The Vine: February 24, 2010
Hi Sars,
My husband and I have a close-knit group of friends, all couples, mostly, and they all are starting to have kids.It is not an exaggeration when I say all of them: it is quite literally 5 out of 5 couples, with some working on kid number 2, all within the span of less than 2 years.
My husband and I are newly married, quite happy to be childless for the foreseeable future, and we are more than happy to be involved in our friends and their children’s lives.
The problem comes with the “lives” part.Sars, I am having a very hard time adjusting to the new lives of my friends as they become parents.They have changed so much, and so fast, it is shocking.Conversations grind to a halt unless we are talking about “the baby” or are centered around how tired they are from raising “the baby.” At our wedding in October, most of them left early or in the case of one person, didn’t come at all, because they couldn’t leave the 6-month-old with the grandparents and didn’t want to bring the baby either (which would have been fine, too).
At Christmas, we visited with one set of parents and all we did for the entire visit was make noises at the baby and barely spoke to one another.All I could think was, is this what we’ve become? Contact between us has decreased, and any time we do spend together has become more of a chore.
I am beginning to harbor feelings of resentment, which in turn makes me feel incredibly selfish and silly with this whole situation. However, that’s where I am right now.My social life with my husband has become lonely and I am feeling isolated. I don’t know how to relate to these new people that have taken over the bodies of formerly interesting, intellectually stimulating people.
I know and am attempting to understand that their lives have changed dramatically since they became parents, and perhaps I will just have to adjust to this new paradigm, but there is a part of me that does ask why.Does this really have to happen to you once you have kids?If so, do I want to become that person?
More immediately, what do I do now? Do I seek out new friends? Do I wait it out, perhaps things will be more normal once the kids turn 2 or go to school (in 4 years!)? Do I just stop being a heartless whiner and understand that this is the way it is from now on and go with it?
Much appreciated in advance, Sars.
Baby-hater
Dear Hater,
Of course this doesn’t have to happen to you once you have kids. It does happen to some people; it doesn’t happen to everyone, or even to the majority, in my experience.
It may have happened to your group of friends because everyone except you is more or less on the same timing wavelength, childbearing-wise, and there isn’t as much in the way of a “let’s talk about Lost” corrective.
And that’s for you to do. You should rehearse doing it in an excited-to-talk-about-TV way, versus an excited-not-to-talk-about-the-baby way, but I think a lot of people feel the same way you do — that they don’t really want to discuss, or coo over, the baby for an entire evening, but they feel weird about changing the subject, or like if the parent doesn’t do it of his or her own volition, it makes the non-parents assholes for purposely changing the subject.
Give it a try. My feeling is that major life changes should receive a grace period of two or three months during which the person undergoing it is given a break on talking about it constantly — wedding planning, new baby, new house, job stress, breakups — but even during that grace period, it’s perfectly fine to want to talk about something else.It’s also perfectly fine to invite your friends out for grown-up time, and to make it gently clear that it is grown-up time: a dinner out, a play, an activity you all share that will require them to get babysitting.
And some of them just…won’t do that. Some of them, from now on, will always answer the question “How are you?” with “Well, Zach just started pre-K, and we’re doing pretty well with letters and spatial blah blah gifted fishcakes,” which is not how that person himself is doing, but is now who that person is, and you’ll have to accept that, and decide whether to move on. The wedding behavior is unfortunate, but you have to let that go and figure out whether, in the future, you want to keep spending time with these people — because friends take an interest in you, too. It doesn’t just go the one way, and if it always goes the one way, well, that’s that.
I’d also try to expand your social circle. Have a few dinner parties for acquaintances; do one of those plus-one parties where people have to bring a guest that none of the other guests has met. Take some classes or join a dining club. You don’t have to write your current friends off; there’s nothing wrong with staying home with the baby, or talking about the baby a lot. But there’s nothing wrong with not feeling that’s your scene, either, so gently try to get your friends to adjust a little bit back the other way, and try to adjust your own self to the fact that not all social circles stay closed indefinitely.
Dear Sars,
I’m wondering about the etiquette for inviting coworkers to your wedding. I’ve looked through the Vine here and here, but they don’t really address the question I have.
I work at a very small company where we’ve all worked together for at least 5 years. I like my coworkers as people. We socialize at work, going out to lunch for people’s birthdays and so on, but I am not friends with any of them outside of work.
One person I used to consider a friend. We’d hung out outside work a couple times and used to have a quite close “work spouse” relationship, but since he became VP there’s been a lot more professional distance between us; we don’t hang out any more and don’t interact the same way we used to.
Other things that may have bearing: I am considered very good at what I do and have never had a bad review or been disciplined in any way. The company in generally very free and generous about paid time off and telecommuting and I don’t take advantage of their generosity.
All my coworkers have been excited for and supportive of me for my wedding; I have politely chatted with some of them about planning when asked.
I do my best to minimize the amount of work time spent on wedding errands, only making phone calls at lunch, etc.
Prior to the engagement, my boss gave me a bonus and a raise when I told her my boyfriend and I were considering buying a house. That plan fell through once we became engaged (and when we discovered we couldn’t afford the house we were looking at) and that money is being put towards the wedding.
I’m also the youngest person at the company by 10 years and even though I am 30, I am constantly thought of as “the kid.”
They’ve all met my fiancé, they threw us an engagement luncheon and he is always invited to company parties, though I think he’s only come once.
