Friendship Friday: Friendship and Motherhood

In the spirit of Mothers Day weekend I thought I would write about Motherhood and Friendship.

If you have kids, you will know that Motherhood changes every single aspect of your life and one of the biggest changes comes in the area of friendships.  I have found that there is a period of adjustment within friendships after you have a baby. I have also found that those who WANT to be in your life WILL be in your life. Kids or not. They will wait for you to be ready and if you are taking too long to be ready then they will just pitch up and tell you that it’s time.

Motherhood has done good and bad things for my friendships.

Motherhood made me feel isolated and lonely when I first had Child1. I was a young Mom and knew no one my age who had kids. All these other Moms at the PTA were much older, somewhat intimidating and VERY together. Or perhaps that was just my perception at the time. Point is. I had ZERO friends when I first had a child.

Motherhood lost me a few friends which often happens when people are in different life stages. I had a kid. Everyone was partying and soooo not interested in my childs bowel movements. Quite honestly, I do not blame them, even though it really upset my world while it was happening.

Motherhood was a big help when I needed to make new friends because it’s an AWESOME thing to have in common with someone else.  So yes, it helped me to make new friends. Specifically with other Mothers. And ESPECIALLY online. I have more Mommy friends online than IRL. I am not sure if that’s even OK but it does make me VERY happy.

Motherhood occasionally made me feel inadequate within my friendships.  Especially with my friends who have “normal” kids. Especially with the whole “different kids” thing. And it made me feel judged by others who I thought were my friends. Because I’m not exactly sheep-like, I don’t read books, I rely on instinct more than anything and I really have no issues with my kids playing with my make-up.

More than anything though, Motherhood has shown me who my real friends are. It has brought the most amazing friends into my life. Friends who affirm me. Friends who just get it. Friends who will come and fetch me so I can have a break from my kids. Friends who will google things about my kids that I am too afraid to google. Friends who (despite being childless) actually WANT to come over when my DH is away DURING THE SUICIDE HOUR to help me out, and to stand ready with a glass of wine when the kids are in bed. Friends who don’t judge me when I say that Motherhood is just not all that (for me). Friends who are just there at the drop of a hat. Friends who love me truly, madly, deeply. Friends who LOVE my kids. Friends who just GET my kids. Friends who are prepared to try to understand my life with my particular kids.

I have WAY more friends (real friends) now than I have ever had in my life and I believe that I have Motherhood (among other things) to thank for that.

What has Motherhood done for your friendships?

Have the effects of Motherhood had negative or positive effects on your friendships?

Do you have more friends now that you are a Mom?

And if you are not a Mom, how does it affect your friendship when one of your friends have kids?

 

 

 

Friendship Friday: when friends do stupid things

This story broke my heart. Please do click on the link and read it? It’s heartfelt and sad and so beautifully written.

I think that we forget sometimes that our friends can also do despicable things, not necessarily to us, but to others. Can you imagine the betrayal that this writer must feel? Can you imagine one of your closest friends doing something so wrong that you just can’t fathom what could possibly be going on in their heads? Can you imagine not being able to look your friend in the eye because of a wrong choice that they have made? Can you imagine feeling like you really have no clue about who someone is?

A few weeks ago I blogged about the fact that my DH is not comfortable with me pursuing a friendship with an ex-partner of his friend. There were varied opinions in the comments (all fantastic food-for-thought – THANK YOU) but I feel that I may have been unfair to my DH by not explaining exactly why my DH feels the way he does. I will be as brief as possible because it’s not my story to tell.  I refer to the relevant parties in this post as A and B, so here we go:

A = my DH’s friend.  Or rather, our friend. They go way back (since school days) and they have a really cool, fun friendship. I love him dearly. Always have. Always will.

B = A’s former partner. I liked her but it wasn’t that big a deal to me when she was no longer in our lives.

To cut a long story short, they were in a relationship, she did something very wrong (let’s just say that there was a 3rd party involved), they had an acrimonious break-up, our friend A was devastated. My DH and I had to babysit him regularly during that period.

I had many opinions on that matter but at the time it wasn’t my place to say anything. In fact, it simply wasn’t my business.  I feel that it still isn’t my business. Both A and B have now moved on. We all have.  We still see A quite regularly. And of course I wrote a post about wanting to resume a friendship with B.

