Want to be Friends? Friendships beyond the Playdate

I have suddenly found myself in a new stage of my life where I suddenly don’t quite fit in. When my children were younger, I would find anyone, anywhere to have a playdate with. I always felt like it was the perfect mom pick-up line (“Hey baby, want to meet at the park… with our kids?”). I felt all of my friends were created from play dates and playgroups and other moms who needed to get out of the house, just like me. But now that my boys are grown, suddenly too big and too cool for playgrounds, splash pads, and fast food play places, I am suddenly without the excuse to get together with friends. My “hey, do you want to grab tea, just us” has seemed to be a thin invitation that has quickly been ignored and inconvenient for the women I once called friends for a variety of reasons. For some, they still have little ones, and since I don’t, I am in a new stage of my life where I want to have adult play dates without rabid children running around us, while they’re still stuck in child play date mode. For others, maybe we weren’t actually real friends in the first place; maybe we only met together because of our children.

It’s hard when your kids make their own friends and suddenly don’t want to hang out with your friends’ kids too. The children they grew up with through constant play dates have been forgotten (“Who is Jack? I don’t remember him”) when I thought they’d be friends forever. This is mostly because they don’t go to school with them and have been able to make their own friends with the classmates they see every day. It always surprises me how poor my kids’ memory is when it comes to people they have met. But it also comes from the fact that they are growing up and are able to choose their own friends, based on their own personalities, own likes and own hobbies. They used to be forced to play with the other kids at play dates even when they didn’t particularly like them (“He always breaks my LEGO towers, mom”). While my kids have been able to maintain a few friendships with some of my friends’ kids, when it comes to a birthday party invitation list, each year, that list of my friends’ kids gets smaller and smaller, giving me less and less opportunities to see my friends too.

I had children young and it seems as if most of my best friends from grade school and college are also just now starting to have babies. I love that some have turned to me for wisdom and guidance as an “old mom,” but I have found that I don’t quite fit in with them either. They’re still in the “if I get 4 straight hours of sleep before a feeding, it’s the best night of sleep of my life” stage when I’m in the “I can sleep until 10am on Saturday mornings while my kids can make their own breakfasts and entertain themselves” stage. While don’t get me wrong, I can’t have any more kids and definitely don’t want anymore, but I just wish for one time in my entire life, I could finally fit in somewhere.

So, how can I shift from mom friends to adult friends? If there happens to be anyone out there reading this who loves to hike, backpack, scrapbook, and watch movies WITHOUT children, let me know. Maybe we could start an adult playdate group. Or perhaps I have to harness the same courageous energy that I had back when I was eight years old, in my third new school in 14 months, and just get the courage, walk up to a complete stranger, and ask “will you be my new friend? I’m pretty cool.” But ask anyone: making friends is hard. But, just like my kids who have been making their own friends over the years, it just takes time.