It's normal, but it's also fixable, particularly if you like and value these friendships.

It would seem like 1-2x a month, your husband could handle kids activities and bedtime and you could meet a friend 25 mins away for dinner, whether or not you're in the office. That's what my husband and I do. It works out to one of us being out of the evening routine less than once a week, and it keeps our friendships going.

We moved back to my hometown about a year ago. We only have a few local friends since most of my HS friends are spread out across the country. While want to make new friends and reconnect with old acquaintances, it’s hard to find the time and energy!

DH and I both work full time and are in the office most days. Weeknight social activities are rare - usually once a month - and are usually things like drinks with coworkers or dinner with a friend visiting from out of town. We get a babysitter 2-3x per month (usually Saturday night) so we can go out with friends or have a date night. We see extended family almost every weekend. And we socialize with families we know though daycare when we see them out and about on the weekends. (DD is 2YO, and we aren’t doing a ton of scheduled play dates yet. But we end up seeing families we know at the playground, farmer’s market, etc. most weekends.)

On the one hand, I wish we had a bigger network of family friends with kids our age here, and I know we need to put in the effort to develop those relationships. On the other hand, the socializing we’re already doing plus trying to keep up with errands and chores on the weekend feels like all we have time for. DH and I also both like having one night to just relax at home over the weekend. So I’m stuck between wishing for a more active social life in the abstract but feeling like our schedule is pretty full in our day-to-day reality.

Anonymous wrote:I no longer work so I socialize a lot. When I was working, I only had time to go to work and barely keep my house together. We would socialize with other families in the neighborhood with the whole family.

Now I lunch, work out, have drinks with friends relatively often. Most of my friends work with flexible hours. I also have friends who have demanding jobs and live further away. I see them less and usually at larger parties or birthday dinners/brunches and more rarely, spa outing or weekend.

+1 I see friends during the day for workouts, school volunteering, lunch. It’s not consistent because some weeks there’s a lot going on and some weeks everyone’s busy. I also socialize during my kids activities.

On the weekends we have activities, birthday parties and typically one evening we’ll go out with friends.

I try to see friends whenever we travel and I usually have 2-3 friends visit throughout the year.

Every 3-4 weekends I try to make sure we have a weekend with very light commitments so we can spend time together at home. This is also important for my husband because he’s needs less socializing than me.

Anonymous wrote:Our weekends are packed with scheduled activities and social ones. We go out at night with friends. Once or twice a week each of us go out - the other will stay home with the kids.

So strange