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Wow! I don't think I could have so ellequently stated all the reasons that I DO NOT want to ever get married and have kids!!
The grass isn't greener on the other side-----------its BROWNER!
Pshaw. You misunderstand. I'm not complaining. What's more, I live a much richer life for being married and having a family. For you haven't learned the Number One lesson in life: All that is really valuable in life requires work, or else everyone would have it.
In that sense, nothing is more pathetic than some guy who chooses to live life entirely for himself. Almost without exception, he becomes a sad and one-dimensional person, and will live in an impoverished way to the end of his days.
People who are married are building a life together. They therefore have less time to be social in the same way that a single person is social. So as others mentioned, they aren't less social, just different social.
I don't think so. It's still very healthy to have friends and do actives that extend beyond your immediate family. As for couples being together 24/7 from experience it's sometimes good to get away sometimes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tjasse
I do think there is something about american culture where married people basically become antisocial.
There's very much a cultural idea that when you get married "everything changes" and you have to stop doing everything you once did, get new married friends, etc. Since it's hard to meet new friends this seems to end up with people having no friends. I know my married friends with kids seem to have no friends "in real life" at all. Their whole 'social life' is Facebook status updates.
My sister moved to regional Australia and it the attitude is very different there. People are very "matey" and are always just popping in and hanging out with each other. To her, it was overwhelming at first but I think she prefers the larger and more diverse social group. Her married friends back here in america are all cloistered off, never seeing too many other people than their husband and kids. She just came to the states and visited some old friends. One of her friends said it was the first time she has done anything with someone other than her husband and kids in 8 years!
^^^Great points. Mr. Bailey and I have been married for a long time and throughout our marriage
we enjoyed a get-together with friends, whether they were married or not. When we had children
our time was devoted to them plus we also had jobs, so having time was a factor. After all, humans
are social beings and getting together to take a break from the daily tasks, routines and responsibilities
is healthy thing to do. In a way, it is a little escape/vacation.
Last edited by baileyvpotter; 04-14-2015 at 08:35 AM..
Reason: edit
The thing I have found that radically changes friendships is not marriage, but having children. That creates such a massive change in priorities and frankly loss of free time that it seems inevitable that socializing with people without children decreases drastically. For people with kids, their social life is wrapped up in their kids - school, soccer games, play dates. That's not to say I do not maintain friendships with my friends who have kids, but it is more of a "we keep up online and meet for dinner once a year" than an active social relationship. The friendship is still strong, it's just not as social.
It's so nice to see a single person who "gets it." Unless and until they have kids themselves, most people -- myself included, before I had mine -- really don't quite have a grasp of just how much TIME it takes to be a parent. Those cute little attention hogs will completely reorient your priorities and the ways in which you allocate your time. Add to that, newborns and infants and toddlers will wear you out. All the jokes about sleep-deprived parents stumbling through life like zombies aren't really funny when you're in the thick of it. In a state like that, if a little bit of extra time happens to fall into your lap, you're not going to want to spend it with your old drinking buddies; you're going to want to spend it in bed!
Status:
"Just livin' day by day"
(set 25 days ago)
Location: USA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bus man
It's so nice to see a single person who "gets it." Unless and until they have kids themselves, most people -- myself included, before I had mine -- really don't quite have a grasp of just how much TIME it takes to be a parent. Those cute little attention hogs will completely reorient your priorities and the ways in which you allocate your time. Add to that, newborns and infants and toddlers will wear you out. All the jokes about sleep-deprived parents stumbling through life like zombies aren't really funny when you're in the thick of it. In a state like that, if a little bit of extra time happens to fall into your lap, you're not going to want to spend it with your old drinking buddies; you're going to want to spend it in bed!
I've known some parents who were still into the "party scene" when their babies were born. I have one pregnant "friend" on FB who has mentioned on her status about "can't wait to have a drink when the baby is born"
I think it all depends on the people. My ex had a large group of friends that were pretty nice and there were some that we'd meet as a couple of couples, but there were also a group that was a clique and those women judged everyone and I got to the point that I didn't want to be around that type of people. We continued with the other couples and yes, we had probably at least 4 single males that we hung out with. We pretty much socialized regularly until we had our first kid and then we hung out with friends that had kids, but that did go downhill the older the kids got.
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