My question is, am I obligated to invite my coworkers to my wedding? We are talking about a total of 10 people, including people’s long-term partners, some of whom I have never met. On the one hand, my salary, bonus, etc. are the majority of the funds being used to pay for the wedding and maybe that entitles them to be invited, or maybe you’re just supposed to invite your coworkers when you work somewhere like this. It is the polite thing to do and in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that many people/much money.
On the other hand, I would not normally see these people outside of work and at work, they drive me utterly bazoo. I often end up ranting to my fiancé about things they have done as coworkers to piss me off, and one woman’s personality utterly clashes with mine, even though she’s nice enough.They are also all assuming they are invited, which is horrifically rude in my opinion.
Not inviting them would afford me some budget to spend on other people I do love being included and/or having a better time. (My fiancé’s coworkers are not an issue, he’s only been at his job for a year and those who are invited were friends before they were coworkers.)
So? Will I be going through unnecessary hell by excluding them? Can I get away with telling them we’re sorry we couldn’t include them because it’s a small wedding, even though our guest list is over 100 people? Do I put them all at one table and try to forget they’re there?
It wouldn’t ruin the day to have them there, they’d bring presents and be polite, etc. I’d just rather not be reminded of the people that make me crazy on a daily basis at a job I don’t love to begin with, on what is supposed to be the happiest day of my life.
Bride Without A Clever Pseudonym
Dear Bride,
For starters, stop with the “happiest day of your life” thing. “One of the happiest days of your life,” yes, but don’t put more pressure on yourself — or think that that pressure means you won’t have to deal with invitation politics. It’s part of planning a wedding; accept that hassles like this come with the territory, breathe deeply, and address the problem without resentment that someone or something is ruining your special day, because it’s neither avoidable nor productive.
With that said, which is it: you “like your coworkers as people,” or they drive you “utterly bazoo”? The first half of your letter makes it out like, while you can tolerate them at work, you don’t feel close to them; according to the second half, they’re a blight on your daily life.
If you really don’t like the job to the point where you plan to leave the office within the next, say, six months, you can probably get away with not inviting any of them, I guess, but they threw you an engagement party. You have to have known where that was going to go. They feel a sense of…well, “ownership” is not the right word, and I agree that it’s presumptuous of them to expect invitations, but if they offered to throw an engagement party and you allowed it, well, you kind of let them think they had a stake in the relationship, and now those 10 chickens and their plus-ones have come home to roost.
Like I said, sometimes what makes Your Special Day special is that you did send invitations just to keep the peace. I’d just invite all your co-workers and hope, depending on what time of year the wedding is scheduled for, that they have other things to do and can’t come. This cuts both ways, of course, but late May is an excellent time for a wedding at which you’d like to manage the obligatories by double-booking them against two other weddings and a high-school graduation.
And if they all do come (and they won’t; you’ll get a few, probably), park them at one table, stop by that table on your rounds, thank them for coming, and move along. It’s your wedding; you barely have time to hang out with the people you do want there. Pull the trigger on inviting them and decide not to worry about it further.
Tags: etiquette friendships kids
@Baby hater- good on you for branching out. That will be a big help. My group of friends all got married and had babies (two or more) in about four years. I have to say while their side of the conversations were about the kids, they were all *very* good about asking me about my life and we’d end up talking more about my life because they found it more interesting (I really enjoy other people’s kids, so I would try to steer the conversation back that way, but they were burned out talking about the kiddos). I’m going to go send them ‘Thank you’ notes for being awesome friends.
When you all are conversing, is it just that they aren’t asking you about yourself, or is it just the big group getting together and falling into ‘baby talk’ that is the issue? We had one of our friends that *couldn’t* stop talking about her kid and it was actually annoying the other Moms even more than me. They were looking forward to grown-up conversations and she would keep messing that up. Finally, one of the others had a word with her privately and things improved drastically. I’d also try to tell funny stories about work when they were all at home with the bambinos for the first few months because they just didn’t have a ton to talk about other than the kids.
Also, having everyone bring their kids to one house and then everyone bringing a dish and having a potluck worked well on getting folks together. Of course, this was when the kids were about a year old and were pretty good at entertaining themselves. We’d all tag team on the kids- putting them in the living room and a couple of us talking in there and supervising while the kids played and then tag out with the others. Worked pretty well, actually, but my friends were good at those times *not* being all about the kids.
All in all, the dynamic is definitely going to change, and it is going to be something you have to adjust to- but that’d be the same thing if you’d have known them all as single people and then everyone got married (which happened in my group before the babies). Once you get used to the adjustment, it’ll bother you a lot less. I’ve since moved, but my friends all still hang out about once a month. The kids are now three-ish and play in the basements or living rooms together super nicely and the parents just glance in at them from time to time.
I actually think friends’ kid talk is kind of a TV-like entertainment anyway–or it could just be I have friends with particularly rambunctious kids and acute storytelling skills. As long as they’re willing to take their turn listening to my LifeTV stories as well, it doesn’t seem to matter that much that we’re not telling the same story.
man, now I feel like writing apology notes to our friends. (We’re the second couple in our group to have kids, and Couple #1 takes their kid everywhere, so I think I may have assumed, wrongly, that people just would sort of accept that would come with the territory.)
this is not exactly addressing Baby-Hater’s original point, but: breastfeeding does complicate the equation. Without going into graphic detail, if I were to skip my kid’s evening nurse-to-sleep on a regular basis, I risk plugged ducts (ow) which then raise the risk of mastitis (SUPER ow). I imagine it’ll be easier for us to leave her with a sitter once she’s weaned.
