Who Needs Friends When You Have Kids?

I've written before about how difficult it can be to make new friends once you become an adult, and how it's even harder for stay-at-home moms.

It's now two years after that initial friendship post and unfortunately, not much has changed on the friend front. In fact, things are even worse. While I've made exactly ZERO new real friends in the past two years, at least two of my mommy friends have moved away...to a different school district, maybe, or a different county, a different state.

Luckily, my kids are now two years older and therefore much better conversationalists. They are my new(ish) friends! And if I want adult conversation, I have my DH to turn to. Pathetic? (Well, honestly, they are way more fun than most of the people around here anyway.)

My husband encourages me to be friendlier and more outgoing. He does this because he knows I wouldn't mind having more friends. He wants me to be happy.

But it's not as if I can change my whole personality. Right? I mean, people don't actually manage to toss off their introverted tendencies and become outgoing types with suddenly packed social calendars, do they?

And it's not like I'm horribly lonely or wallowing in self-pity: I love my life, I'm happy. I don't think about my lack of friends on a daily basis.

Probably because I actually do have lots and lots of friends. Tons! They just aren't local. They are pals from childhood, high school, college, my 20's. They live in Chicago, Seattle, England, Israel, Australia, and so on and so forth. They are scattered around the world--pretty much everywhere except within 30 miles of my house.

I rarely (never?) see my far-flung friends. We don't speak on the phone. Hell, we don't even email anymore. It's come down to the occasional Facebook comment or message.

With some of my "friends," if you break down our communication over the past few decades years, it boils down to the equivalent of "LOL" or " :-) ."

My friendships have been reduced to emoticons and acronyms.

These are the people I used to spend HOURS talking to--either on the phone when we were teens, in our dorm during college, or over coffee (or beers) in the city during our single days.

Yeah, it's sorta sad. But it's also life. I'm pretty much okay with it.

People move on. Priorities change. It's not just about us anymore. No one has time for hours-long conversations anymore.

And discussing ad nauseum the strengths and weaknesses of your and your friends' children will JUST NEVER EVER be as exciting as dissecting what it could have possibly meant when Johnny looked at you in 10th-grade social studies class. Sigh.

What to do?

For now I'll just bitch about it in my blog.