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[quote=Anonymous]Oh come on. I'm not OP but these boards are liberally seasoned with posts from moms on both ends of this cycle. If I had more energy to google, I'd say that there are plenty of people offended because they get mixed signals from a mom at the playground, they chatted and seemed to have so much in common, but then the mom declines invitations to hang more and people are like "what gives? if she doesn't want to make a new friend why not just say so?"

On the other hand, there are lots of posts of moms who say "I keep saying no to this one woman at the playground. I like her, but I'm just swamped right now and she is nice but persistent. How do I handle?"

I've responded to some of these posts before. I'm NOT ultra-busy and I like my life that way. So I tend to decline invitations that come a week in advance and lock me into a "date" with someone. I get enough of that at work and I am open to making new friends, but I want them to be more casual and spontaneous things - not "I'd like to hang out, how does your Tuesday look?" I'm just not into that. When I posted that, several posters said they felt the same way, and several other posters said "I would be so offended if you wouldn't commit, if I don't schedule it in, I just can't accommodate, so i would not be friends with you."

I know nothing about OP and whether she's a scheduler or not. But I do know that I resist things that make me frazzled, busy, or harried. I LOVE LOVE LOVE waking up on a random weekend day and having nothing to do or only a few things to do (with older kids you don't really get to have "nothing." Anyway, I personally tend to feel boxed in by a "okay then on Tuesday we are going to the park with Sarah and her family." That is not to say that I won't do that, ever. It's just that it cannot be the mainstay of our relationship. I'm not up for it.

I don't have tons of friends beating down my door, but I have met at least five nice women in the past year who are slightly persistent about arranging and scheduling an adult version of a playdate and I'm rarely up for that.

And people talking about how terrible life is without friends aren't getting that many of these posters are saying hey, I HAVE friends, and I'm not willing to sacrifice time with the people I love for new people I just, well, like. I have gone through various cycles of friendships in my life. In college, I made all new friends, then did that again when I moved here to DC, and again when I moved in between scenes. Over the years, the stand-out people have stayed put in my life. The others are more topical. I'm not going out to the bars anymore, so those people whose interests intersected with mine only on a limited, bar-scene basis, are not people I seek out now even though they were perfectly nice. Same kind of goes for moms at the playgrounds. Unless we have some kind of friendship epiphany, I'm not making room. Why? Because mainly people want to schedule up and I'm not up for that. I need lots of free time to function as a healthy human. I can only tolerate so much scheduling before my own pleasure / obligation balance gets skewed and my personal life starts feeling like my work life.  And, I'm 40. So I know how life works, I know how important friends are.

As for having a line, I certainly don't have one. But as I said, there are hurt feelings and offenses taken when you routinely decline invitations without saying why. People wonder if something is wrong with them, if they're turning folks off, etc. I don't really think there's anything wrong with an honest "I think you are really cool, I am just at an overextended place and feel it's hard to keep up with friends I have." I'm not sure I could ever pull off that line gracefully, but I almost wonder if it's better to be direct like that than let someone think they are doing something wrong or you don't like them. [/quote]

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