As a mom of two, I don’t mean to be Baby Hater’s friends, but I realize that I am sometimes. I work, but it’s from home when the kids sleep, so 99% of my waking hours are filled with kid-related drama. Especially if BH’s friends are working on their second in two years, it’s…intense. Mine are 2.5 and 1, and I can’t go anywhere alone because the baby used to cry until she almost vomited if anyone–even my husband–would hold her or try to interact with her or even make eye contact with her. When I talk to other people, they get a lot of baby news because it’s what I do 24/7, even if it’s not all I do. It’s not that I don’t watch TV or read or listen to the radio or have a job that’s mildly interesting–I do, but when I’m on the phone and the kids are getting squirrelly, I draw a blank on anything else. I love it when friends ask me about non-baby issues. I’ve answered “How are you?” with baby junk before, and I’d love it if someone said, “Yeah, they’re cute and all, but how are you, as an individual?” It’s easy to get consumed with kids when they’re young and start to lose yourself to parenthood; sometimes parents just need a reminder that they weren’t always parents.
@Baby-Hater My wife and I have gone through a similar thing with many of our buds, and it’s been hard (particularly because we want kids, but obviously, as two ladies, it’s a struggle and can take a lot longer). When a bunch of friends all have kids at the same time, which is what has happened to me, too, it can just feel relentless. I have tried all the tricks (starting new topics of discussion, trying to get them out without their kids), and my group of couples-with-kids friends just aren’t responding to that. So…
I’m 30, my wife is 31, and we’ve made a lot of new friends who are younger. Most of them are single but past the “go out all the time and drink” phase and are happy to do low-key things with us and discuss adult things. It’s been rejuvenating for us to escape the diaper crowd and hang out with our friends who are twenty-four and twenty-five.
@Baby-Hater: I agree with Sars’ advice of “join a club.” There are many, many groups on Craigslist that are for singles, couples, childfree, retired, etc.
There is also a group called “Childfree by Choice” that meets in several states. I have never gone to an outing, so I can’t completely vouch for what goes on, but it’s basically an outing club for people who are childfree and like to get together without the distractions of children.
@ Patricia: I am contemplating ditching one of my best friend’s because all she does is work. She bails out on me 4 out of 5 times we have plans, claiming “something came up at work.” It would be funny if it wasn’t so hurtful, but — if you want to keep your friends, you need to make time to nuture your friendships.
When I was a young parent with a child, most of my friends were other young parents with children, because honestly, young children are exhausting, and in those first few years leave little time for a social life. The friends you have in your life will often be in flux when you’re in different life stages; some friendships will evolve through that and some won’t. I often joke that I have a “culture gap” that spans several years in the early 90’s when I had a small child and was completely clueless as to current music, television, books, movies or just about anything that wasn’t kid related. I was dying for adult conversation, but I wasn’t sure I knew how to have it anymore. It’s perfectly acceptable to seek out new friendships while you deal with the fact that your friends with young children just aren’t going to be as available as they used to be for awhile.
wedding planning, house-buying, and most new jobs simply aren’t comparable
I didn’t mean those things aren’t as *important* — I meant they’re not comparable in terms of the mandatory physical number of hours spent doing them. That’s why I qualified with “most” new jobs, because unless you’re something like a medical resident, or an associate in a big law firm, or a stockbroker, or a programmer at a startup, you generally don’t work those kinds of hours for long periods of time. Pre-kids, I did the crazy work hours for a month or two at a time, and it’s pretty miserable even over that short a stretch. It doesn’t leave you with much else to talk about, especially if your job is a highly technical one. There’s a reason why people in those kinds of intense job situations tend to socialize mainly with others in the same line of work, because at least you can use work as conversation fodder.
I’m not trying to give you the “parenting is the hardest job” line. My brother’s a resident, and what he does is a lot more demanding than what I do most of the day. I may be typing one-handed with a baby on my lap, but I’m still dorking around on the Internet instead of saving people’s lives. However, parenting infants blocks off as much of your waking hours as those really hard jobs do — many more hours than the average person devotes to required things like work — and prevents you from doing outside leisure activities which require more than a few minutes of uninterrupted time. You can’t “save up” all those 10- or 15-minute chunks where nobody needs you, and trade them in for two hours of watching an intelligent movie with a complex plot, or a visit to a new yoga class. Instead, you do small things which require no major mental context-switching, but which nobody else cares about either. You’re busy all day long, give or take, but you can’t even tell anyone else what you accomplished, because who cares that you folded three loads of laundry — at least baby-talking is more interesting than that.
@ afurrica:
“It’s not the Tired Olympics, but having kids IS different. You can break an engagement, quit a job or sell a house.”
…but that’s not really the point. Just because a choice can be abandoned doesn’t mean that any difficulties that come with sticking with it are less worthy of patience or respect. And are you really saying that you, as a parent, deserve more understanding simply because you can’t get out of having kids?
