Anonymous wrote:I have to be honest - I'm not beating away potential friends banging down my door. However, since I work full time, I am really only interested in making new friends who also have kids and would be interested in doing kid-related things with our families on weekends/evenings. I don't want to spend more of my free time away from my family.

Wow -- seems awfully short-sighted to me.
When I was single I was not turning away married w/kids friends just because I was busy trying to get a man.
You never know what this person may eventually add to your life if given the chance.
In the meantime, can't you just turn down specific invitations if you don't have time?
Same if it is broader feeling that you do not or would not connect or like the particular person who issued the invite.
Why block a Blessing?

This whole thread is sad to me. Is everyone on DCUM so frantic, over worked, over scheduled etc that people don't want to do anything that doesn't involve their kids? Cmon ladies, your kids won't be little forever and one day you will miss having some real women friends, not just couple friends, not just friends with kids etc, not just someone to share snack duty with at the soccer game.Between reading this and another thread about a woman sleeping on a mattress on the floor of her toddlers room for years, no wonder DC moms seems so freakn miserable. Stop infantilazing yourselfs, you are a grown up and not the child.

Anonymous wrote:I don't have enough friends, so I can't help you there.

+100000

first world problems...

DCUM - just.like.high.school.

"But as I said, there are hurt feelings and offenses taken when you routinely decline invitations without saying why. "

I wouldn't ask you more than once to do something. If you decline, I don't ask again. Unlike some of you, I'm always looking for new friends, partly because my long time friends sound like you all and are too busy to hang out!

I don't have friends. They are not necessary. I prefer to use my free time surfing the net

Anonymous wrote:I have to be honest - I'm not beating away potential friends banging down my door. However, since I work full time, I am really only interested in making new friends who also have kids and would be interested in doing kid-related things with our families on weekends/evenings. I don't want to spend more of my free time away from my family.

+1

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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is your line. I feel bad I meet so many great people but I have no time to connect.

"Everyone. I am so popular. I have SO many friends already, and people just KEEP wanting to be my friend. Help. I am so busy and social and engaged and I cannot possibly squeeze one more person into my fabulous universe. It's difficult to allow so many people to orbit me and I'm finding it hard to make room for a few more, no matter how badly they want to get to know me! This is so sad and difficult. If you've ever gone through this, how did you cope??"

Is this for real? Fabulous universe?

This is a weird post. Presumably people aren't saying, "Hey OP, do you want to be my friend?" They are asking you to specific events, right? Just decline. Or if they are saying vague things like "Let's get together sometime" give the time honored, "okay, let me know" and if the person actually follows through with a plan, say you have such-and-such going on and can't make it. If you decline enough people will get the hint. It's not that complicated.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know how this OP feels. I don't have any extra time in my life for one single thing. If I am not at work, I am trying to catch up on things at home. If I am not trying to catch up on things at home, I am trying my best to keep up with the friendships we have. If I am not doing that, I am trying to keep my head above water parenting. I saw a Nick Galifinakis (sp?) cartoon the other day which showed a frantic mom of a little kid and an infant with all sorts of chaos going on in the background saying to a friend on the phone, "Can I get back to you in about 5 years?!?" and that is exactly how I feel most days! I don't know how the rest of you seem to have so much extra available time to slot a new friend in, honestly.

Well you had time to read a cartoon.

Yeah, glancing at a pictoral cartoon takes just as much time as an outing to catch up with friends. Good call.

My point is right there. You DO have time for more single things. Like cartoons. And posting to DCUM about how busy you are. What you should say is, "I don't care to devote time to friends."

You are weird. And not a little bit needy.

Not needy. I'm just self-aware enough to not proclaim myself the busiest person to ever be busy while simultaneously responding several times to a thread on an online message board.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know how this OP feels. I don't have any extra time in my life for one single thing. If I am not at work, I am trying to catch up on things at home. If I am not trying to catch up on things at home, I am trying my best to keep up with the friendships we have. If I am not doing that, I am trying to keep my head above water parenting. I saw a Nick Galifinakis (sp?) cartoon the other day which showed a frantic mom of a little kid and an infant with all sorts of chaos going on in the background saying to a friend on the phone, "Can I get back to you in about 5 years?!?" and that is exactly how I feel most days! I don't know how the rest of you seem to have so much extra available time to slot a new friend in, honestly.

Well you had time to read a cartoon.

Yeah, glancing at a pictoral cartoon takes just as much time as an outing to catch up with friends. Good call.

My point is right there. You DO have time for more single things. Like cartoons. And posting to DCUM about how busy you are. What you should say is, "I don't care to devote time to friends."

You are weird. And not a little bit needy.