Friendships, marriage & children

We're getting older, the group of us. We haven't aged much in the years since Smith, but I know we're getting older because now that everyone is over 30, they are getting married and making babies. The days of the SUNC (single unmarried no children) Smithies are gone. I am the last of the women in my circle of friends who is not married with children. And I never will be. I miss them. They mean well. They don't mean to exclude me, mostly its a matter of not being able to include me. They cannot hop a plane and meet up somewhere--travelling anywhere involves baby totes, car seats, diapers, bottles, pacifiers--or finding a trustworthy sitter. Husbands who were understanding about a girls' weekend out of town are much less likely to be understanding with two children under age three needing round-the-clock care. Some of my men-friends are still unmarried, but I keep hoping they will meet someone and do the married with children thing, too. I wish it, even knowing that will leave me with even fewer friends who are spontaneously available, as with Thorsten. And even knowing that some of them will have women in their lives who will somehow find me threatening and demand changes in our friendships (as with Michael and Matt), I still hold out hope that they will find love.

So, most of my pool of friends are married with children, or otherwise attached, and most of them live more than a day's drive away. Damned inconvenient. Most of the friends I formed when I first moved here moved away in the Great Tekkie Diaspora of the Silicon Forest circa 2002. They are in Texas, California, Colorado, and North Carolina now. And then are are the friends overseas. Some people are better than others at long-distance friendships. Some I exchange postcards and emails with, while others I chat daily with on ICQ or MSN. Some I connect with once a week on Skype. Some I don't hear from for six months, or a year, and then we talk, and all that time and distance melts away, and it is like we were never apart. But their lives are filling up, and the gulf in our recent experiences is dividing us. I cannot relate to marriage, to children, to not being able to read a book, to rarely having a quiet moment to one's self, to domestic arguments over landscaping, house-painting, garbage disposing, disciplining the children, bar tabs, and shopping sprees, nor to wondering when sex will ever again be anything more than a quickie caught against the door of the laundry room, hoping the kids won't notice you are missing before you're done. Or, rather, he's done.

So I need to make new friends, I guess. Its easy enough because I'm an extrovert, and I've a broad range of interests, but its just an effort I'm not up to right now, not with therapy being as intense as it is.

Tamar said "If you want more single friends you should go back to dating women, or cultivate more gay friends. Or..." and she drew the 'or' out for a long moment, "get married. If you miss them that much, join 'em." I snorted when she said that. She knows better. We talked about the finalization of her divorce after 10 years of marriage; about her present situation, in which she lives under the curse of loving two men, both of whom want to get married, but who, individually, are unable to fulfill what she wants/needs in a partner. We discussed the challenges of polyamory, and the preferability of the three-way (triad) subset of polyamory. It is easier, most of the time, to have a relationship with two other people when they are also involved with each other. It is usually less competitive that way, but not always. Her two men tolerate each other because they know that the moment they become possessive or question her actions, she will simply stop making room for them in her life. She said she prefers the company of women, and sometimes she really wishes she was gay. She tried a relationship with a woman once, back when she was 18 or 19, but she realized two very important things: 1) she does not like eating pussy, and 2) she must have dick regularly. *grin* Ah yes, the joys of sister-talk. So few people speak our language... but then so few people grew up on a commune where sex had as much mystery as any other bodily-function. Ie, not much.

I talked to her about Chris. She told me to be careful, said I'm very vulnerable and open right now and as much as I think I'm a big girl and can handle myself, I'm in foreign territory emotionally and she worries, not so much that I'll get hurt, but that I'll be suckered into a long-term relationship with someone "worse than David." God, but she hated David. Loved Mark, hated David, liked Stephanie. Once he finished growing up, David fulfilled all the 'must' criteria for being my partner. And I still threw him over for Stephanie, after nearly 7 years together. Funny how that works. Or doesn't work.