S/O to "Don't Bring Your Boyfriend" - Why?! (rant)

[snowball's chance]

I didn't want to hijack Shay's thread, so I'll post a new thread . . .

Why do we (the rhetorical we) do this?  Why do some people get a B/GF, or get married, and immediately drop all contact w/ friends they've known for years and years, including longer than the S.O.? 

When my "paired-up" friends no longer want to go out on a weekend night to a bar or a club for some drinks anymore, it's like they were saying the only reason they ever went in the first place was to find a B/GF.  And I'm not saying I expect them to come EVERY time, I even get that people want to spend the MAJORITY of their free time w/ S.O., but you can't come *1* time out of 5?  Or can't you ever come out w/ S.O.?  Don't get me wrong, I think your S.O. is a great person (and I'd like to meet his friends if he has cute, single ones), but can't we just be ALONE sometimes?  Like clothes shopping?

Even worse are the friends who only want to do something if S.O. is busy, or has plans my friend is invited to.  Thanks, I'm so glad to know I'm second choice, but btw, I've made plans w/ the friends who still call me regularly, and want to do stuff w/ me not just as a back-up plan.  You're welcome to join us, but be warned, no one will be amused when you sit at the table & sulk til you finally call your S.O., and then immediately perk up when he arrives, after he's done w/ his other thing.

And please, please when I call you, and you're with S.O., I want to talk to you!  Please don't turn your head & tell your Honey everything I'm saying.  If I want your Honey's opinion on something I WILL ASK.  If I've interrupted you two, just let me know & we'll talk later.

And please expect an  or 2 once you've stopped calling me (& all of your other female friends), only to call me out of the blue after X # of months to either 1.) tell me you & Honey broke up and you need a shoulder to cry on or 2.) he proposed, & you want me as your BM.

P.S.  I know my rant is more about how women do this, but I realize men can be guilty of this, too.

[Dandy Andy's Daddy's Love]

Being married, I tend to gravitate towards other attached people, just because I think that we have more in common. I never did abandon my single friends and I still have some, but to be honest, since meeting my husband, I haven't really been up for the club scene. It's not that I used to go out in order to find a boyfriend, but a lot of the fun included flirting, dancing with, and checking out other guys. I really don't feel comfortable doing those sorts of things and I don't think that it's appropriate. I do things with my single friends- usually chatting over a few drinks or playing a game of poker. My husband and I don't really have separate friends, but we do maintain our independence by not always hanging out with them together. I think that a lot of these women are in for a big surprise when they start going through stages where they don't really like there significant other (, and yes, there will be times when they don't really like each other, even if they are still in love). Sometimes you just need some time without them, and they are setting themselves up for a huge disappointment.

[jimithing]

I try to make as much time with my single friends as possible.  I vowed not to be my friend who said, "I'm married now.  I can't just hang out with you guys anymore."    With that being said, my DH works a lot and is out of town.  When he is in town, I will go out with my friends on occasions, but that is my time that I spend with my DH. 

I need my time with my girlfriends.  It's very important to me.  But my marriage is the most important thing to me and my DH is my best friend.  I love spending time with my girlfriends, but I also love spending time with the person I am married to.

One of my friends is dating someone, and she is the first friend out of my single friends to have an SO in a very long time.  It's been great to have another couple to hang out with, and although we invite our single friends to come with us we really do like to hang out with just us, as couples once in a while.  We talk about things that my other friends can't relate to necessarily, just as I get somewhat uncomfortable when my single friends are always complaining about being single and not "having a man."  I just can't relate to that anymore.

[Sirius]

i was usually the single person who was more or less forgotten once her married friends were married.  Not all of them were like that; of my two best friends from high school, I'm still friends with one and the other disappeared into the night.  The friend I'm still friends with after all these years would invite me to visit her, and her husband has always been very nice to me.  In fact, her husband and I are both astronomy and sci-fi buffs so we have at least two subjects to talk about.  With the other friend, her husband always struck me as a bit of a phoney, and she may have picked up on my feelings about that, even though I never told anyone I felt that way.  Plus, he and I had zero in common.  I was never a threat to anyone's marriage and I know both my friends knew this, and if I'd even had an inkling that one of my friends' husbands had more than friendship feelings for me, I'd have headed for the hills.  Now that I'm married, I don't have any unmarried friends left over from my single days except for a close friend who is widowed, and I try my best to keep lines of communication open between her and me.

