The Bean Blog

Is friendship and motherhood like oil and vinegar or is it more of a good mixed drink?

Jan 18, 2007 In my humble opinion

We lived in apartments for most of my life. It was just my dad and I. And we were comfortable in the small spaces. But then my dad got remarried and a couple years later they had their first child together. The apartment we lived in was getting a little cramped. Especially since my brother was sharing a room with my dad and stepmom and getting older every day.

The summer before my freshman year in high school, my brother was about one and a half and he needed his own room. So we bought a house. I was pretty excited because I would still get to go to the same high school as most of my friends. But I was a little bummed that I would no longer be within walking distance of my best friend, Cammie.

As you may have guessed, Cammie and I drifted apart. When you’re fourteen it’s very important that you have easy access to your best friends. She was a year behind me and still in middle school and I was a very important [at least in my mind] high schooler, so we weren’t seeing each other at school. Plus our interests began to differ. She was getting more and more in to heavy metal. I was more of a rap girl. So the friendship fizzled. There was no big blowup or anything. We just gradually started seeing each other and talking to each other less and less.

But when we moved in to our new house I met a new girl down the street [see, within walking distance]. She was new to the area and looking for some friends. She and I began walking to the bus stop together [because for some reason the bus didn't come in to our housing development and we had to walk uphill, both ways, barefoot, in ten feet of snow up to the main road]. We quickly became best friends.

Rachel and I were tight. We saw each other every day. We talked on the phone every night. We knew everything there was too know about each other.

But that’s not to say there weren’t problems.

Our sophomore year she went to homecoming with her boyfriend [who happened to live next door to her]. I didn’t have a date so I tagged along with them. I don’t remember how that all came about, but somehow I ended up joining them at the dance. It sucked and I vowed never to go to a dance stag ever again. But a few weeks later [after Rachel and said boyfriend had split up], he told me that Rachel calls me a leach. According to him, she said that I don’t really have any of my own friends so I leach on to her. I was a little hurt, but I blew it off. He was the “ex” after all and why would she hang out with me every day and stuff if she really thought I was a leach.

By the end of our sophomore year, Rachel was in a very serious relationship with a boy who was a year older than us. And Rachel was the type of person who often ignored her friends when she was in a relationship. We were still friends and still hanging out when she had time, but I found a new group of girls to do stuff with.

It was pretty much like that for the next two years. By the end of our senior year we were still close, but I also had a very close group of other friends I went out with [most of whom I'm still friends with today].

After high school I went off to college [very briefly] and she went off to a different college. We were only 45 minutes apart, but we didn’t really keep in touch. An occasional email or phone call, but really we had drifted apart. Especially after her job moved her out to Colorado.

Then she got married and they had a big reception here in town. Lee and I went and I caught up with her. A few months later she moved back to town and we started talking more. I got a job at the same company she worked at [where we both still work to this day] and we started to have lunch on occasion.

But then all hell broke loose. Apparently she had a lot of issues with me. She was disappointed that I had dropped out of college [even though she dropped out too and has never gone back]. She thought I was going to be a brain surgeon or something [her words, not mine....not even ever a dream of mine]. She didn’t like my husband. She didn’t like that fact that I never sent her a thank you card when she sent me a gift when Keaton was born [I am really, really bad about thank yous...I'll give her that one]. And she thought it was really rude that I brought Keaton to a candle party she had without even asking her.

Now this candle party was months before this big blow up. Many months had gone by and never once did she tell me she was upset that I did that. I had no idea that I had offended her. So I promptly apologized for that and told her I really should have asked her before I brought him. I didn’t even think about it. But, honestly, I wish she had told me she was upset about it at the time because I can only do better when I know better.

Needless to say, we no longer speak. She has said some very derogatory things about me to people I know and I feel like I don’t have room for a person like that in my life. [Not that she wants me in her life. I'm pretty sure the feeling is mutual.] I have a lot of really good friends who do support me and my decisions even when they disagree with them and who have the balls to tell me when they are upset so we don’t just fester on for months until it finally blows up. I believe that’s how a mature relationship should work.

I bring this up because I was reading the article How babies rattle female friendships on MSNBC.com and I was trying to figure out if I ever lost any good friends because I became a mom.

I was a very young mom. I got pregnant with my first child when I was nineteen. All of my friends were still partying and sleeping in and I was raising a baby. It’s only been in the last few years that my friends have started to have kids. I’m done having kids and many of my friends are just beginning. In fact three of my friends had babies [although not their first babies] in 2006.

But I still have many of the same friends I had before I became a mom. In fact my friend, Necole and I lived together when Keaton was an infant [and Lee and I were on a break]. She picked Keaton up from daycare for me because I had to work passed the time the daycare closed and she got off earlier. She also babysat for me sometimes. And she even took some days off of work to stay home with him when he was sick and I had already missed a lot of work. She didn’t have to do that. She was single and childless and still partying and having a good time. But she did it because she’s my friend and valued our friendship.

When I read the responses to that article I started to think that these people would have gradually grown apart anyway. It doesn’t have anything to do with one of them having a kid. If they really were good friends and really shared a deep bond then it wouldn’t matter that there were some changes in their friendship. The woman with child would recognize that although she has new priorities in her life [with a baby and husband] she also needs to make sure she keeps her friend near the top of that priority list too. And the childless friend would be almost excited for the new baby as the friend actually giving birth.

If it’s just a casual friend then maybe having kids does end your friendship. But kids aren’t the only thing that ends casual friendships. Sometimes you have work friends that you go to lunch or happy hour with. But when you switch jobs you rarely see them anymore because all you used to talk about was work and you no longer have that in common. Or if you had a friend in high school that you used to love sitting around with and gossiping about what all the other girls at school were wearing or who they were dating, but now you’ve grown up and consider yourself lucky if you even have half a clue about what’s a popular brand of jeans while she’s still wearing the hottest fashions, then maybe your friendship drifts. It’s the same thing with a friend you used to go bar hopping with. If all you had in common was that you were both searching for a man and you now have a family then you may drift apart. You’re husband will probably frown on you have some guy do a body shot off of you. If that’s all you had in common and one of you decides body shots aren’t for your stretch marked tummy, then the friendship often ends.

Casual friends come and go, but a real friend loves you through the good, bad and drooling child. I consider myself pretty lucky to have a lot of those real friends.

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