My DH is of the view that me being friends with B is a betrayal to A. He continues to remind me of a heartbroken A (who contributed to their break-up in his own way, but of course I’m not allowed to say that) – our argument about this goes back and forth and for now I’ve decided to just leave it for a bit.

My DH says: “I can’t understand why you would want to be friends with someone who can do a thing  like that”.

Now THIS is where my problem lies.

I feel that A and B are adults who have both moved on. I feel that both parties contributed to the relationship breakdown.  I feel that it is NOT my place to judge B. I feel that everyone makes mistakes.  I really do not care what people do, if I feel a connection with them I will go with it. I am not God.  I will leave the judging up to Him. The only time that I will not befriend a “sinner” (oh my gosh, I really cannot think of a better word in this context) is if they hurt kids or animals or if they are rapists – it may not come across that way but I actually do have limitations and boundaries.

Also. There is one more thing that my DH fails to understand – and this is a key point:

Me deciding to NOT judge B for doing what she did does NOT mean that I condone her actions.

It doesn’t mean that I’m OK with what she did. It simply means that I’m prepared to look past it (mainly because it wasn’t me that she hurt) and move on. I’m prepared to focus on her good bits. I’m prepared to accept that there are TWO sides to the story and not just A’s side of the story. Quite honestly, I don’t even want to know what really went down. I know that B won’t share it with me and if she feels the need to explain herself then I plan to tell her that I don’t want to know.  She could have decided to involve me in it at the time – people like talking to me about the  stupid, wrong things that they did – probably because they know that I won’t judge them.

I’m happy with the fact that she respected me enough to leave me out of it while it was going down.  Quite frankly, I don’t want the “whole” B in my life. I want the only the part of B who is a Mom to a special needs kid. I’m not interested in any of the other parts as they don’t serve me in any way.

I guess what I’m trying to say is this:

B made a choice a few years ago. I am respecting her choice. I will not judge her choice because it’s not my place to do so and in hindsight, she made a damn good choice – she’s really happy in her life. I do not condone her past behaviour.  But I can look past it and me doing this doesn’t mean that I’m saying that it was OK. I have done some pretty bad things in my life as well. I wonder where I would be if I had friends who couldn’t be there for me when I was stupid. Or friends who could not see ME but ONLY the wrong thing that I did.  

I asked A how he felt about me being friendly with B. He told me that he would be OK with it, as long as he didn’t see her. I think that’s fair.

So today, this is my question to you:

Have you ever been in a situation where a friend of yours made a poor/wrong choice?

Do you stay away and judge right along with everyone else who doesn’t truly know what went down? Because let’s face it. No one truly knows what goes on behind closed doors.

Do you recognise that often a poor choice is an underlying cry for help?

Do you often judge choices that your friends make, especially if they are not choices that you don’t agree with?

Have you been in a situation where a friend has judged your poor/wrong choices?

 

 

 

Friendship Friday: bad friend dates and letting someone down gently

A few weeks ago I was at a function. There were a number of really cool people at this function and I had loads of fun.

However, there was this one person stalking me trying to connect with me. I didn’t feel the connection and was constantly trying to escape. Alas, it wasn’t very easy. Usually my DH is with me and we have our own code, so if I need to be rescued then he makes it happen.

I figured that by the end of the function this would be a thing of the past and I knew that I would probably never run into her again under those circumstances.

So I humoured her. I listened to her crap vitriol and as hard as it was I showed her the respect that she deserved by trying to remain engaged and focused  It was hard – as I said there was absolutely no connection from my side and, to be honest, I was OK with that.

After that function, this person managed to obtain my phone number. I was somewhat annoyed (I would NEVER, EVER give out someone’s contact details without their permission. Would you?) but again, I was kind and respectful. This person wanted us to meet up. I tried to get out of it.  Numerous times. Eventually I gave in because I ran out of excuses. Truthfully, I didn’t really have a reason to not pursue this, except for the fact that there was zero connection from my side.

I really do not have the manual on how to tell someone that I’m not feeling a friendship with her and to be honest, I didn’t know how to handle this particular situation.

All that I could think of was the fact that she could so easily have been me. I I kept thinking about how I would feel if the shoe was on the other foot, and I was the one trying to connect with someone who was evasive and somewhat disengaged. Anyway.

