When my ex-husband and I started dating I had a huge social network ... I had friends from the two high schools I had attended, from college, from several jobs I had worked at ... I had a group of guys I played roller hockey with ... I had friends I worked at the local amusement park with that I hung out with late at night at Denny's and IHOP or just their houses ... I had enough girl friends from various aspects in my life that when we got engaged I could think of more than twelve potential bridesmaids ... I was a social, popular person ... I just was ...
I ran across a picture a few days ago of my ex and I and a group of my friends, from various parts of my life at a Christmas party I hosted two months before he asked me to marry him ... and then I started remembering things ... well, I knew the concept had existed in my life ... but I started remembering the details ... of how I pushed a lot of my friends away ... for various reasons ... but mostly because he was uncomfortable around them ... all my friends from the high school I graduated from were giving me updates on my ex-boyfriend ... the one I was still dating when I graduated from high school and well into my freshman year of college ... my ex-husband hated that ... he really didn't like being reminded I had a past at all ... and now that I have more experience dating people that have pasts ... I understand more where he was
coming from ... but at the same time when your friends overlap your relationships it will happen and we have to accept that in other people as well ... but he didn't like me hanging out with my high school friends because of that ... he didn't like me playing roller hockey with a group of guys I knew from the sporting goods store I worked at ... and then I was also doing the new love/puppy love thing and kind of pushed my friends off to the side on my own as well ... my best friend through my first two years of college quickly became resentful of my lack of answering phone calls, my constant decline of invitations ... we finally ended up having a big fight and she dropped out as the maid of honor in my wedding ... she had her own responsibilities in the downfall of the friendship, but I did too ... and the blow out came mostly because she found a new friend ... that had time for her ... when I didn't ...
All along we gained couple friends ... we had two couples that we had dinner parties with every other month or so ... which usually involved really good, home cooked food from one of us three women, good desserts, bottles & bottles of wine, great conversation ... the guys (who didn't smoke) would go enjoy cigars together and leave us women to our wine-induced girl talk ... one of those guys was also in a band ... we would go out and watch him play live ... we had other couple friends we had game nights with ... and laughed hysterically ... and then we had a few that we just did things with now and then both kid-friendly and not ... but we had a social life together ... he just didn't really like me having a social life by myself ...
Then a co-worker and I started going out for dessert or drinks after work ... and I started realizing how much I missed the social being I once was ... I opened a MySpace account ... well it had been opened earlier just so I could read a blog a friend was writing, but I actually started using it ... reconnecting ... reaching out ... finding long lost friends and acquaintances .... i was downright giddy at finding friends I hadn't talked to in 20 years who told me they had been wondering what I had been up to as well ... then I started having girls nights (that usually were not confined to just girls, because they just weren't) ... and going out dancing ... it was almost like I found my soul again ... the inner extrovert that had been screaming to get out for years ... and I realized something ....
I missed me ....
I wasn't defined by wife or mother ... yes they were huge pieces of who I was ... and as a mother ... still am ... I could just be me ... I realized how much I missed having girlfriends to gossip with and bitch with and guy friends (which most of my friends throughout my younger years were) to just play around with ... and meeting new people ... and this discovery probably had something to do with my divorce, but in all honesty I think that my marriage was over long before that ... when I felt like I had to lose myself to stay with him ... but then I got divorced ... and my friendships were re-defined again ...A lot of my girlfriends I had outside of my ex-husband were kind of taken back .... and I remember at one point my ex said to me that it was like all our friends thought that divorce was contagious ... because his friends were backing off from him as well ... I lost a lot of trust in a lot of friends in a short period of time thought when my ex made a bunch of phone calls and some in person visits basically flat out lying about what we had and hadn't agreed to .... telling people that I was a neglectful and alcoholic mother ... that I was going to go for full custody and not let him see the kids ... that he didn't want a divorce ... when I very clearly remember having a conversation with him and it was a mutual decision ... but he called some of my family .... and most of my best friends ... he went and visited with every single set of couple friends we had and did what he could to sabotage my relationships with them ... including coming back to me and telling me a bunch of degrading and awful things that they supposedly said about me ... but yeah ... he took most of our mutual friends with him ... he "won" them in the divorce ... I was left with a few broken friendships that I honestly haven't had the strength to try to piece back together ... maybe I'm too jaded ... maybe I just put up my walls ... but what I have now is mostly broken friendships ... I don't think they'll ever be the same again ...
Some of my older friends stepped up, came through ... turned out to be people I didn't know they were ... some people I would have described as mere acquaintances came out with amazing support ... amazing words ... I have some tried and true friends ... one I've had since I was less than a year old ... one I've had since my Junior year of high school ... that are the kinds of friends you can go years without talking to and pick back up like you hadn't missed a beat ... luckily thanks to social networks that years without talking thing doesn't happen anymore ... but I have some good friends ... it's just that I really don't have the support structure of friends I once had ... I lost my pre-marriage friends when I got married and had kids ... and my married life friends when I got divorced ...
My MOPS ladies have been amazing ... not so much in the hang out way ... but in the support through words, gifts and inspiration, they have been amazing and to be honest, I thought they would be the most judgmental of my friends ... I was so wrong ... I do remember in a MOPS meeting once basically having the "if mommy ain't happy ain't nobody happy" talk ... but the speaker was saying that we have to take care of us too ... that we can't and shouldn't teach our kids that when you're a mom you have to stop being you ... give up your friends ... stop doing the things you used to ... that's not a good message to send them ... it's actually healthy for kids to see their parents have a healthy and active social life ... so that being said ...
I think it's time to start rebuilding old friendships and forming some new ones ... especially since the bulk of my good friends right now came to me through my boyfriend .... which means I'm not doing much better than before as far as having a social network and support structure of my own ... so now I just have to go about doing all that ... and that is the hard part ...
