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Being Single When Most of Your Friends Aren’t

It’s a common scenario that many of us encounter, usually starting sometime in our mid-20’s. You have a decent size group of friends who are mostly single and unattached to anybody. Maybe you also have that token dating couple to keep thing diverse. Then that couple gets married. Everyone celebrates that first marriage in your social circle. At some point, one of the guys who you never expected to find a girl crazy enough to talk to him is the next one in line to get married. Over time, those couples start having kids. Everyone continues to share the joy of these experiences. However, time and changes in life stage begin to change all that.

As the single person, you still have  your own sense of schedule and freedom that doesn’t work with your married friends, especially those with kids. Life is more scheduled now, or at least not as much driven by your own needs and wants. We adapt to make everythin work. And what I was thinking about most recently is that the single friend who wants to keep friendships with his married/with kids friends, he also adapts to their lifestyles like hanging out at their homes since their kids need to sleep early. Mostly gone are the days of impromptu going out for a drink or the random 2AM run to Meijer (unless it’s to grab diapers for your newborn, like I and a friend just did this past weekend.)

Don’t misunderstand me here in my thought dump. I love all my friends who are married and may also have kids. They are a dear part of my life and I wouldn’t be the same without them. But as someone who is still very much single in his early 30’s, I still have sparks of spontaneity and want to do stuff on the fly. Those days are falling farther and farther into my past, not because I’m turning into someone who stays home all the time, but because my social circle have new roles in life that don’t always perfectly align with mine anymore. And that’s OK. We work through that and continue to have community. I’m open to hearing thoughts and feedback as I continue to work through this and understand my role as the single person in a roomful of people paired off with each other.