How do you find time to make/keep friendships?

[noah's mom]

Maybe I'm the only one...but I have found that having 2 kids under 5 and working fulltime has made it incredibly difficult to build & maintain close friendships. The little time I do have available (weekends, mostly...I'm too exhausted to do anything social on weeknights) I tend to either spend with the kids or catch up on stuff around the house. We have very few young families in our neighborhood, so no "natural" relationships to build there. Plus it seems like any activities where I can meet other mamas of kids around the ages of mine are geared towards SAHMs (in other words, on weekdays when I'm not available).

To complicate things even more, DH and I moved from his home state (where we met) to mine about 5 years ago (right before we started having kids), and folks here tend to hang with ppl they grew up with and for the most part don't seem interested in building new relationships (at least that's my perception, but DH who had never lived here before has noticed the same thing). I have a couple of friends "left over" from before I moved away, but after having been gone 12 years it's been really difficult trying to pick up where we left off.

And finally...I'm an introvert so I'm not great at this whole building/ maintaining friendship thing to begin with. I can literally count on less than one hand the number of ppl (locally) that I would consider friends and not just acquaintances.

Anyone have advice for me? I'm starting to feel really lonely/isolated and discouraged. Is it something that will naturally get easier once my kids start school? Or is there something I can do NOW to help the situation?

TIA!

[Carita]

you know - i have always had this problem. I find a couple things - a great friend understands that a working mom is time limited. I tend to get a long better with other working moms becuase ew both don't have time to maintian, so we are okay with only hanging out a couple times/month.

having kids near in age are big bonuses because when the kids play together well, moms can actually have time to work on relationships with each other, and getting together is a lot of fun.

meeting people - I have given up on traditional methods of finding mommy friends. The internet has been my friend. Mom's that can e-mail - well, that makes my life 10 times easier! When I lived in my last area, I found moms I had stuff in common with my hanging out at the local mom website/forum. Now I have met local moms through the tribal areas on this board. I am more rural, so they aren't close, but I'll make do The other thing to is that I joined a church that had kids my son's age. My church type is more progressive with more working moms so activities were mostly planned for weekends.

hope that give you some ideas! ((hugs)) I just moved too, and it is daunting to go through all of that awkwardness again!

[cchrissyy]

yeah, I have the same problem.

being busy and introverted, the only times I've had luck making friends is when I take the time to go to things with repeated contact with the same few people. things like organized park groups or book groups or church or kid-related stuff like playdates or just everyday school pickup.

[Maggie05]

My son is 7 and my daughter is 4. Many of my closest friends now are from the daycare that I sent my son and daughter to. The children in their classes would have birthday parties, and I would see which children my children liked to play with, and then arrange play dates if the parents and I clicked. We have three couples with whom we are very good friends now that started out this way.

I learned that to make a friend takes work. You have to put yourself out. There were times when I would stay up late into the evening because I had to clean the house. The next day I would go to work, and then have a play date "for pizza and play" at around 5:00 at my house after I had worked all day and picked up the kids from day care. I still do this on occasion. It is hard work.

Other things I have done was to invite a new friend and their kids to Chuckie cheese after work. You meet for two hours, eat dinner, (coupons are online!) the kids play, the moms get to know each other...a few times of that, and you have a new friend. Last weekend my husband and I spent the entire day cleaning the house so we could have a family we met at the daycare over for dinner. We served stuffed shells that we had bought already made, with bread and butter, and salad. The kids played, the parents had drinks and chatted and laughed. We had a ball.

Soon, you begin to receive invites to other peoples houses, and a friendship is born. My biggest advice though is that it does take work to make friends, but is so worth it in the end.

[staceychev]

I made friends in my neighborhood by going to town activities and talking to people on the bike path across the street. I don't look for "natural-minded" friends. My friends know that I'm "crunchy" and that's fine. We have a great time together as adult women and as couples, and the girls all play well together.

We do potlucks and playdates occasionally, and keep in touch on Facebook. We also see each other when our town holds events.

