They say you can choose your friends but not your family. I’m not entirely sure that’s true.
Not the family bit. That’s true. At least as far as your blood relatives are concerned. You get to choose your spouse (in most cultures) and it can be fun trying out prospective candidates.
But I’m not so sure you really can choose your friends.
I moved to where I live now when I was in my 20s. I have one friend here that I knew while I was in High School. Most of my old friends are elsewhere. I made a few good friends in uni, which I was at from the ages 25 – 28. I still see one or two of them.
I met C at uni so that was nice. Most of our social circle consists of C’s friends: people she knew for a long time before we got together. So while they are friends, I’m not saying I don’t like them but they’re not people I chose to be friends with; rather people I was put in a room with and told “You’re our spouses/partners/other halves, do try and get along”. Don’t get me wrong. They’re good people and I like them, for the most part. We enjoy each other’s company but it kind of stops there. I wouldn’t immediately discuss anything remotely private with them because C is still, to an extent, the guardian of those relationships, with perhaps one exception.
We are friends also with some people who used to be our neighbours. We have kids that are around the same age. C gets along well with the wife and the kids get along. That’s swell.
Our kids are at child care a couple of days a week. So Little Miss L has made friends there. (Miss M is still a bit young to be truly socialising.) So we’ve been inviting those friends and their parents to various birthday parties and have recently been invited to some suburb on some distant side of the planet to their infant’s birthday party. And again, C gets on well with the kid’s mother.
I think what I’m really getting at here is some kind of male thing that makes it very hard to make friends. Some of the male spouses I’m now socialising with, mostly through my kids, are boring as all fuck. I have no idea what they do but I think it’s more in the commerce area. I’m trained as a journalist and have skills in photography and radio. So I work more with Photoshop and InDesign than I do with Excel or MYOB, which, I don’t know, these guys might work with. Also, they have no musical taste whatsoever (did I hear the soundtrack of an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical at a recent lunch?) and whenever there’s a barbeque or such social engagement, they’re wearing business shirts tucked into jeans, which is such a heinous fashion crime that even I know about it. I’m thinking of maybe three or four guys here who probably don’t own a t-shirt between them. I bet even their pyjamas are the kind with collars.
I was at a 4th birthday party the other day. C & I went along and were late, so ended up staying for the last hour. There was another father there of one of the attendees and we shared a few awkward silences in the kitchen at one point.
I was admiring his Gazman shirt which he had carefully tucked into his RM Williams jeans and thought, ‘Is this guy going to try to talk, or do I have to strike something up here?’
“So you live in the hills then?”
“Sort of. We’re over in Happy Valley,” he replied. And I told him we’d been where we are now for nearly two years.
Now that should have been his cue to ask me what I do for a living, or the age of my children, or even for advice on whether he should iron his jeans with or without a crease down the front.
But nothing.
Which was fine as far as I was concerned because I thought he was a dick.
It’s not all bad though. We (C & I) do have some friends we’ve made through professional contact that we both seem to like. Trouble is, they don’t all have kids and with all the kiddie-events we seem to have to go to, it’s like we never get to see the people we (or at least, I) would really rather see.
For me, making male friends is harder than dating (which, I suppose, is another reason I could never be gay).
Any thoughts?
I think I must be becoming more gregarious as I get older. I have more friends now than at any previous point in my life.
I still see heaps of Craig and through Craig I have met “the comedy set” and this is the group I socialise with most often. I even get to hang out with relatively famous people from time to time. They even pay me to play poker with them.
We also met some people via the New Mother’s Group. Not sure if they have them in S.A. but you get tossed together with some people where the only thing you have in common is that you all recently had a child. Most of them we didn’t hit it off with but 2 couple have become firm friends.
A few guys from work are great and we have the odd Sunday BBQ together.
And of course there the blokes at the cricket club, golf club etc.
Lucky me.
Hmm… I’ve already ‘done’ the Adelaide comedy set. Used to work at one of the main clubs here and did radio for a while with one of the more famous locals who is now doing bigger, better(?) things. I moved on also but still catch up with the odd funny guy.
C has been in a mothers’ group since Little Miss L was born. I still haven’t been introduced to half the women, let alone their husbands.
Working on a couple of working relationships, and I’ve never been ‘one of the boys’ as far as organised sport is concerned. With volleyball we were a disparate bunch who sort of landed in the same team. It was drinks after the grand final every season but nothing more.
Maybe I just don’t get out enough…
I would suggest socialising more without your wife and kids. Even a casual Friday night drink with the crew from work can introduce you to time outside mingling with same sex. No gay jokes coming from here. I think its wise to hang with friends, outside of your family circle otherwise you can lose your sense of self. ie. Who the hell am i? just a dad? Just a husband? What about me… you know?
What club did you work at? Only curious, because I’ve been working at one over the last couple of months. I’m not a in a comedy set though.
This is a great post – my husband has the same thing going on. He does wear gazman shirts, but he is good apart from that. I think when you work full time and have little kids it is a bit socially isolating.