[MDefarge]

I've tried really really hard not to be one of those women - The "girls" and I have Tuesday night Book (ok wine)club and we don't miss it without a very good reason. I'm lucky though that BF and I met through a mutual friend, and our two main groups of friends have intertwined since then.  I'll admit to checking with BF before making plans without him, but I won't cancel plans I've made if his plans change.

[Lisbeth]

Being married, I tend to gravitate towards other attached people, just because I think that we have more in common. I never did abandon my single friends and I still have some, but to be honest, since meeting my husband, I haven't really been up for the club scene. It's not that I used to go out in order to find a boyfriend, but a lot of the fun included flirting, dancing with, and checking out other guys. I really don't feel comfortable doing those sorts of things and I don't think that it's appropriate. I do things with my single friends- usually chatting over a few drinks or playing a game of poker. My husband and I don't really have separate friends, but we do maintain our independence by not always hanging out with them together. I think that a lot of these women are in for a big surprise when they start going through stages where they don't really like there significant other (, and yes, there will be times when they don't really like each other, even if they are still in love). Sometimes you just need some time without them, and they are setting themselves up for a huge disappointment.

Prior to your marriage, did you and your single friends do anything together that didn't involve clubbing and checking out guys? 

It's probably inadvertent, but your post gives out the idea that single women only want to get together to flirt and look for guys.  That ain't the case.  I'm single and don't like clubbing, and would like to do things with women of any marital status that don't involve looking for guys.

[mrsbrandt]

I'm married and my single friends have kinda fallen to the wayside - not for lack of trying to keep in touch on both sides.  It is just that we all seem to want to do different things. My single friends want to go to bars or do thing all weekends and so do my friends without kids.  I'm married and have kids - I like going to bars or spending time with friends all weekend, but it isn't something I can do often.  That being said though - the girl component of our couple friends are people I always hang out with for girl time.  I don't purposely try to gravitate towards couples, but it seems that it is just the way my friendships have played out.

[Dandy Andy's Daddy's Love]

Being married, I tend to gravitate towards other attached people, just because I think that we have more in common. I never did abandon my single friends and I still have some, but to be honest, since meeting my husband, I haven't really been up for the club scene. It's not that I used to go out in order to find a boyfriend, but a lot of the fun included flirting, dancing with, and checking out other guys. I really don't feel comfortable doing those sorts of things and I don't think that it's appropriate. I do things with my single friends- usually chatting over a few drinks or playing a game of poker. My husband and I don't really have separate friends, but we do maintain our independence by not always hanging out with them together. I think that a lot of these women are in for a big surprise when they start going through stages where they don't really like there significant other (, and yes, there will be times when they don't really like each other, even if they are still in love). Sometimes you just need some time without them, and they are setting themselves up for a huge disappointment.

Prior to your marriage, did you and your single friends do anything together that didn't involve clubbing and checking out guys? 

It's probably inadvertent, but your post gives out the idea that single women only want to get together to flirt and look for guys.  That ain't the case.  I'm single and don't like clubbing, and would like to do things with women of any marital status that don't involve looking for guys.

Honestly, and I admit this rather sheepishly, no we really didn't do much else. Legal drinking age where I live is 18. I was working an evening shift job at the time, so I was getting up at 2 in the afternoon, getting ready, going to work at 5, and hitting the bar at midnight. I was single my entire 18th year. I then moved to a new town when I was 19 and I met my husband the night that I arrived. We dated for a year and a half before he proposed, were engaged a year and a half, and  got married when I was 22. I really didn't have a whole lot of the single life before getting married.

