a playmate, and I will be able to swap stories and advice with…
Ok, not to sound creepy but I cried when I read this. My heart hurts for you because I totally know how difficult this is. I’ve been exactly where you are. I know what it’s like to be home alone, knowing all your friends are at the 10:00 movie… I know what it’s like to have to say “no” for the millionth time… It’s difficult and frustrating and there were many nights I just laid down and cried.
Anyway, I just wanted you to know that you’re not crazy and not the only person in the world who has felt this way or struggled. Sometimes I just needed someone to tell me that. 🙂
I see the other side of the story. I find it very hard to make/find single friends. All my high school & college friends are married and building wonderful families. Difficult to find yourself as the 3rd, 5th, 7th wheel…….
Erinnnn! I am going through the exact same thing this past year, well almost. I moved to Boston from NYC last June to move in with the boyf and start grad school. BIG CHANGE, all my high school friends and most college friends are in NYC and my family lives in NY. I was lucky that one of my best friends from college is here in Boston which was so nice this past year. But it has been pretty hard to make “couple” friends. Now that I am done with school (it’s been a crazy year!) I am hoping we will get more involved here in Boston and make more friends. Such a touch spot to be in.
xoxo KAG
I haven’t had the parent friend problem yet, but the couple thing and all the others I can totally relate on. I managed to keep the same core group of friends from elementary school on until today, but now we don’t live close and it is hard to get together. However, I think I’ve had a hard time making friends in college and so on because of my good core friends. A few close friends have been around since literally kindergarten. Our newest problem has been the couple thing, we made a ton of great couple friends in Sunday School and they moved our class to an older class who all have at least one kid and none of could relate and now I am the only one left, my husband even went on to teacher in the youth group!
I have never posted on your blog, but have been a reader for awhile now. I guess I am de-lurking! This post really resonated with me, especially as my husband and I will be transitioning to a new city this month. We are fortunate to have many couple friends that we both get along with, many of whom we went to college with. However, we will be moving to a city that will only have one set of these friends, which happen to be his brother and sister-in-law. Even though we really enjoy hanging out with family, we know that we still need to make other friends of our own as well. I am nervous about making new friends that both of us will really like, especially since we haven’t had to in such a long time! We hope to find a good church down there and hope that will help some, but it is still hard to make friends that we both have things in common with! Thank you for this post. It helps to know that we are not alone!
I too have read your blog for awhile, and never commented, but finally decided to “just do it :).” I must say my husband and I struggle with this too…not just meeting people to do things with, but actually being able to plan anything with everyone’s hectic schedule these days (my word, when did 3-4 weeks out become the norm for being able to find a date “good” for everyone???). That said, having moved from Greenville (I’m still in SC but outside Charlotte now), I must say for those of you looking for a good church there, Downtown Presbyterian would be a great place to check out–wonderful people there and the sermons are Gospel based…just as an aside ;).