Everyone will tell you, becoming a parent will see you saying goodbye to friendships because you lose common ground with people. However, don’t hang up your friendship hat just yet because new “parent” friendships are just around the corner.
You will start to make a few “couple friends” and by the time the kids start school you’ll have friendships with some parents at the school drop off and pick up times, too. It’s now that you’ll realise that building a strong friendship with those couples and parents may take a little more effort than they did when you were in school, Uni or the workplace.
From personal experience, it’s usually the fathers who have the worst end of the stick when it comes to friendships. Generally, Dads go to work all day and then come home and be parents. There’s not really any time to put effort into building friendships and this can often have them feeling down about themselves (not that they would ever admit that!).
We’ve put together a few suggestions on how to build those couple friendships up and get you both socialising again.
Building “couple” friendships
- Host a monthly couples games night (alternating each month on where the games night is held and who is hosting)
- Organise a fortnightly Friday BBQ night where all the kids can hang out and play while the parents cook dinner and have a few beverages of their choice (alcohol or not. psst- we’ve heard wine is a great social lubricant 😉 )
- Plan a couples dinner party- There are so many ideas that a simple google search will reveal. An example you ask? Try a murder mystery dinner party!
- Find a common interest and start attending those things as a group (ie. car racing, football, hiking, camping etc)
Whatever you come up with to do, be sure to make the effort at least once a month so your friendships can start to blossom. By building a group of couple friendships, you will also help your children grow up with great social skills and some awesome memories of hanging out with other kids while their parents actually had fun!
After a few meets, the friendships will start to take a more natural flow and organising catch ups won’t feel like such an effort. It’s vitally important for our children to see that being their parents isn’t taking away from our lives and happiness. They notice these things weather you realise or not. So good luck on building those friendships and start finding yourselves again!
