Unfortunately, we aren't good friends with any of our kids' friends' parents at the moment, which is one easy way to cultivate meaningful friendships. (Also, having friends IN your town helps... sighhhh. Sob!) Back when that was true for us, we had a lot more social activity organized around kid soccer games and other such events - it's a lot easier to do things like meet up for lunch or invite people to come over for a cookout when you're already seeing them for some reason and there are low expectations about being dressed up, prepared, and so on. Now if I want to hang out with people, I need to either set up a lunch (which sometimes has that "professional networking" feel that makes further connection not automatic), or block off a whole night where we can have people over and the house is all readied and kids accounted for and... just a lot of action to make all that happen. We end up investing that time in family events instead.
We have tried to institute some things like "people over for drinks" or "pizza/game night" to get a more regular stream of people in the house hanging out. It is hard to get over a hump of "we are work friends" to "we are actual friends", and while work friends can disrupt your loneliness, they also aren't people with whom you can bond in a greater sense that might make you less lonely.
Social media really sucks because it does a great job of filling the cracks and crevices - but your social life cannot resolve a deeper desire for friends when it's happening mostly while you wait at doctors' offices and for your kid to get out of soccer practice, with people you probably have no hope of seeing in person anytime soon. At some point you need time spent with people. We want surplus dollars so we trade having a social life for work that brings in surplus dollars, frankly. That's the plan because our world is stressful. There's always a huge What-If we lose health insurance, and how do we pay for college. So work more, tweet with your friends, never see them... it sucks.Statistics: Posted by Phoebe — Fri Oct 13, 2017 11:04 am
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