Friend or foe?

 

Recently, I've asked a wise lady and my role model about how to maintain friendships with girlfriends who are mothers.

When you are childless and all of your close friends are mothers, and your siblings are parents, too. You sincerely love them, and you're happy for them from the bottom of your heart. But you have a battle going inside of you: you love to hear about their children, since they are such a great part of their lives, but at the same time, it's often hard for you. You have a lot in common that you can talk about, but you feel that if your friends are not allowed to talk about their kids, so as not to hurt you, your communication is not as rich, profound and sincere as it used to be.

Here's what she said:

"Intimacy and honesty are the same thing".

When you start feeling it hard to be honest with your friends, you start loosing intimacy. So, gradually you might begin to "ghost" such friendship: stop answering the calls, avoid meetings, and in general, be less involved in that relationship.

The best thing to do first is to get support of other childless women to fill the void. If you feel that your friends do not completely understand your pain or expect you should be over it, don't look for support where non is available. It doesn't mean they don't love you, though.

If there's a really close connection within the friendship, you can share these feelings with your friends. At the same time, you should try and accept that motherhood can be an all-consuming role for some women. Therefore, "friendships can be maintained if mothers don't collapse their identity into motherhood", she said. And even if some mothers are obsessed with motherhood those friendships can come back after some time.

This gives hope.

Thank you Jody 💜