Maybe I’d have more friends if I had the adult version of this pink snowsuit. (Baby Beth)
Oh hey! I’ve decided to start up this blog again and also – surprise, I’m a mom now. It’s been a busy few years! My daughter is 13 months old. One of the things that has surprised me the most is how hard it is to make mom friends.
Listen. If you’re my friend and you’re a mom – don’t get angry. Be proud because if we were friends before I had this kid- you don’t count.
So, here’s the truth. I’ve made 0 mom friends in the last 22 months (what’s 13 months old + 9 months in utero??? 22 months!). LISTEN. I’m okay with it but it’s not for lack of trying.
Here’s what I have tried:
- Joining every local mom group under the sun.
- I joined Mothers of Northern Arlington (MONA). What an epic fail. Some people love it, but man, I really struck out. My daughter was too young to participate in most of the events and everyone already had their cliques. Also MONA has a ton of events on Tuesdays at like 10 am. Hey, that’s cool and all but that’s an hour that I literally am guaranteed to be at my job. Our “expectant moms” group crashed and burned when we all went back to work… I didn’t mourn it.
- I moved to Falls Church and there is not another mom group of the Arlington magnitude BUTTTTTTTTTTT I tried to join the Working Mothers of Northern Virginia thinking maybe the events would line up better with my calendar. They did! Weekend park dates- I’ll give it a try. I tried showing up at 3 different events because you need to, like, try out for actual membership. I could not for the life of me, find any of these women EVER at any of the locations. If this is a club where you need to be at least an hour late to every event, it’s not for me.
- I tried the friend dating app for moms.
- Maybe because I didn’t ever have to develop dating app skills, I sucked it up on the “Peanut” app. Do people actually meet people through this?? I tried chatting to people here and there but we never made any plans.
- I was overly nice to everyone with a kid in a public place.
- I just wrote out that sentence and realized people may have thought I was a huge creep (mostly I mean when I didn’t have my child with me). I have been nice to people at the local grocery stores, local restaurants, local parks. You never know when you might meet your mom soulmate. I guess she’s not in Arlington or Falls Church because none of these interactions ever amounted to anything substantial.
Here’s the deal. This has really caused me to search deep within to start to wonder if there is something wrong with me. But why do I have no problem making friends NORMALLY but I can’t make any mom friends?
Here are some of my perceived limitations:
- I had/have zero desire to talk about breastfeeding. It’s your thang? Cool – I’m happy for you but I cannot sustain a conversation on this topic unless you want to have a rousing debate with me over what my time is actually worth. This especially seemed like a conversation killer for the first 3-4 months of my daughter’s life and has drastically been reduced in the last month or so (thank god).
- To be clear, I am OBSESSED with my child but I really like talking about ALL OTHER THINGS.
- I am really bad at censoring myself. Maybe new moms don’t want to be friends with people who have really inappropriate senses of humor because it may pass off in a distasteful way to their children? All I know is that I want to keep cursing as long as I possibly can before my daughter becomes a human parrot and/or figures out what these words mean.
- I work – that means I’m pretty tired on the weekends. Maybe I’m not as “open” to opportunities as I think I am.
So, what’s next?
Honestly, I kind of give up and really hope that eventually I can be just like Andrea Savage in “I’m Sorry” and find some other like-minded friends at that point (I don’t know – pre-school or elementary school?)
I’m savoring the strong mom (AND non-mom) relationships I already had. I feel lucky to have a strong advisory board of people I turn to – and although none live across the park from me, I am thankful for the technology that allows me to ping them in my times of need.
Things can get scary, weird and lonely and, I think many times, we’re better when we know there are people who have our backs.
Pieceofbeth 