To the original poster/letter-writer: the separate activities is a great idea. So is one-on-one time with each individual friend. I felt like I was losing touch with a recent-new-mom friend of mine, so I figured out that she walks her dog for about an hour every morning at 6am and now I join her once or twice a week. I ask about the kid, because I love that little guy dearly, and then I ask about *her*. Like many of the parents above have said, she seems more than happy to take a break from talking about baby stuff. I think being just the two of us makes it easier for us to steer the conversation away from kids and back to adults.
Firstly, Bride, is there any chance of a two-tier event?
We wanted to keep our reception to a manageable number, so invited colleagues, the wider circle of family and family friends, and those pals we just couldn’t fit into the reception venue to the ceremony (conveniently held in a church, which is a public venue so you can’t actually refuse anyone’s attendance) followed by afternoon tea. We cut the cake there and had plenty of bubbly and it was actually a lovely little event in itself. Then the smaller party went on to the reception proper.
I got married in New Zealand, which if this site is anything to go by is much more relaxed about weddings than in the US, but everyone totally understood the problem with numbers, seemed to enjoy themselves, and we got to share our day with lots of people.
As an aside, I have to disagree with the suggestion that you “let” your colleagues throw you an engagement party, so you are obligated to invite them. In my work-place experience the recipient of the going away/maternity leave/engagement party usually has no choice in the matter. Indeed, such functions usually seem like thinly veiled excuses for the department to have cake.
As for BabyHater, when you’re with your parent friends, really push for different conversation topics. One thing that annoyed me during my own pregnancy and beyond was how my interesting, childless friends would suddenly only talk to me about the baby. It’s totally two-sided: it may seem to some people that I talk about my baby a lot, but I feel like no one asks me anything other than baby-related questions and I’m treated by the world at large as a “mother.” Even in my part-time work at a university, initial small talk tends to revolve around my daughter. Lovely as she is, sometimes department gossip, or heaven forbid, research, is way more interesting. But then I’m probably really annoying now because I practically interrogate my friends about their work, when they’d rather not think about it – vicariously living their important “adult” lives!
Baby-Hater, welcome to my world! I’ve been married for aggges (got married just after I turned 24 and am rapidly approaching our 11th wedding anniversary), and virtually all of our friends have had kids, but we haven’t.
With the best will in the world, becoming parents fundamentally changes people. And it’s not that things won’t calm down a bit – once they’re clear of the hell that is baby-related sleepless nights, for example – but parents do gravitate towards other parents because they’re all in the same boat and it’s far easier than trying to help child-free couples understand their lives. Which is all ‘yay’ for them, but can suck when you’re the child-free couple left trying to figure out where all your friends have gone.
I do think you need to expand your social circle, pronto. There are plenty of people without kids in the world: find them. And maintain your relationships with your parent friends, but do so with the knowledge that NOTHING will be as important to them as their kids – you just have to accept it. They will change plans to meet up at the last minute, because of kid-related reasons. They will talk about their kids a fair bit (particularly if they’re stay-at-home parents, and if they’re not, they’ll talk about how hard it is to juggle work and parenting). They’re still the same great people they always were, though.
Bride: Just chiming in to say that yes, you must invite all of your coworkers, unless you are holding a very, very small wedding (as in, inviting all of them would double the size of your guest list). Also chiming in to say that their presence really, really, REALLY will not affect how you feel about your wedding day while it is occurring, unless they get spectacularly drunk and start a massive fight. Without even knowing you or any specific details about your wedding, I can tell you that you will be in a busy whirlwind on your wedding day, and will have vivid memories only of the specific people you interact with for more than a 15-second greeting. Whether or not certain people drive you crazy on a daily basis will be irrelevant. (I wouldn’t invite cruel people who actively wish you harm, but your coworkers don’t appear to fall into that category.) Take it from a recent bride. Invite ’em and go from there.
Jen S, I molecularly adore two of the things you said today, and one of them was the point about “totality of focus”, which seems to me to address a lot of the discussion and debate regarding priority/parenting. Right or wrong, it’s the immersion that makes the perspective, and that can be one-sided. (You’ll have to guess what the other phrase was I liked so much. *Hint hint*)
I’m often fascinated by people’s discussion of fairly well-defined circles of friends, because my relationships are definitely conducted on an individual basis. I have many friends who cross-pollinate, and there are always group-inclusive social occasions, to be sure. But the relationships themselves are always, for me, very much one-to-one affairs – and I have never had most of the problems I see people writing to Sars about, regarding tight-knit groups. It really fascinates me.
I think tight, unified group friendships like that must be amazing, but it’s hard to relate to the balances and imbalances, because my own gimbals are systematized to respond specifically rather than generally. Even in my family – even as a frequent negotiator *within* my family – my approach is entirely distinct and I don’t see my brother in relation to my mom, except where specifics necessitate otherwise. This may well be a neurosis on my part, but things like this – I see some advantages! Each friendship I can count is a thing unto itself. That they sometimes come together, that’s just awesome icing on the cake.
Heh. Maybe I should have said, “I don’t see my brother in TERMS of my mom” … ? (Shutting up now.)
@Stanley – I definitely think you have a point. I don’t think people should assume any invitation should mean bring the kids along (if there’s any question about what you’re doing). And I think(hope) we do a pretty good job of either extending the invitation – hey, we’re hitting up the ballpark on saturday w/ the boy, care to join us? – or receiving an invite – dinner? sounds great, let me find a sitter -that hopefully is what everyone had in mind. I will say that the activities we do w/ the boy and friends is typically limited to 3 or 4 couples b/c as you said, not everybody likes spending time w/ kids (related or not). I do hope we’re getting it somewhat right w/ our friends. Thanks for your reply, it’s good to reevaluate a situation and see it from a different perspective!