I realize now that my previous post did sound like I was stereotyping. Sorry for the misunderstanding. The truth is that I still do a lot of things with my single friends apart from my husband. They just don't include clubbing and the like. Seems as I now live in a small isolated town, things like shopping, bowling, and movies are just not options, but I still do lunch, or go for drinks without my husband.

[lovinAZ]

I hate it when people do this.  A guy I went to college with said it was "pair bonding."  Whatever 

I am fortunate in that I have single and married friends, all of whom will hang out with or without attachments.  We've had a few girl sleepovers, and none of the married folk (including me) had any issue with leaving hubby home alone in bed for a night.

But, as some others mentioned, we do things that aren't man-hunting-focused.  Not that I was ever into that scene anyway, which has made the transition easier.  It's not surprising that women who spend their entire single life looking for a man will spend all of their time with said man once he's found.  (Same for the other way around, too.)

[IndianInlaw]

It could be that they feel they've moved out of one stage of life and into another.

Life is like that.

[behindbj]

It could be that they feel they've moved out of one stage of life and into another.

Life is like that.

That's right - who wants to stay friends with single folks who have obviously not advanced to the next required stage of life and are instead stalled, falling further developmentally behind people who do the normal thing and couple up?

Seriously - if you didn't mean it that way, that's what it sounds like. 

I am single.  I don't feel the need to get married so my life can "advance."  My life is clipping along right nicely, and I certainly don't think I've been left behind.  These folks have moved from one state of existence to a different state of existence on the same geometric plane, not passed us by.

behindbj

[mrsbrandt]

I don't think IIL meant it that way behindbj.  And I don't think anyone would say that single folks are behind married folks - have you seen some people's marriages?   

I know lots of single folks who have no interest in hearing about my DH or my kids - and I know married folks who have no interest in hearing about single life or dating or anything like that.  I'm not saying I agree with it, but sometimes friendships just grow apart.  I think making time is something both parties in a friendship should work on despite marital status - but sometimes people just aren't interested in the same things anymore.  It isn't a diss to either party, its just the way things pan out sometimes.

[Sibby]

I don't think IIL meant it that way behindbj.  And I don't think anyone would say that single folks are behind married folks - have you seen some people's marriages?   

I know lots of single folks who have no interest in hearing about my DH or my kids - and I know married folks who have no interest in hearing about single life or dating or anything like that.  I'm not saying I agree with it, but sometimes friendships just grow apart.  I think making time is something both parties in a friendship should work on despite marital status - but sometimes people just aren't interested in the same things anymore.  It isn't a diss to either party, its just the way things pan out sometimes.

Don't you talk about anything other then your interpersonal home relationships?  Don't married people & single people still have a HUGE middle ground: work, current events, hobbies, sports, movies, TV shows, fashion, food, new technilogical advances & inventions to talk about? 

[lovinAZ]

I don't think IIL meant it that way behindbj.  And I don't think anyone would say that single folks are behind married folks - have you seen some people's marriages?   

I know lots of single folks who have no interest in hearing about my DH or my kids - and I know married folks who have no interest in hearing about single life or dating or anything like that.  I'm not saying I agree with it, but sometimes friendships just grow apart.  I think making time is something both parties in a friendship should work on despite marital status - but sometimes people just aren't interested in the same things anymore.  It isn't a diss to either party, its just the way things pan out sometimes.

Don't you talk about anything other then your interpersonal home relationships?  Don't married people & single people still have a HUGE middle ground: work, current events, hobbies, sports, movies, TV shows, fashion, food, new technilogical advances & inventions to talk about? 

If not, then perhaps it's best that the socializing has died off

Really, unless something significant is happening or someone asks, I don't talk about my relationship with DH.  Though we have a strong relationship, conversations just wouldn't be that interesting 

[mrsbrandt]

I don't always talk about my interpersonal relationships...but I've had friendships die because the other party wanted to hear nothing about DH.  She got upset when I mentioned that, oh we saw such and such movie.  She wanted me to talk about life as if he didn't exist or he wasn't a part of my life.  It was really weird and majorly her issue, but some people are like that.  I must say that the majority of my friends aren't - but some people feel as if S/O should never be mentioned even in passing.