Coffee date happened during my lunch time. I purposefully set it up this way because of the limited time.

So off I went to coffee date. Well “friend” was late. No big deal, I was hungry, I ordered something and I started to eat.  Stalker friend eventually pitches – 25 minutes late. No phone call or text or anything. This kind of thing is usually a deal breaker for me. Nevertheless, I overlooked it because it wasn’t the end of the world for me to be eating by myself and I reasoned that I now had even less time which was all good.

We made small talk.  Things started to get better and I thought to myself “I can do this; perhaps it’s not so bad. There may actually be a teeny tiny bit of potential here”.

Eventually the subject turned to my special needs kids.

I spoke a bit about them both – mind you, no details because I’m not going to be discussing details with someone  I don’t really know. It was all very surface-like.  And then it went pear-shaped.

The judgement started (btw this person has no kids), and I know that it came from a place of ignorance (she probably read the You or the People magazine) but it really stung. I was not going to tolerate some stranger judging my choices and so I gave as good as I got – unfortunately for her she got me in my PMS week.  She continued to interrupt me as I was trying to stand up for myself.

And so, I opened my purse, put my money on the table and for the first time in my life,  got up and walked out on someone in a restaurant. No turning back and all of that. Since that day I have not taken any calls from this person and I have not responded to any texts.  She was persistent and for a while I considered having my Boyfriend tell her to go and fly a kite or something (when I told him about it he said that I should have left her with the bill – so rude he is!),  but then she got the message.

I guess I am lucky in that in this whole process, this was the only really bad friend date that I had.

As far as I am aware (because I realise that one can be unaware of this) I haven’t ever been in a situation where someone was clearly pursuing a friendship with me and I felt zero connection. I haven’t ever needed to “let someone down gently” because of this.

Quite honestly, I have no idea how to tell someone that I am not interested in being their friend.

What would you have done in a situation where this was required? 

Have you ever needed to tell someone that you don’t actually feel like being their friend because you are not really feeling a connection?

Have you ever had a seriously bad friend date?

If so, please tell me about your experience?

 

Friendship Friday: toxic friendships

During my life I’ve stopped a certain friendship or two in its tracks.

But that was mainly because I felt hurt about something that the other party had said or done, and as much as I tried, I could never respect the person again.

I have never needed to end a friendship because of toxicity. In fact, I don’t think that I’ve ever been in a toxic friendship. I guess this makes me VERY lucky because apparently many  women (stats show something like 80%) have been in a toxic friendship at some point in their lives.

I wonder if boys have occasional bouts of toxicity in their friendships? What do you think? I have never, ever heard of a guy ending a friendship with another guy because the relationship has become toxic.

A friend of mine is currently in a situation where she recognises that a particular friendship in her life has become toxic. It’s rather painful for her because she did love/does love her friend very much. However, she loves herself more than this friendship, which is how it should be  (I’m so proud of her for recognising that) and she sees that it is in her best interests to let this particular friendship go.

I spoke with her about it last weekend and I must admit that I have been thinking about our conversation ever since. I can see that it really hurts my friend and that it’s a hard place to be in.

I keep wondering how a beautiful friendship can become a toxic one. Is it possible that a person can suddenly become toxic? Do we assume that the person has always been toxic and that we just never saw it before?

Is it a jealousy thing? Could it be an insecurity issue? 

I spent some time on Google this week and I saw that there are TONS of articles on toxic friendships.

Here’s a good one. And here. And here.

What does the term “toxic friendship” mean to you?

Have you ever been in a toxic friendship?  How did you deal with it?

Have you ever been a toxic friend? I promise not to judge if you answer this truthfully.

It’s the end of the world as we know it and I have really good friends

That REM song has been in my head for a few days now.  It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine. Only, I don’t feel fine. I hope to feel fine at some point.

There is just so much going on at the moment.

Some of it upsets me tremendously. Some of it makes me downright anxious.

Sometimes there are bursts of excitement.  I’m choosing to focus on the exciting bits but it’s so hard to do that when all the not-exciting stuff is just so in my face.

I just don’t have words at the moment. They all come out wrong and then everyone gets upset.  So I keep my words close to my chest. Which makes it worse.

I hate when I can’t use my words in the way that I need to. So I’ve been cleaning my house. A lot. Like a nesting pregnant person.  I have a clean house but no words.