@Waverly- I don’t think you’re out of bounds with that at all, but please, please, talk to your friend first (if you haven’t already). I don’t really blame my friends for being annoyed that I wasn’t around, but they never talked to me. I just resurfaced one day, sent around a, “Hey guys, I can finally breathe, can we get together?” email, and one of them called me to scream at me in response. I had no idea they were upset at me.
I also very rarely made plans that I had to cancel. I find that more irritating, myself. Usually I just declined the invitations they made.
And I appreciate that friendships need to be nurtured, but friends also cut people some slack. It was a new job for me, and it was about three months when I was just buried and trying to figure out how to do my job and not be underwater. Once I recovered from their complete blindside, I really felt- still feel- like maybe they could have been a little more understanding.
ust because a choice can be abandoned doesn’t mean that any difficulties that come with sticking with it are less worthy of patience or respect. And are you really saying that you, as a parent, deserve more understanding simply because you can’t get out of having kids?
Again, the difference with parenting is that once you make the single choice to have kids, you are REQUIRED to put in a lot of hours over the first year or so. All the other activities we’re talking about involve an initial decision to do the thing, and then a whole series of subsequent choices about how to conduct it and allocate time to it. The actual basic requirements of wedding-planning or house-buying take up relatively little time in comparison to parenting or other long-hour jobs.
Sure, you can spend every hour of your free time poring over bridal magazines or MLS listings, but that’s a *choice* about how to spend your leisure time. You can have a beautiful wedding, or buy a fantastic house, without spending more than a few hours a week on it, except for some crunch time right at the end. More importantly, you can generally opt out of or reschedule almost any given piece of it. If your friends are feeling neglected, you can make the decision to spend an afternoon with them instead of driving around neighborhoods looking at houses, and there will be no external negative consequences. You do have to spend some afternoons looking at houses, and have less overall time available, but you still have a lot of freedom to prioritize.
Even with a relatively intensive job, you can usually decide to leave early on a given evening, or take a given weekend afternoon off. With a work situation where your physical presence is required for 90 hours or more a week, though, you don’t have those kinds of choices.
Parenting’s a little easier than lawyering or doctoring or consulting, because at least you can get out and do a few things with the baby in tow, but you’re still very limited by its schedule and its presence. This is actually harder with older babies who are past the naps-in-the-infant-carrier stage — I lunched with friends when my twins were very small, but with three kids under three, I could barely make it through thirty minutes at the grocery store, let alone an hour of chitchat at Starbucks.
So yes, I do think parents of young children deserve more temporary understanding on the specific dimension of leisure activities and interests which aren’t baby-compatible (and people with little direct experience often don’t understand what is and isn’t baby-compatible). It’s not like that forever, but the entire first year is pretty demanding in a way that most professions and leisure activities simply aren’t.
Re: the Bride discussion. Um. So, everyone in the world necessarily has weddings where 10 people plus dates wouldn’t have an effect? Really?? My husband and I had a wedding with forty guests, so twenty more people would not only have significantly added to the bill, but also would have made a lagre percentage of the guests from Bride’s work instead of friends and family, which is weird. I don’t understand the sense of entitlement from the engagementparty, either: so, by throwing you a party, what they’re doing is paying their way to your wedding, instead of just, you know, celebrating your engagment? Yeah, I’d love to hear what Miss Manners has to say about that. Further, there is an enormous distance and amount of variables between “just invite them because society expects you to” and “I’m a mean nasty Bride and it’s All About Me” — and one of those is that the bride and groom and their families get to choose whom they want to celebrate with them, to make it a pleasant event, not a social chore. Invite the people with whom you want to spend your wedding day. If that doesn’t incude coworkers, then so be it. Surely, if they are adults, then even if feelings are hurt they can just get the hell over it. There is no reason you should have to feel obliged to twist yourself in knots of apology; just as there is nothing ungracious in saying, “We’re having a small wedding.” I think the lesson here is to be prepared: somebody somewhere will decide that you’re doing something unbelievably wrong and will decide they have to be hurt about it. Rise above, and don’t overthink. Keep the point of the event in mind: how fantastic it will be to start a married life with Groom and how you’re celebrating that with people you care about. End of crap.
I really appreciate the different perspectives that everyone has offered. I also like the parents chiming in to say yep, we do it, and we don’t want to do it all the time, but there you go and try to engage us on a personal, individual level more. It think some of the problem is also coming from how I relate to the parents now, in addition to how they have changed as people. They are parents, for better or worse, and I now see them as such, but I need to see them as indivduals too.
@Jacq: EXACTLY! It is the transition to these different dynamics and personalities I am having a hard time with.
I think it’s also worth pointing out that not all kids are equal in their demands on parents’ time and energy. I think I’ve done pretty well so far at not being That Parent, but then, I have a supernaturally healthy and easygoing baby who goes to bed at 7:30. If you’re dealing with things like colic, behavioural problems, or (god forbid) health problems in your kids, it gets to be a lot more all-consuming. And even if everything turns out fine, an early scare or trial-by-fire can really affect your priorities and the way you get used to structuring your time.
