Personally I want to know how the man date went. Now that I have a child my only excitement comes vicariously through this board…
Woohoo! We made it!
Yeah, how did the man-date go? Enquiring minds want to know. 
It went fine. We went to Fuddrucker’s for man food and Dunkin’ Donuts for man dessert. Made promises to do it again. I hadn’t been to Fuddrucker’s in 15 years or more. Had the elk burger. Good stuff.
** thumbs up **
Elk burger? I had an elk pot roast once - aside from being over-salted, it was excellent. Now I want an elk burger.
If I were the OPs friend and I read this, I’d drop him. He’s essentially insulting his guy friends’ families. I feel like this is a prelude to a bad romcom where the guy’s best friend is jealous he’s losing his mate to a girl…
Where did he say anything about either her “friends,” or their “families?”
I don’t think he was insulting them personally – he just seems to feel bad that he doesn’t have the same relationship with his friends that he used to. It’s not that he dislikes the wives or kids. It’s that he misses the way their relationship used to be.
That makes even less sense to me - if it is only taking up 2 1/2 hours of your time each evening, how can having children be all that time consuming?
So do things like going to the zoo, movies, swimming, etc. You need to prioritize being something other than a parent.
I also think it’s a bit scary that the cost of the occasional pizza figures that high on your financial radar. It’s starting to look more like you simply cannot afford to do anything outside the home & sans kids, rather than having kids means you can’t.
Assuming they are alive but not nearby, you could do like my parents did and send me from CA to OH to live with my grandparents for several weeks every summer. I always had a blast–I got to do different things out there, had different friends, and so on. Not once did I get the impression that my parents were “dumping me off”; instead, it was “special summer time”. Frankly, it was only much later that I realized that my parents probably quite liked getting a yearly break from childrearing.
My father lives in Brazil. My mother is dead. My wife’s parents live in another state, are in their 80’s and are in failing health. We don’t have an option to dump the kids on grandparents.
Yes, and if we don’t get the ‘occasional’ pizza (BTW, this is what I see is the slippery slope to having takeout everynight and never having a home cooked meal), we can have the trip to the zoo or movies, etc. and save for college and our retirement. It’s simply taking the effort to cook healthy meals for the kids (which is something you should do anyway, no?) and getting to save money.
We also have no debt, retirement savings and college savings. Because we live within our means. Part of that means more work for us. Yes, it is a choice. Yes, it is a choice that makes going out with your buds harder.
We also chose to have kids (a decision that you don’t understand anyway) and this is part of that choice. If we wanted to continue the freedoms we had before them, we wouldn’t have been so stupid as to have them.
So, why do you keep using the word “dump” when you go on and on about how spending time with your kids/family is the most important and wonderful thing for you? I’m really having a hard time with the disconnect here.
Hey, we use the word ‘inflict.’ No matter what the grandparents say, you feel like you are being bad parents and feel badly for putting someone else out. (And you buy into the media’s presentation that you should be able to do it all yourself.)
So, on some level, you feel like you are dumping them off.
This is my experience, Dio’s may differ.
I believe that this is a problem created by the relatively recent rise of the nuclear family. In extended family living, there are plenty of people to share the various household duties and there is always someone to watch the kids, whether grandparents, aunts, uncles, older cousins, etc.
It’s my experience too, but I think ultimately it’s better for everyone to bite the bullet and get out once in a while, specifically BECAUSE of how much of it is a media creation of implied responsibility.
Especially since my parents in particular are so exuberant it’s not possible for my brain to delude me into thinking that the kidlet is a burden on 'em.
Every Sunday evening my husband and his buddy get together. Sometimes they get some pizza and beer and just hang out, sometimes they see a guy movie, sometimes they shoot pool at his friend’s house. This costs around $10 a week.
Tuesdays for me is book club night. We gossip, eat brownies and share our love of books. This is more or less free (I buy the occasional brownie mix).
This has been happening for years and it doesn’t cut into our college savings, doesn’t make the kids eat poorly, and hasn’t begun any slippery slope of doom. The kids know that we love them and spend most of our time with them, but we have other interests as well. Oddly, they aren’t traumatized by this.
It’s all about balance. And being afraid of the dire consequences of getting an occasional pizza with friends (without the kids) just is NOT balanced.
This was about feeding my kids pizza (which I am loathe to do). They don’t find it as fun as spending the 20 bucks on just about anything else (they would rather have real food).
When I go out with my friends, I use my allowance to pay for the fun things we do.