{Social Transitions}

From college life to married life to the having-a-baby life, I've found that the transitional periods of these major milestones are something to be noted. College life to married life was fairly seamless. There was a little over a month left on my lease with my roommates, so we simply added another roommate when we got married. (Except I had no problem cooking dinner for, cleaning up after, and accidentally walking in on during a shower with this roommate.) My roommates welcomed the man in the house because we could finally get lightbulbs changed, doors repaired, and spiders squashed!

Once we got our own place is when I slowly started to realize how drastic a change married life was. Yes, we were still game to go out on the town with an impromptu invitation. But the weekly get togethers and girls-only happenings started to diminish for me. I didn't get married so that I could participate in events that excluded my best friend/ life companion. And the weekly get togethers became difficult for me to commit to, because the convenience factor of living with all my best gal pals was no longer there. Plus you are now having to merge your friends and your husbands friends, so you are left having to altnernate groups every other weekend. "We hung out with your friends last weekend, so we are going to my friends' house this weekend."

Expressing this to my single friends, however, was more challenging than I anticipated. There's an automatic stigma that correlates to 'married couples' in the view of the ever-so-independent, do-as-I-please bachelor or bachelorette. As if the action of slipping that wedding band on your spouse's finger has simultaneously morphed you into someone who can now only participate in couples-only events. The real kicker is, once your single friends start writing you off because you have declined invites to 2 out of 3 parties per week now, you find yourself seeking out other couples going through the same thing. So the irony is that now you've become a couples-only couple.

Then your single friends start to follow suit and all of a sudden your dropping $20K per year on wedding events. (Who really needs a retirement fund, anyway?) So now that you are no longer written off as 'that married couple', your social life has made a full recovery. Then you decide to throw yourself for a loop and have a baby. It'll be the same as before, you just bring a baby with you all the time now, right? Wrong. The notion of on-the-fly, spontaneous get togethers has altogether become a thing of the distant past. (Believe me, we've tried it...many times.) Despite how many times other parents tried to relay this to me, I truly did not understand this concept until I had my own child. Your life is never the same again. Ever. Your social events are now categorized by the words, 'adults only' or 'kids welcomed', your child-friendly-restaurant radar is on full force, you think going to bed at 10pm is late and you now get tipsy off one glass of wine. (The last one has actually improved our economic status.) And yet, you wouldn't change a thing because you're so overwhelmed by love for this baby that you'd give up anything in the world for them.

So now, when you're around people without kids, you find yourself constantly apologizing. You apologize because your baby has been crying for the last hour, or they've now pooped-through 3 outfits and you have to stop (again) to change them, or you're racing town trying to find a restaurant who knows the meaning of 'lukewarm' when trying to make a bottle. Inevitably, you gravitate towards people with kids because they, too, are able to zone out a crying baby for the 30 minute drive from one end of town to the other. You not only become happy for your friends who find out they're pregnant because of the immense joy that comes with having a baby, but also because you feel like you can re-connect with them on another level. You cannot believe you've become that person who only surrounds themselves with people who are in the same stage in life as you. Yet, you understand how it can happen.

I, therefore, have a message to all my currrently single friends: Please don't give up on me because I can't join you for drinks tomorrow. Know that you still mean the world to me, and I still know how to have a good time...just between the hours of 6am and 9pm.

My message to my currently child-less friends: I'm sorry (again) that my kid threw up on your $300 jeans. I promise that smell will go away when you wash them. Also, let's do dinner again soon. Adult time is very much appreciated!

Until next time...

XOXO Mama D