Do you and your spouse have completely separate social lives?
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Anonymous
| Do you and your spouse mostly spend time with friends not as a couple? Is it typical to have a completely separate social life from your spouse? |
Anonymous
| I have friends I do things with, he has friends he does things with, and we have friends we do things with. Much easier now that kids are older. When they were younger, it was near impossible to go out at all, we were just so exhausted! |
Anonymous
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The people I know who did have all divorced. It’s just if you are all not involved with someone socially, they will over time gravity to people they are involved with socially. Proximity and availability.
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Anonymous
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Now that you say it, we do have pretty separate social lives. I mostly socialize with people that I meet at the kids school. We might volunteer at the school or the church together, and I have a book club with a few of them. I also row (well, erg now) a few times a week and socialize with those ladies as well. DH has met them all at school functions and at church (we are catholic, so almost all of these functions are at night and involve a lot of alcohol), but I don't think he considers them friends.
DH tends to socialize mostly with people from work. At work, and then sometimes they will meet on the weekends to play basketball or golf or play video games. I have met them all (we both work at the same place, but in different departments, so I have lunch with him and his colleagues sometimes), but I don't really call them my friends. I don't know. I think it's really hard when you have little kids to go out with couple friends a lot. Someone has to be home with the kids, and then date nights seem like they should be reserved just for us as a couple. |
Anonymous
| No I don't think it's typical to have completely different social lives but it's also super healthy to have partially individual social lives. As with everything in life, balance is key. |
Anonymous
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Yes, mostly separate. It is a point of stress because of the time he devotes to them, e.g. running text chat, but I think that's mostly his all-or-nothing personality. He sees my friends occasionally and is up to date on their lives.
We used to have mostly couple friends -- but it was actually his friends and then all their spouses hanging out in the other room, and the spouses didn't necessarily have anything in common. It wasn't more fun for me than having my own friends. |
Anonymous
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Our social life is together sometimes and separate sometimes. It’s important for us to have separate interests as individuals, but we also live spending time together and with our mutual friends.
We each take a class during the week (me: pottery, him: jiu jitsu). Occasionally, he’ll go for a happy hour after work with colleagues or I’ll have a dinner with my friends. Many of our friends are couple- or family friends and we can hang out in a group with our children. Sometimes DH will go out with some of the husbands or I’ll go out with some of the wives, but we’re usually in a group. |
Anonymous
| My DH is an introvert who has gotten more introverted as he’s aged. He prefers to stay home or go to work. The past few vacations have been me and the kids vacationing with friends. When he does do something socially, it’s because he’s joining me at one of my activities or to an event we’ve been invited to that I’ve said I’m going to. Rarely initiates any social activity. Not a great situation but i’ve learned to deal with it. |
Anonymous
| Most of our socializing is as a couple. I like hanging out with him! But we also have our own activities/friends. He plays cards with his male friends and I have “girls” nights and coffee with friends pretty regularly. |
Anonymous
| We do a ton of things together but also do things apart especially when only one of us has a real interest in something. Doing everything apart sounds like being on the road to being separated. |
Anonymous
| No. We have shared friends and then friends we see separately. The friends he sees separately are typically the guys from our shared social circle, whereas mine are friends we don't share, but it's not an issue. We have a large group that originated with him and his friends; I've made new friends since we've been together, so in that sense we have separate circles. But I don't exclusively hang out with them or anything. |
Anonymous
| We go out together regularly and generally go together when invited to parties or dinners by friends. However, DH is much less social than me and, since his friends from his single days have moved away, he has never replaced them with new local friends. So, I see my friends without him pretty often but he doesn't really have an independent social life. I have encouraged him to take trips to visit his friends and connect with them online but he doesn't do that often. |
Anonymous
+1. My DH is terrible at maintaing friendships. |
Anonymous
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We have separate and mutual friends. He’s fishing today and meeting a friend for birthday lunch/drinks, I’m meeting “my girls” for brunch as well.
It’s really nice. You need your own people and lives. |
Anonymous
+2. Same here. He’s happy with friendships that are a couple texts every few months. It’s very smothering to be your spouse’s only social outlet. People, make friends. |