I’m happy for them, but it feels like I’m losing them.
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Hello Help👏Me👏Hera,
I’m in my almost-mid-30s, and it feels like all my friends are having children. There are constant announcements popping up across my social media – scans and bumps and bellies, and those bittersweet “last year it was just the two of us” posts.
Don’t get me wrong, I am genuinely happy to witness my friends’ milestones and watch their lives becoming fuller. But every time I find out, I feel like a balloon that got let go at a party, just floating off into something wide and empty and untethered.
I’m not planning on having children. It has never felt right for me, and that’s not something I’m conflicted about. What I am conflicted about is the quiet grief that comes with it – not for the path I didn’t choose, but for the friendships that are slowly changing shape around me.
For the last few years, it’s been so important to me to build a real community around myself. The kind made of small, ordinary moments like a spontaneous coffee, a few glasses of wine on a Friday evening, running little errands together, an aimless walk with good conversation. The kind of closeness that lives in the in-between. But when friends have children, those moments become the first casualties. Realistically, there’s no longer time for any of it or at least, not in the same easy, unscheduled way there once was.
And so the community I worked so hard to build starts to feel like it’s slowly dispersing – not through any falling out, not through any failure, just through the natural gravity of different life stages pulling people in different directions.
It’s a particular kind of loneliness, one that’s hard to name because it carries no bitterness. Just the ache of missing people who are still there.
Thank you,
Still holding the string
Dear Still holding the string,
All your friends having children at once is one of those generational rites of passage sent periodically to remind us that nothing lasts forever, the past is a haunted music box, and despite an abundance of good company, we’re all ultimately alone, hurtling towards our deaths like an escaped parade blimp, listing towards the nearest power line.
We get many of these turning points in life, and they all hurt in a unique way. It’s hard to leave any part of your life irrevocably behind without getting a little maudlin.
It’s very cute and funny to see your friends become parents, and scatter their excellent and prestigious genes to the furthest reaches of time. It’s even better to witness their children growing up, and becoming platypus experts and bark-throwing prodigies. But it’s also normal to mourn these relationships, as your lives suddenly diverge so profoundly, and your friends retreat for a time into the mysterious world of jams and duck ponds and sentient trains.
The spontaneity and freedom of your old relationship will likely undergo some kind of transformation. But having a new baby can also be very boring and isolating, and your friends might appreciate your company while they push a stroller aimlessly around the neighbourhood, or take the baby to art galleries and hold it up in front of famous paintings.
It’s normal for new parents to vanish for a while, as they adjust to their terrifying burden of responsibility, but that doesn’t mean they’re gone for good. The distinction between the lives of parents and indolent childless gadabouts isn’t as clearly delineated as you might imagine. This is especially true as their kids get older. It’s easy to feel like your social group will inevitably become split into childless and child-having factions, with vastly different trajectories and interests, but you might be surprised at how little it matters after the talcum powder has settled. As you get older, your community of friends naturally expands to include a more eclectic group of people, at different stages of life, like a mobile phone network commercial.
Having said that, I would also highly recommend taking this opportunity to intentionally make some degenerate childless friends, who don’t have to take Hercules and Brigette to pottery class every Sunday morning. Childless millennials in their mid-to-late-30s are a notoriously vast demographic, and I’m sure there are plenty of people out there in a similar position to you, who are experiencing a similar change in their social groups and would love someone to run spontaneous errands with.
Parents have tighter schedules and more commitments, especially as they figure out how to keep a human alive, but having children also forces you towards the world, and arguably makes you better at seeking out community and social connections in the long term. It won’t be as casual or spontaneous as it once was, but the upside is that if you play your cards right and keep showing up for your friends during this insane life-altering process, you will get the honour of seeing their kids grow up.
Your friends are not leaving you behind. You are all collectively moving on from a shared moment in time. A chapter of your collective youth is over, and it’s normal to feel a little adrift as you consider what comes next. My advice is to use this moment as an opportunity to make sure you have something meaningful to look to. The best thing about not having children (apart from the absence of constant ambient terror you presumably feel for your offspring) is the vast abundance of time at your disposal. What do you want to fill that time with? Travel? Translating the Voynich manuscript? Having some kind of existential purpose will help bring you peace.
Friends come and go throughout life. Some people vanish for good, but others come back again when you least expect it. Preserve the friendships you can, make new friends to fill the gaps, and don’t give up on your aimless walks and spontaneous errands. There are more than enough childless millennials to go around.