Sleep is elusive.

I really hate when my sleep patterns become unsettled. It throws my entire life off balance.

But. It is the weekend. My friend is fetching me just now. We are going for a walk and a cheap breakfast.  And I have another friend coming over sometime during the day. It’s my friend who likes to clean my house. Seriously. She comes and visits me and then starts to clean up. Initially I was uncomfortable. Then she told me that it’s not me, it’s her. It’s her thing. So now I humour her.  Acts of Service is her primary love language. Do you have friends like that?  Would you be OK with a friend visiting you and then cleaning your house? I think I will make her go out for a coffee or something.

I may go and play some drums as well. IF I do, then I will smash those drums. I really need to hit something at the moment.

And on Sunday morning I have a knitting date. Some good conversation and cake and tea and knitting is my idea of a perfect friend date. What’s your perfect friend date?

If there is time then I think that I may go and upgrade my phone too. A new device will also make me feel better and the distraction and play time on a new device will quite welcome. Btw…Samsung has a Galaxy Mini for half the price of the regular one. Do you know it? Would you recommend it?

Quite honestly, I just need to be out of my house at the moment. And away from the people there.

How are you? What does your weekend look like?

Ps…Child2 and his left-hand scissors go together like strawberries and cream. I am sooooo excited.  He is too! I plan to shop up a storm for him. Have a look here. And here. I should blog about this some more.

Pps..My MIL has been discharged from hospital. She has used her stroke to emotionally blackmail herself into my house. I cannot talk about it because it upsets me too much. My poor DH is in the middle of his wife and his Mother and it’s just so much worse for him. He says that he will take her home on Sunday night because she can’t be here alone during the day. THAT, my dear friends, remains to be seen.

 

Friendship Friday: sometimes friends bear grudges

There was an issue with another person.

I definitely  wasn’t wrong in said issue and if you know anything about me, you would know that I analysed the entire situation to the death from all the angles. The person who  I had the issue with, took the issue very personally when I brought up the issue and freaked out on me a bit. It was a bit ugly. Actually, it wasn’t ugly. IT was more irritating than anything else.

Anyway. The issue was eventually resolved. Or so I thought.

I would like the relationship to go back to the way it was or at least close to the way it was. I think it probably will. Maybe in a year or so.

For the moment though, kindness and respect will do.

However, the person is actually not being too kind with me. Person is kind to my kids (person LOVES my kids and they LOVE her) and everyone else in the room, but is abrupt towards me. I ignore it and just carry on laughing and being my fabulous self.  From what I can tell, no one notices this persons abruptness towards me. They notice ME. Which is awesome because it means that I am actually being VERY fabulous.

I can see in her eyes that she’s not OK.  Clearly I touched a nerve? Well, that was my intention, so mission accomplished.

Point is. It is clear to me that this person is bearing a grudge. It annoys me. On the one hand I want to tell the person to grow up but this would bring MORE drama that I’m really not interested in. As I said, I’ve moved on. I am OK. I want to go on with my life.

On the other hand, I am very busy in my life at the moment and I would be quite happy to take a timeout from this person for a couple of months so she can get over herself. BUT. A decision like this doesn’t only affect me.

My DH says “hou vir jou  ingedagte”,  in other words, I should pretend that I’m not seeing it.  OK. I can do that. I have been doing that.

But it is starting to irritate me a lot. Perhaps it’s irritating me because I’ve been anxious lately and I am finding people a bit too much for me.  I don’t quite know if it is that. I need to think about it some more. Hopefully soon I will have a free moment to add that to my list of things to think about. I’m seeing this person over the weekend.  Things could very easily go the other way which adds to my anxiety.

Fact is, I don’t bear grudges. I never have been the type to bear a grudge. I would quite honestly find it exhausting to remember to be cross with someone.  And I REALLY don’t know how to cope with people who are professional grudge-bearers.

Are you a grudge bearer? You can say yes if it’s the case. I truly won’t judge you – I’m merely trying to understand the thought-process behind it and how to manage another person who is like that.

Do your friends bear grudges?

How do you cope with grudge-bearers?

Friendship Friday: are you friends with your kids?

My kids are not my friends.

I don’t want to be friends with them right now. That is a privilege that awaits them when they are adults.

