Your Social Life (After You Have a Family Life)

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social lifeIn life, some young ladies dream of graduating college, establishing a career, getting married, having children / a dog / a cat, and purchasing a house.

You don’t really know or realize how your social life will change after you have accomplished some of these “adulting” goals. 

As a young woman, I yearned to get a great job after college was completed, get married to my long-term boyfriend, and eventually have children. I have accomplished those goals (working on getting the house thing), but I neglected to realize is that once you reach your goals, your reality will change.

Going out with my girlfriends on a whim is something I cannot do any longer.

I have to plan out my “nights out” days in advance so that it can coincide with homework, bath times, quality family time, husband time, gym time, work time, and other times that I may have neglected to mention (read household chores). My new reality now means that I cannot just go out at the drop of a dime with my friends who are still single, the friends who go out every other weekend to Manhattan to go drinking and dancing.

As I understand it now, my social life does not involve going out at midnight and coming home at 5:30 a.m. I am perfectly fine with going out straight after work for happy hour drinks with one or two girlfriends and enjoying their company without men ogling over us and trying to get our phone numbers. I thrive on getting my two glasses of Sauvignon Blanc or Prosecco and discussing our lives.

As a result of this change, I feel like my friendship circle is ever-shrinking, shrinking to the point of extinction.

Over time, I have concluded that it is ok to have my small circle of friendships. Over this past year, I have grown into my skin, if that makes sense. My social life has changed. I have different interests than what I used to partake in. I used to revolve my social life around what my friends were doing and where they were going. I cannot tell you how many events I have skipped out on because of what I thought my friends would think about those events.

This past year and a half, I have truly evolved, and I now know that it is ok to have a select group of people that I would want to go out with and enjoy their company. It is ok to go to events alone. It is ok that my social interests do not exactly align with what all of my friends are doing.

My social life has evolved as my belief in myself has evolved. I am truly happy to be going through this mental change. I am finally standing tall in my own skin. I have my social life to thank for this earth-shattering change.