Falling in love. Check. Getting hitched. Check. Buying your first home. Check. Having a baby. Check. My social networks are quickly crossing off the milestone to-do lists. Let's be honest these are pretty monumental events in one's life. Each event being ceremoniously celebrated within the circle, followed by speeches, toasts, dinners, lavish gifts, laughter and of course showers. The one constant is that as friends, we still manage to get together ( a little less frequent as we would like) for dinner parties.
Whether its just the girls, or the husbands/boyfriends/significant others/partners are welcome- the women usually side off and dominate their own conversation. Back in my early to mid twenties dinner parties and gatherings were focused on our latest crushes, outfit options to wear to the next big party, who broke up and who got together. Purely girly gabbing and gossip. In the last several years, our dinner parties seem solely focused on ring sizes, color swatches, fabrics, baby names and bedroom schemes.
For some of us singletons, its easy to be happy but hard to contribute to these conversations. Incorrect, I've been known to bang out some really great decor tips, and some girls often invite me along for shopping support and critical decision making. Okay so other than that- zippo. I don't even know the difference between a princess and square or what the hell a karat means (the man who snags me will pretty pleased). The most difficult is the baby talk, or rather the new mom chatter. I'm not griping- its just when the new moms chat endlessly about which week this or that happened, or what occurred before, during and after birth- or their breast feeding schedule I have nothing to say (maybe that's a good thing) and even less to contribute. Listen, I'm not talking about a few minutes here and there- I get it- they have fallen in love with their new bundles- I'm talking about excessive and endless chatter- where they absorb themselves and often forget that there are other important topics of adult conversation besides their surprises at diaper change time.
I guess what I'm saying is- remember that other people in the world exist- that just because some of us haven't crossed off our milestone lists that we have nothing to offer a good dinner party. As I type these last few words of what appears to be strong opinion- my fingers are crossed that one day Karma doesn't come back to bite me in the ass.
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I agree, having had friends who went the College route, and others who went to University, it seems that the College grads have been married for 4 or 5years now, have bought their first home, and are now on baby #2. About 5 years ago I started to ask myself...should I be getting married and having babies and ditching my plans for traveling and post grad studies....the answer was NO.
ReplyDeleteAfter a lot of unnecessary stress, I realized that I am no where near that stage in my life. And that just because everyone else is doing it, didn't mean I should be there too.
After much thought, I decided to take life at my pace, and if that means having kids at 35 then so be it.
A girl friend of mine described it perfectly..."we are still in the selfish phase of our lives"
Although, I just got married 7 months ago...I am in no rush, and enjoying married life before we tackle any bigger milestones as Cynthia mentioned.
I will conclude by saying that sometimes we need to discreetly change the conversations away from the baby talk or the wedding talk as a way of saving ourselves from a completely boring conversation with good friends. Sometimes though, it gets the best of us (I probably annoyed people with my wedding talk over the last year)...so we need our friends to challenge us to think outside the box.