I have been best friends with a certain guy for about 10-15 years. We live in different states, and we would call each other at least once or twice a week. We saw each other several times a year - I’d go to his place for a few days, or he’d come to mine. We were very close. We shared a lot of hard times; we cried on each others shoulder, we confided in each other, we were there for each other, etc etc etc. But we also had a lot of good times and had a lot of fun together. We enjoyed talking and being together. I was best man at his wedding. He was, in every sense of the word, a good friend.
But then, after he got married (just over a year ago), all that stopped. He stopped calling me, and when I try to call him, he won’t return my calls (he’s never at home when I call. Hmmmmm). We haven’t seen each other since the wedding (over a year) and haven’t spoken in almost 2 months.
I know that when a person gets married, priorities and responsibilities change. I know we can’t spend time together like we did and we can’t call as often. But he’s totally cut me off. We didn’t have any kind of arguement or disagreement or “falling out”. I met his wife when they started dating, and I got along fine with her. So I don’t know what happened.
And he’s not the only person to do this, nor am I the only person this has happened to. I know several people that have done the same thing - when they get married they cut off their single friends. Why is this?
What should I do about this particular situation? Should I keep trying to call him, even tho he won’t return my calls? Or just forget him and move on, since he obviously has? I just can’t believe he would just throw away this close of a friendship. Especially one that’s lasted this long. And that’s exactly how I feel - like I’ve been thrown away.
When my ex-husband and I got married, he quit calling all of his friends. I asked him why he never did anything with them anymore, and he said that he didn’t need to, he had me. The whole six years, he didn’t go out with anyone other than his brothers, and only when I would force him to go out.
With my fiancee, we’ve been together for 5 years now, and he has hardly talked to any of his friends since we’ve been together. I ask him too, and he says that he just doesn’t have time (not true, I think, but whatever).
For the record, I’ve kept all of my friends. I don’t really know what it is with men who don’t keep theirs.
I have only been married for almost 10 months but I still maintain strong ties with my pre-married friends. As nice as my wife is, she is but one. I thrive on people relationships. Let alone, I would slowly go insane and feast on my own spleen.
(This is all info I have gleaned from speaking with married men.)
There are men who are afraid that their friends will no longer see them as the wild and crazy guys they used to be. And they’re not. They can’t risk being thrown in jail over some stupid prank or bar fight–they have to take out the garbage at 7am. Even if the friend is someone who might understand this–it’s a self-image thing. (This holds true even for those men who were never really wild and crazy. They feel self-conscious that they cannot just up and go anywhere they please for as long as they please.)
There are also men who have experienced a type of rose-colored glasses syndrome about old friends. After being married for a while, they go out with their buddies and shoot pool, drink some beers, maybe even flirt with a waitress or two. They begin to think to themselves, “Gee, this kind of life was so great! Why in the hell did I ever give it up? I’m out til three in the morning, women are hitting on me, I’ve got a great beer buzz, football on the t.v.–why did I want to leave all this behind?”
But they are forgetting what it felt like to return home after such a night to their dirty, lonely apartment. They are forgetting what it was like to not have a steady supply of clean socks, folded clothes, and meals that didn’t come from Chef Boyardee or Taco Bell. They are forgetting what it felt like to be having a really shitty day/week/month and not having anyone they could talk about it with or cry with. When they do remember all these things, they find it easier if they do not tempt themselves with the fruits of yesterday that they cannot have today. Some of them will eventually be able to reconcile the two lifestyles and then they will be comfortable with old friends. Some never get past that. These are usually the mid-life crisis/convertible/Miami Vice-looking divorced men who jump from relationship to relationship.
Then again, there is always the possibility that the wife (after marriage) turned out to be a controlling person and does not want him to maintain relationships with his “single” buddies for both reasons listed above–she is afraid of losing him. (My sister-in-law is this type of person.)
The big question is why are dinner tables made rectangular, so that you’re always hearing about how you need a couple, not a single, so no chairs go to waste.
If more tables had an odd number of sides, mixed groups would be required instead of dicouraged.
Two words: common interests. And you no longer have things in common with him. I’m not saying this to be flip or cruel, but it’s the truth. People change, for better or worse, and they tend to seek out people who are in the same stage of their life.
For instance, you probably had a lot of friends at school that you no longer are in contact with. Why? Because your common denominator was school. Once that was removed, you didn’t see each other as much and interest in each other waned. It’s not that you all of a sudden you decided you didn’t LIKE them anymore, but with only 16 waking hours in a day you have to prioritize your time. And staying in contact with everyone you like requires too much time and effort.