I have friends who are great friends with their kids. I have tried that approach (well, a mild version of it), but I was forced to put a stop to it. Because I couldn’t seem to get the balance right. The boundaries kept getting crossed. It’s possible that I didn’t work at it long enough – I can accept that, but it’s fine. For now, I am the Mom and they are the kids.

This very clear boundary works for me. I make the rules. I make the decisions. I am the adult in the relationship.

I do make an effort to  maintain openness. I have always tried to do that. I don’t quite know if it’s paying off yet – I guess I will know when Child1 becomes a proper teenager. For now, he appears to like talking to me about stuff (he feels free to tell me cool and not cool stuff and even things that he did wrong that he feels bad about or things that make him feel sad or whatever)  and he seems to enjoy my company very much. This makes me happy.

I DO treat them with respect. THE WAY I WOULD TREAT MY FRIENDS.

This means that I am as kind as I could possibly be even on hard days.

It means that I don’t shout at them.

It means that I try not to judge them or their very limited choices. But I WILL nip a potential bad choice in the bud. STAT.

It means that I listen to them, give them my full attention, do fun stuff with them and make time to engage and to connect with them.

It means that our relationship MUST be based on trust and complete honesty and that this is not negotiable.

It means that I will mentor them and be a safe place for them. ALWAYS.

It means that I will accept them for who they are. Flaws and all.

I guess though that one could say that there IS a friendship between my kids and I. Our relationship HAS to be based on that in order for it to work. BUT. It is a different type of friendship. It has limits and MANY boundaries. They ain’t my BFF’s or anything.

For the moment this works well for my DH and I.

I don’t know if the current approach is going to ruin the possibility of our adult friendship. I hope not. It certainly hasn’t ruined my relationship with my parents who only became my friends when I reached adulthood. I count them as two of my very best friends.

For now though, our “friendship” will continue in the way that it has, although there is going to be a bit of a shift with Child1 in the coming years. I will continue to work hard to maintain a fair balance between Mommy and Friend and safe place.

Over to you:

Are you friends with your kids?

How do you maintain the balance between friend and parent?

Do you struggle with it and find it a challenge?

Do you believe that parents should be friends with their kids?

Friendship Friday: when your partner is uncomfortable with a particular friendship

I was actually going to blog about how much fun I had this past month and then I decided to blog about friendship instead! I’ll do the fun-stuff blog post tomorrow.

I’m currently in a situation where my DH is not comfortable with me pursuing a particular friendship.

Let’s start with some background:

My DH has a close friend.

OK, WE have a close friend. Our close friend dated this woman a few years ago. For many years actually. They have since split up. She’s now married to someone else and she and her husband have a gorgeous 4-year old boy.

She and I have remained Facebook friends despite all that went down between her and our friend, and we occasionally comment on each others status updates.

Recently I found out that her little boy is Autistic. He’s actually very severe and has no speech at all.

Anyway, she and I started messaging one another on FB and sharing stories and experiences of our ASD kids as well as other things. I LOVE having her as a bit of a sounding board and I do believe that she feels the same way.

She suggested we get together and I told her that I would love that very much. After all, it’s been YEARS since we’ve seen each other and we do seem to have so much more in common now. I even found out that she stays quite close to me, maybe 10 minutes away. She told me that the ball was in my court and that I could name a place and a time and that she would be there. With her son, of course.

So I talked to my DH about this and he went NUTS!

He’s not comfortable with me socialising with his friends ex partner. I told my DH that their former relationship was between them and had nothing to do with us.  We are all grownups and we’ve all changed and moved on. We are ALL in very different places in our lives. I honestly don’t see the big deal here.

He hasn’t budged with this ridiculous view of his. He somehow feels that me pursuing a friendship with our friend’s ex is a form of betrayal to his friend. I honestly thought that only women had these silly notions in their brains!

So I find myself in a situation where I want to pursue a friendship and my DH is opposed to it.

I’m not one of those women who will submit to and obey my husband or anything but I don’t feel completely OK about being defiant about this. My DH allows me to do and be whatever I want and never stifles me in any way. I am not someone who is devious and who will do things behind his back either.  We don’t have that kind of marriage and it’s  simply not who I am.  So I haven’t made a decision as yet about how to proceed.

Tell me what you would do in this situation?

Would you pursue a friendship that your partner was clearly opposed to?