I don't know how old you are, OP, but I found this to be one of the hardest adjustments I had in moving from my college and mid-twenties years into my late-twenties and thirties: I had been hanging out with friends constantly, either at work, or college, or grad school. Suddenly, life intervened, and I was seeing my friends less and less frequently. It was a big mental shift to understand that I could see people once a month, or even less, and still consider them friends. This was huge for my sanity (especially since I'm an overworked introvert, too, and often want to just chill and do housework on the weekends). If you can find friends who have also made this mental shift, it'll help a lot!

[pixiepunk]

to some extent i think that true friends (worth making the time for) are just rare. at least they always have been in my life - whether i had kids or not. when i was a SAHM, i thought i had a nice network of friends, mamas i saw regularly with similar parenting philosophies and quite a lot in common. but what i've discovered over the past year is that, for the most part, those people are not making an effort (even when i have tried to make one) to stay in touch with me now that i'm unable to make it to playgroups and such (and my situation wasn't even that i was working, just that my older two were in school and my schedule for picking them up/dropping them off didn't jive with the rest of the group). i was disappointed at first, but i've gotten over it. every few months the group has a potluck on a weekend and we go, and we enjoy ourselves. once in a while one of the kids has a birthday party we're invited to. and that is fine.

now that my kids are in school we've met a few other families that have kids in the school of similar age that we get along with and occasionally the families get together. and the one family that i think has real potential for being close friends (DH's get along, kids get along, mamas get along, and we enjoy doing the same kinds of things) i know it will probably be slow over the course of years before we're truly close, simply because we're all so busy with daily life that we rarely have the time to get together.

to some extent i just had to let go of the hope that most of these people were going to be the kind of people i could count on to have a shoulder to cry on or support me in a rough time. they're just people we hang out with sometimes, and that's nice and its OK. both DH and I have a couple of close friends who live a few hours away that are long-time very close friends (in our wedding, known forever) and we keep i touch via phone and computer and get to see each other several times a years. it'd sure be nice if we all lived in the same town, but no one is willing/able to move and that probably won't change. so we've gotten comfortable with our local acquaintances, and enjoy the little bit of time we get to hang out. if someone ends up turning into a great friend, bonus.

[Aquitane]

I think part of this depends on which type of friends you want to make/keep.

It will take work to keep up with childhood/college friends. DH and I each have one friend from childhhood that we see "regularly." (That means a few times a year.)

I find I'm closest with friends that I've made at work. I've been a teacher for 16 years. I don't work in the same school with my closest teacher friends (we're all spread out) but we meet every month. Are there people at work who have similar interests, children the same age, etc.? I know this can really differ from workplace to workplace, so that may not be an option.

My kids each have a couple good friends. We are not super close to any of DS's friends parents. We know and trust each other enough for the kids to spend the night and stuff like that. We probably could be better friends with a few of them if we put in more effort. I don't see that I have to be best friends with the parents of my kids' friends. But if you come across a couple that you really like, go for it!

DD has been friends with a little boy since preschool. I think his parents are trying to set up a close friendship with us, but it's not working. Both DH and I WOH. They have one parent WOH and one SAH. (They don't approve of both parent WOH.) They are also very religious. The husband is studying to be a pastor and some of their religious beliefs (like a pastor can "lay hands" on a person to cure them of something) are miles away from our beliefs. I like them, but I think they are really odd.

I guess you need to define what kind of friendship you want. Does it have to include DH? The kids? Once you know, pursue avenues that get you to that goal.

[snarky]

Almost all of my friends are friends from work now. Weekday lunch and coffee are the mainstays of my social calendar. I work at a large company and there are 15 people I have lunch with regularly. Over the course of the last year I must have had lunch with another 30-50 people joining us. (we have big lunch tables, but occasionally I will have a one on one lunch). This kind of social life is fine with me, however my husband complains about his social life because he doesn't work outside the home.

[listipton]

I Facebook a lot with friends to maintain relationships Most of my close adult friends are long distant but I'm starting to reconnect with childhood friends who are now in similar family situations.