Where I’m Stuck: Can Singles Be Friends with Married Couples and Families?

(Last week I missed a day of posts due to server issues so I’m delivering those via a couple rare Saturday posts.)

Final Week with Shasta Nelson

Alas, this is the final week with Queen of Friendship, Shasta Nelson (pictured below) ,who is answering the last of four “Where I’m Stuck” questions submitted by blog readers. Follow her long and she will convince you it’s possible to grow into better versions of friendship than those that might arise by default.

Shasta is the C.E.O. of GirlFriendCircles, a Huffington Post blogger, and author of the book Friendships Don’t Just Happen.

Here’s this week’s question: I feel like I’m always late to the party, meaning I’m late to every new phase of life. My friends all got married before me. I’m single. Now they’re all having kids. Do I have to find new friends who share my stage in life just so I won’t always feel like an awkward fifth or seventh wheel?

And here’s what Shasta had to say about it:

Great question! The answer is yes and no.  :)  Yes, you are always invited to make some new friends who understand your current life stage– it makes sense that we want some single friends when we’re single or other mom friends when we have kids. But, no, we don’t need to end relationships with our long-term friends just because we’re going through different stages.  It’s never easy being the last to get married, nor is it any easier to be the first to go through a divorce, but’s it’s completely unrealistic to think we’ll all go through life at the same pace and on the same path so we want to learn how to love each other regardless.

In my 5 Circles of Connectedness diagram I show that our different friends can serve different purposes.  It’s important for us to remember that while we may want to make new single friends to go out with in the evenings (Common Friends), that’s not to say that they will have the history and intimacy with us that our Committed Friends will have, even if they have 3 kids already.  What’s more important to long-term and meaningful friendships than having our life stage in common, is remembering all the other things we have in common whether it be memories, values, world views, shared activities, opinions, etc.  Research shows that having 2-3 “smaller” similarities is more bonding than having one “big” commonality like motherhood.  We can create bonds with far more different people than we think we can so just because she has kids and you don’t doesn’t mean there can’t still be a ton of meaningful love shared between the two of you.  But neither does it mean that she shouldn’t want to make some mom-friends and you may want to find some single-friends.  The more important thing is to know what each friendship can do for us and appreciate them for the different roles they play in our lives.

I talk on the phone every week to a girlfriend of mine who a stay-at-home mom to three kids, and even though I have no kids of my own, there are so many common feelings in our lives.  We both know stress, the feeling of not doing enough, the fear of failure, and the joys of unexpected moments– whether the content of those feelings is kids, a date, or a business doesn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that we’re both able to validate the feelings of the other person.

Want to read the rest of Shasta’s insights? Check out the rest of this series here. Or check into Shasta’s regular writings here at her blog.