@Cora: I think that the problem here is that Bride did not specify how large her wedding will be. Yes, if it were 40 people coming then she could get away with not inviting co-workers. But if its 140, then yeah, she sort of has to. I had a wedding of 95 people, and one of my cousins I didn’t even see until just before he left for the night, it was that crazy of a day.
I view engagement parties like bridal showers: everyone that gets invited to the shower/party gets invited to the wedding. If you don’t, you are kind of saying, “you’re good enough to trow me a party and give me gifts, but not good enough to come to the main event for whitch this party was held in honour of.” Having just come out of wedding-planning mode, this is established wedding etiquette. The caveat of it being a family-only or suuuper small wedding.
No, @Cora, nobody was assuming that. The original letter-writer SAID it wouldn’t hurt their budget much or cause their guest list to double. She stated that she is having a 100+ guest wedding, in which case I think FIVE coworkers who are clearly excited and invested in the day–“rightly” or not–should probably be invited. People can–again, rightly or not–hold some serious grudges about not being invited to weddings, and my thought is that, in a case like this, it’s so much easier to just invite them than to risk or deal with any lingering social awkwardness in your place of business.
Obviously if you’re having a 40 person wedding, it’s perfectly acceptable (not to mention honest) to say it’s a small affair and thank you very much for the engagement party but family and close friends only at the wedding. But if it’s no skin off your back to invite them, and they just aren’t your bestest friends, well, I think it’s worth pointing out that she really won’t notice them on the day itself and it’s a case of path of least resistance.
Personally, I got around this problem by having a destination wedding.
@Cora – Bride stated her guest list is over 100. 10 coworkers and their SOs will probably work out to no more than 10 additional guests who actually show, given a reasonable guess of a 50% melt. It won’t be that big of a deal.
@EmmaB – for what it’s worth, I completely understand what you’re saying. I’ve planned a wedding and bought a house, and while those were stressful, consuming processes, I know that the demands they placed on my time/energy were nothing like the demands of a baby. I’m an attorney now, working rather crazy hours…and I still don’t think it’s on par with taking care of an infant. It’s not that I feel my wedding, my house, my job are less important or less meaningful than a baby would be, I just recognize that the toll they took on my life and my ability to socialize with my friends is markedly different.
@Waverly – as someone who has to cancel plans relatively regularly because of work, can I plead with you to cut your friend a little slack? Obviously, I can’t speak for your friend, but I can tell you that I never break plans because I’d *rather* work. I break plans when I don’t have a choice. If there’s a way I can make it all happen, I do, and sometimes that’s just not in the cards. It sucks, really, but this is the job I have. Dinners with friends, baby showers, trips to Napa…all more interesting than staying at work for the 10th weekend in a row, slogging through documents. I’m sorry your friend is bailing on you all the time, but I urge you to consider giving her a break if at all possible. Who knows, maybe she’s being horribly rude and hurtful, but maybe she’s just swamped.
I guess things have changed, because my parents never seemed to find it a logistical nightmare to hire a babysitter for an evening. Though I don’t think it’s changing times, because my sisters also do not seem to find setting up babysitting to be an arduous task.
@Stanley, it can be an arduous task when you’re trying to set up FREE babysitting with a relative or friend. Babysitters have gotten freaking expensive–you’re talking at least $10/hr for two kids, and that’s for an evening when they’re going to be asleep for the bulk of the time. So for two movie tickets, dinner at a restaurant without a drive-through, and sitter services, an evening out for two parents is likely to be at least $100. For daytime babysitting when the kids are awake, it’s $15/hr or more.
This is why I so appreciate my BFF, who realized that sometimes going out was going to be difficult, and often settled for renting a movie at our house many evenings, especially when the kids were little.
@Diane… ummm… “fucking wasted brutality exhaustion?” I kinda mashed that together from Lamott’s descriptions of so adoring her son it was like she was transformed while simultaneously asking him if he wanted her to go get the stick with the nails, or fantasizing about leaving him on the lawn at night and bringing him in in the morning (she’s not a sociopath, just really honest about how wearing it is to be on call to this little Need Machine 24/7).
Did I get it? Do I get a puppy? :)
@ Baby-Hater: “I view engagement parties like bridal showers: everyone that gets invited to the shower/party gets invited to the wedding. If you don’t, you are kind of saying, “you’re good enough to trow me a party and give me gifts, but not good enough to come to the main event for whitch this party was held in honour of.”
Really? Maybe I’m coming from a different cultural context, but every engagement party I’ve been to has been significantly larger than the wedding that followed, simply because it’s significantly less expensive to throw an engagement party than a wedding. And every guest knows it.
Also, I’ve been invited to hen’s nights (we don’t really do bridal showers in NZ) of girls who cannot invite me to the wedding itself. In fact, this was their way of involving me in their celebrations even though they couldn’t fit me onto the reception guest list. If you have a big family, even a 120-person guest list can quickly exclude some of your friends.
My point with Bride is that her co-workers threw her an engagement party, presumably at work, and maybe (no one has offerred this suggestion as yet), it was their way of being involved in her life, but on a work level. It may have came with no expectation of an actual wedding invite, and that’s always worth asking.
“But then I’m probably really annoying now because I practically interrogate my friends about their work, when they’d rather not think about it – vicariously living their important “adult” lives!”
