Going out with the gals

[limewave]

I've just been skimming this thread and I find it interesting. I was thinking about this on my drive to work this AM.

I used to have a fun group of women friends and we'd get together all the time--not drinking at the bar--hanging out at the coffee shop, playing games, hiking, etc. This was when I was single. I loved it.

Then I met DH. I had a short courtship/engagement and a small wedding with immediate family only--we married after just 3.5 months. I had major surgery a week after we were married and I was house-bound for 3-4 months. Suddenly, all my friends disappeared. It was horrible and I didn't understand it. They wouldn't return my calls or my emails . . . it was very lonely. Sadly, I think that what I was going through was so traumatic that they couldn't relate and didn't know how to be a friend to me. All I wanted was a friend

Ever since then, I've had this longing for female friendships like I used to have, but I can't seem to find it. Most women I meet now already have their good friends, they don't seem to want to make room for another.

I have two good friends that live out of state. We try and get together once or twice a year. We often email each other but our schedules are such that we don't get to talk on the phone.

I have friends that I bike with. Friends that I run with. Friends that I play volleyball with. Friends that I work with. That's as deep as it gets.

I'm finally accepting that I probably won't have that "group" of friends again. But as DH likes to remind me, they weren't as great of friends as I thought they were. Otherwise they would have stuck with me through the hard times.

[MomOnBike]

I was a part of a quartet of women who would get out once a month for lunch - though it eventually turned into dinner - and talk about whatever. No husbands or kids allowed at the gatherings, though we DID talk about them.

As for the dressing up part, um, we put on clean clothes. This counted as dressing up in that part of the country.

Of the things I miss about moving from that area to the Big City is that bunch of women and our lunch group. When I went back last summer for a visit we had lunch and picked up right where we left off. Fifteen years on where I am now, I have yet to find a social friend here. I evidently don't have the skills to start a friendship.

I'd love to get together with a smallish group of women and discuss everything from the way our (now grown) kids make us crazy to the gender of God again. *sigh*

(What's a Sex in the City?)