I think PL is on to something here with the ‘common interests’ thought.
This weekend Mrs Chance and I went out with 2 sets of friends, one on Saturday and one on Sunday. Saturday was a ‘day out with children’ at the National Zoo. All of us who had kids or could borrow them bummed around the Zoo for about 4 hours. 6 sets of adults and a passel of kids ranging from 2 months to about 9 years old. Great fun was had by all…war stories…animal crackers.
Sunday it was a party at Dave & Busters for a couple who got married last month in Vegas. Cheezy but OK. We were the only ones there with a kid (The Chancling is 4 months old) and one of only two married couples. Lunch went great but when it game time to leave the dining room for the midway we went in for about 5 minutes and then decided it just wasn’t for us anymore. There were things we would MUCH rather be doing than spending too much cash (the damn games cost like $2 to play) to hang in a crowded, noisy warehouse structure. So we said our goodbyes and left.
In all the Saturday event was much more to our tastes. People we could better identify with and who could understand us.
When my husband was still single, he grew apart from his married friends a little. He was still doing the party thing, chasing girls, drinking too much, and staying up too late. Now that he’s married, he’s re-established those relationships. He just “gets” where they are better than he used to.
He still has a few single friends, but finds that they’re not interested in doing the stuff he wants to do and he’s not interested in going out to the bars all night. He finds that his friends from his single days who are still single vary from just not being able to relate very well to the married thing to being outright insulting about it. His one friend told him he was an “idiot” for tying himself to one person (I had never met the guy, so it wasn’t anything against me personally).
RonA, in your case, it seems like your relationship was based on something more than just cadding around, though. Maybe he fills his need of a confidante with his wife? Maybe he feels like a close relationship with someone other than her would be redundant or get too complicated? I tell my husband all my close, intimate details and don’t really feel the need to repeat my stories to someone else (but that’s just me…other people find getting several people’s viewpoints helpful). Also, during the first year (or two) of marriage, you’re still revelling in your new bond. It’s enjoyable and it’s sometimes doesn’t seem like much fun to leave your new spouse while you’re still in that gishy stage.
I think you should just be patient, keep trying every once in awhile, maybe invite the two of them to do something in order to non-threateningly re-establish your friendship. Don’t expect to have the same deep, close, intimate relationship you had with him before…he has someone else he can pour his heart out to every night, if he needs to.
Why I stopped seeing my friends when they got married:
Their wives are bitches who do not want their husbands to have friends like me who are still single. They want friends who are married and into talking about babies, married life and all that crap. Their lives bore me to death.
I agree too with PunditLisa about the common interests problem. The same thing has happened to me, only in my case it was all my female friends who “vanished” after getting married.
It’s hard to imagine that such a thing could happen when you’ve been friends for such a long time, but sadly it’s true. One of my best friends from grammar school days got married about ten years ago, and it’s difficult for us to find common ground to talk about these days… she’s got two kids, a house that’s being remodeled, and a husband with a damn good job that lets her stay home to be a mom and do volunteer work at the local community center. I have a boyfriend & no immediate prospects of facing up to the “C” word, am finally struggling out of the financial hole grad school put me into, and am trying to figure out what my long-term employment prospects will be (needless to say, I’m not a home-owner either). The situation is not helped by the fact that we live on opposite coasts now. We try really hard on certain holidays, etc., but it’s just tough to get past the awkward feeling that we’re each talking to a stranger.
Sure it hurts when it happens as abruptly as you describe. First-year infatuation probably plays a big part… could be also that they are now in the mode of socializing with other couples, and your friend thinks you’d feel uncomfortable as the only single person present (at least, I’ve been offered that excuse before).
C3’s suggestions to be patient and invite both of them out are good ones if you really don’t want to let your friend go. Best of luck to you.
Before we were married, my husband had a large group of single friends. After we had been married for a year or so, my husband started saying, “We need to find some more married friends.”
Notice that this was not me being a bitch and not wanting him to have single friends. I couldn’t care less whether his friends are married.
Nor did we have the idea that we were in some exclusive little club to which our single friends couldn’t belong.
And neither one of us thinks that our unmarried friends are losers – or if we do, it’s not based on their marital status.
All he meant was that it would be fun to find more coupled friends who we could do couple-stuff with. But of course spending time with new friends means spending less time with old friends, and if they were bitter about it they never bothered to tell me. When we moved out here, the majority of the people we’ve become friends with are either married or in serious relationships, and like us, none of them have kids. I think it just happens that you gravitate toward people who are going through the same stage of life as yourself.