There’s just no winning for anyone, I think, because I have to say I really hate talking about my job and get annoyed when anyone asks lots of questions about it. I recognize this response is effed up – I mean, they’re curious! They want to show interest in my life! It’s not their fault I think talking about my job is boring! My sisters often go on and on about my job and life, and it totally is about vicarious living. On the flip side, I often ask detailed questions about dance recital schedules, the many faults of various nursery school teachers, who got what role in the Christmas play, etc., etc., and that is also totally vicarious living.
In sum, I apparently don’t like talking about anything, or else like talking only about things in order to live vicariously. I am anti-social.
@KKP: you sound really thoughtful about the issue and I’m sure that makes all the difference with your friends. I honestly don’t mind having kids involved in most things; I just like the courtesy of the notice/request (and the understanding if no-kids is the deal that time).
Don’t get me started on the related topic of being a single person with all coupled friends, though. The desire of some couples to want to hang out only with other couples mystifies me. But that’s a whole other bucket of worms.
It’s cool seeing Baby-Hater getting good ideas already. I’m in a similar situation (my husband and I are the only childless ones of our married friends), and it gets easier after the early-baby years. Also, queenjawa has a really good point: if you ask one of your friends how she’s doing and she responds by talking about the baby, respond by saying, “I’d really like to hear about how YOU’re doing. Are you sleeping? Getting time for yourself?” etc. I read an interesting study (here in Canada) that showed that there was a significant drop-off in cases of Post-Partum Depression (not eliminating all of the cases, of course, but a significant decrease) when visiting health nurses got the new mom to talk about herself and not just the baby in every visit.
And a note for the Bride: I noticed that you said that you don’t consider your wedding to be small (more than 100 guests) and that inviting your co-workers wouldn’t be a financial problem. First of all, if you decide not to invite them, don’t tell them that it’s a numbers issue, because you don’t seem to believe that to be true. One of them will end up seeing wedding pictures (it’s inevitable these days, with Facebook and everything) and then it’ll be awkward. I had a sizable wedding and, five years later, I hardly remember every individual who was at the wedding. On the other hand, I clearly remember each person I forgot to invite/decided not to invite, because that omission changed things between them and me.
@NZErin
Yes, there may be some cultural differences going on here. In your earlier letter you suggested having two parties, which here wouldn’t fly. I would not accept that kind of invitation- it suggests that you are good enough to show up and give presents, but not good enough to go to the really fun, A-list party.
@Bride, Miss Manners is always advising people to say “Oh it’s just a small wedding,” even if your guest list is over 600, on the grounds that “small” is relative and is the modest/polite way for a host to describe any party. I say don’t invite them unless you want them there.
@NZErin – I agree…it sounds like these coworkers threw Bride an engagement party at work; she didn’t have a bridesmaid invite them to a shower, expect gifts, and then not invite them to the wedding.
To all of those saying that, since they were involved in s pre-wedding activity they must be invited to the wedding: How – and I’m asking this with all sincerity – is someone supposed to gracefully decline an engagement party thrown in her honor? Especially if she is unaware the coworkers, or whatever other group, were planning to do so?
I’m not saying that in this instance, it might not be easier to just invite them. However, it seems unreasonable to expect her to do so for the party reason alone. As I have recently found the hard way, 100 people isn’t actually that big of a wedding, and 50-80 of those people could easily be family. Also, even if *only* 10 extra people go…that can easily add $1000 to the bill.
@ LDA: Expect presents? I don’t think you should expect presents whatever sort of wedding you have. But would you really feel put out if a friend or colleague told you that they’re having problems with wedding numbers, but would love it if you came along to the ceremony? Going to weddings is fun – often more fun than sitting at a table of people you hardly know and listening to speeches!
We’re not talking about bestest friends here, we’re talking colleagues and those friends who are often left off the guest list.
Oh yeah, in the UK and in NZ too, it can also work the other way round – I’ve been to several post-reception dances of friends and colleagues. Often no formal invite, just a “come along sometime after dinner and have a dance.”
[i]I guess things have changed, because my parents never seemed to find it a logistical nightmare to hire a babysitter for an evening. Though I don’t think it’s changing times, because my sisters also do not seem to find setting up babysitting to be an arduous task.[/i]
Your sisters are very lucky! I have a small circle of “senior in high school”/college age girls and once they get interested in boys, driving around in cars and going to parties it is harder and harder to schedule a sitter. I am pretty picky about who I allow to sit my kids and am lucky to have parents who are almost always available….but when they aren’t it is tough to find a sitter.
To BH: Please be patient. Emma B said way better than I can but I swear, we are just Parent-zombies right now and eventually things will get better.
I totally thought the Bride answered her own question in the middle there: “It is the polite thing to do and in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that many people/much money.”
Conversations like this make me wonder if my mom was an annoying mom because I remember going everywhere with her. I was an only child and my parents had me later-ish than some of their friends and sometimes I was the only little kid places. However, I was good at playing by myself so I also remember playing in various living rooms and back bedrooms while the grownups chatted. I’m certain, of course, there were bad days when I was Annoying Child. And I don’t remember farther back when I was perhaps Wailing Baby.
I do have to say the +kids transition time is tough. I always remind myself that my close friends made it through the college transition (and assorted school-ish things), the new jobs, the new significant others, the new permanent others, the new house/other new jobs. This is another big new thing. Things might be rocky, but we can do it.