Have you ever been in a situation where you were friends with someone who your partner really didn’t like?

How did you handle it?

Friendship Friday: When friends fight

I had a fight with one of my oldest friends about two weeks ago. It went on for a few hours but it felt like a few days.

It was extremely distressing and painful and made me sad. At one stage I felt like this friend really didn’t know me AT ALL.  IT broke my heart, and even though there are other fantastic friends in my life, I felt lonelier than ever.  The fact that I’m SUCH a “feeler” didn’t help AT ALL.  Nor did it help that I’m actually a very sensitive so-and-so. This part of my personality is so inconvenient sometimes!

Now that I think about it, this may very well be the reason (or part of the reason) why my anxiety levels have spiked in the last while.

It was typical argument that started off with poor communication and involved assumptions, jumping to conclusions, a spot of anger and some defensiveness.  On both sides. Of course it REALLY helped that we both have really big egos. And pride issues. Fortunately there was no rudeness or insults or anything ugly. Just MANY MANY MANY WORDS and not exactly sticking to the issue at hand. And ATTITUDES. And both sides not really listening.

We’ve since made up and have apologised to one another. To be honest, I am a bit annoyed with myself for making the first move with the apology thing. I usually walk away from conflict OR if I have no choice (like in the case of a family argument) then I usually make the first move. I’m ALWAYS making the freaking first move!   Why does no one ever make the first move with me?

Ugh. Unfortunately I just can’t stay angry with people who mean a lot to me.

Right now, there is peace. But things are awkward and a bit raw. I guess we need to do a bit of work on the friendship and it feels (to me) like we need to learn to trust one another with our emotions again.

I’ve never truly been in a situation like this (except with my Boyfriend – am not afraid argue with and to go into conflict with that one) and to be honest,  I don’t quite know how to go forward.  I’m usually the type to walk away.  IT’s quite BIG for me to actively make a decision to be an adult and stick around for the ugly bits and to ACTIVELY work on RESTORING this friendship that means a lot to me. This friendship that is in need of some TLC.

I initially  felt that perhaps a bit of space was needed between us so that our emotions could settle, and  I was ready to take a step back. Then she invited me over for wine tea and scones on Sunday. She KNOWS how much I love wine tea and scones. It doesn’t look like there will be space between us after all, but I am encouraged by the invite. It shows me that she does want to prioritise our friendship and that we are on the same page about it.

It has been weird for me though. I don’t think I’ve EVER fought with a friend. I’m usually the avoider. The stay-away-er. The one who walks away from a friendship  if there is even a hint of conflict or something that I’m no longer happy to put up with. The one who pretends that the elephant in the room (whatever it is) isn’t there.

But, I have learned a lot about myself these past two weeks and while I don’t hope to be in this situation anytime soon, I DO know that my friend and I will be OK. I know that I will be OK.

Have you ever had a serious fight with a friend? How did you handle it? Did you stand tall and fight it out or did you walk away?

 

Friendship Friday: Couples

So my DH and I used to have MANY couple friends. When things were good they were AWESOME and when things were bad they were REALLY bad.  

In the last year or so we haven’t done that much couple friend dating. 

In fact, I can count on my one hand the number of couple friend dates that we’ve had. 

There are a number of  reasons for this. Divorce, the two units not completely clicking (i.e. maybe I don’t like the man or he doesn’t like the man that much or maybe he thinks the woman has a whiney voice or whatever) as well as well, life. 

Not all couples are as lucky as we are with baby sitting and while family dates are also cool in their own way,  the dynamic is somewhat different if the kids are around, mainly  because no one can completely relax. You essentially have to socialise with one eye on your kid or one ear in the next room where the kids are playing. It becomes even more complicated when the kids don’t particularly gel. 

I have also found that couple friend dating doesn’t happen unless I MAKE it happen and my DH somehow thinks that this is OK.

There are three couples that we REALLY enjoy socialising with. Yet, it’s only when the women and I want to see one another that a friendship/couple date gets set up. It would seem that I have become the “social director” in our relationship. 

Is this how it happens in your home or is this just some abnormality in mine?

Are you the social director in your relationship? Does your partner take on that role? Do you have a good balance? 

How do you suggest I remedy this? 

And where on earth does one meet couples to hang out with? Do you have many couple friends?