I believe that good friendships, although they do normally need tending, can also be dormant for awhile and revive. Or I hope so because this last year has been generally a bust for me for entirely non-baby reasons.
I never dealt with friends who became annoying after they had kids. Unfortunately, this was because they mostly hung out with other parents after they had kids. I get why it happens, but I wish it were otherwise.
Don’t get me started on the related topic of being a single person with all coupled friends, though. The desire of some couples to want to hang out only with other couples mystifies me. But that’s a whole other bucket of worms.
Seconding this so hard I might break my keyboard.
But about babies – babies! Oh, I love ’em. I had a great group of friends (mixed singles and doubles) who started with the procreating within a couple of years of each other. Something that I noticed was that the new parents could almost always make an appearance at mid-day weekend stuff. Lunch dates, afternoon gatherings, etc – things that did not require a disruption in their child’s precarious night-time sleep.
So maybe try for fewer evening gatherings?
The desire of some couples to want to hang out only with other couples mystifies me.
I don’t find this that mystifying. Two pairs is often easier, socially/conversationally, than three, particularly if the third is closer friends with — or really only friends with — one half of the couple. It depends on the situation, but sometimes, if I’m the third, I feel obligated to stick to topics that appeal to the spouse I don’t know as well, and if there’s a fourth along, I don’t need to do that as much. This is true of non-coupled situations too.
From the couple perspective, it’s weird (to me) to invite a friend to hang out with both of you, and then not invite his/her SO, even if it’s pro forma. And your mate always has a couple of friends you could do without, so diluting the effect with their spouses is sometimes key. One ex of mine’s best friend was really not my jam, but her spouse was cool, so in that case, hanging as a foursome was a lifesaver.
Some couples think they have to get all cutesy with the even-numbered dinner parties or whatever the hell, but it’s not conscious discrimination most of the time. The couples who MUST do everything together is what I don’t get. Everyone isn’t always invited to the break-up post-mortem talk, people, so if I only met your spouse at y’all’s wedding, maybe s/he stays home for that.
I have to admit I have what seems to be an unusual response when I see “should I invite so-and-so to my wedding?” questions. (I’m an advice column junkie and see similar questions a lot.)
Are all these colleagues, high school buddies, distant relatives, casual acquaintances, etc., really just dying to set aside a big chunk of weekend to put on uncomfortable dressy clothes to go see a chick in a white dress exchange a few words with a dude in a suit, and to then mingle with strangers and eat food they wouldn’t order in a restaurant?
The last wedding I attended was ten years ago. I had a revelation that weddings bore me senseless, no matter how much I care about the participants. I send my regrets to a lot of weddings. I’ve been invited to many weddings of people I care about; I’ve also not been invited to many weddings of people I care about. I’ve not found that my relationships with these people were noticeably affected by my not coming to their weddings when invited, or by their not inviting me to their weddings in the first place.
In my world, getting or not getting an invite is not a big deal. Surely that must be true of some others, too?
Oh, @Clover, you are so right. My husband and I have just received an invite to a wedding of some friends of his who I’ve met precisely once. It’s on a Friday (for Pete’s sake) and several hours’ drive from us, so if I go I have to use a precious day of paid leave. I’ve told my husband I don’t want to go but I don’t mind if he does, but wow do I feel selfish about it. I don’t think I’ve ever truly enjoyed a wedding, apart from one superlative Jewish one I went to once, and bits of my own. There’s just so much hanging around, everyone’s stressed about saying or doing the wrong thing, you get a small amount of food at a weird time of day and like you say, uncomfortable clothes.
I also wanted to say to ‘Baby hater’ (something I have in fact been called myself, hurtfully, as I do like children, I just don’t have any and not through choice) that I think her feelings are totally normal. In fact she already hit the nail on the head with her advice to herself in the final paragraph of her letter.
It’s all about branching out a bit. Having friends of different ages is often really fun (although the older ones can go on about their grandchildren a lot!) Someone who is a real friend will still be a friend once they’ve emerged from the haze of nappies, screaming and sleeplessness. If you’re lucky their kids might be fun to be around too. In the meantime, grin and bear it and thank goodness for your younger/older/single/gay friends.
@ Bride: I have to admit I’m feeling a little odd about the bonus, which came about along with the raise when you said you were considering buying a house. Not that I’m suggesting you return it but is the done thing to redirect it to something else if your stated intent doesn’t wind up happening? Does the boss know? Am I being weird about this? I fear so, particularly as I don’t feel odd about the raise.
I meant to say this when I first read the thread and never got around to it.
@dk
Just because a choice can be abandoned doesn’t mean that any difficulties that come with sticking with it are less worthy of patience or respect.
Yes. Thank you. Slow clap.
I feel her pain of being the only one in the old group without kids and while happy about that choice, can’t stand the changes the friends have gone through. That is life my dear and you must get a new network of childless friends started. this will give you more options to spend free time on adult nights out instead of doing nothing but cooing at baby. I have done that for the love of a friend who lives in another state and won’t make the trip to see them again anytime soon because of it. While it was sweet to see my friend totally enamored with the new babe, being left on the sofa not spoken to because there was eyes only for baby and no adult talk made me realize that this friendship will be best kept in cyber space for now and save myself the 2 hour trip to visit – as much as i miss my friend, they aren’t friends anymore, they are parents.