Getting married and blowing off your friends without warning, C/D S/D

I had a very good college friend, also a former roommate, who called me last summer to tell me that

(a) he had left his girlfriend (a mutual friend) of six or seven years
(b) he had met a new woman and had gotten married to her and was very happy
(c) he was about to be a father, but this wasn't the reason he'd gotten married. he apologized for not letting me know – i wasn't upset, just sort of surprised - and i said 'that's great' and that was the last i heard from him.

i've called him a few times, but never heard back :/

I am skeptical about the healthiness of any relationship where the participants aren't able to integrate their previous social relationships into the marriage.

I actually think it's a pretty natural thing to do, at least at the beginning, and in many cases it actually takes pretty serious effort for the seriously-in-love to integrate previous social relationships. But it's utterly vital to do so over the medium and short term, says the guy whose 17-year relationship has been falling apart over the last year or two for this very reason.

medium and long term, I meant.

i have one friend who cut off all of his formerly important friendships after he started dating (and then married) this woman, and that relationship is straight-up emotionally abusive imo.

at the same time, i feel bad that i rarely see my good friends who don't live in town these days. in town is easy, but it's harder to take off for a weekend and either leave my gf alone or have her ditch all of her regular life stuff to go hang out with my friends.

On one level friendship is about hanging out and having fun, but there's another level to it as well. I like to think that with good friends there's a certain unspoken reciprocity. When your life i going well and theirs isn't, you try to make them feel better and vice-versa. And when someone in a relationship discards their friendships it sends out a certain message. The message is "I've found something that makes me happy now and that's all that matters". Kind of a self-absorbed attitude.

Otm but sOmetimes friendship becomes about a sort of remote/long distance support, or, I guess, virtual hanging out. My best friends live far off and I can very rarely them, but everyone's cool with that. Aside from my wife I've been shit at making new close friends since college.

it's really hard to find time to integrate new relationship/preterite social life, and i think somebody always feels slighted. when i was single, i sought to spend a lot of time with my friends b/c there wasn't a lot going on in my home life. i still love my old friends, but i've got less opportunity/desire to spend evenings w/ them because i am ... kind of easily peopled out? and there's somebody always at home? i do try to keep up with them, but as we grow older/physically distant there are fewer opportunities.

agree with RC above too, that there's a lot to be said for phone chat as an adequate friendship w. some people that aren't readily or easily accessible for actual hanging out

there's a lot to be said for phone chat as an adequate friendship

I HATE talking on the phone. It's a problem and I'm afraid that it's causing friendships I have wiht people who live far away to disintegrate but I really hate it so much. I'm just not a phone talker. :/

My closest friend lives in LA but I haven't talked to her in like 6 months mostly because I hate the phone.

I don't love it either, and I sometimes avoid phone calls (from people I like! and haven't talked to in a long time!) because I'm just never in the mood. But other times, I'll make three phone calls in an evening b/c I get a little nostalgic and I need to herd my friend-sheep. I was probably a collie in a past life.

I'm the same way with Netflix DVDs, fwiw. I'll order three good movies that I really want to see and then set them in a stack for three weeks while I watch crappy Modern Family reruns, before binging on the discs, sending them enthusiastically back and waiting desperately for more which I will ignore for months.

I sometimes avoid phone calls (from people I like! and haven't talked to in a long time!)

Me too!! I do this all the time. The last two times she's called me I've ignored the calls and I love this lady to death I just really hate talking on the phone. The worst part is that she's not even on Facebook so I can't pretend like I know what's going on with her. Dammit. I should really call. Thankfully when we do talk it's like we did so last week but still. I was supposed to call two long distance friends last weekend. Did I call either? No. No I did not. I'm horrible.

I hate the phone too! I actually haven't used it to talk to friends in... years... I Skype my parents but that's it.

ask my hs friends here how often I call somebody (hint: never)

It's weird because I love talking in person but just not on the phone which is in sharp contrast to how I was in HS when I would call my friends I'd spent all day with just to say hi at night. lol. I wish she would get a damn FB page and we could keep in touch that way LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE. :/ I'd skype with her but I doubt she has a webcam. I should find out but that would require me to call. Hmmmmmm.

Really this just means I need to take a trip to CA so we can just hang out IRL and talk, you know, face to face. Phones suck!

http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/990/PreviewComp/SuperStock_990-889.jpg

yes come to CA and then you could come see meeeeeeeeeeee :D

I really should. I haven't been there since hmmmmm . . . 2000!! Shit. That's forever ago.

VG - where in CA are you?

Sacramento (ie 2hrs north of San Francisco)

At this point I only ever call my parents. Every once I a blue moon I call two peeps who love in Cali, but the nature of those friendships has evolved into a single massive annual call each.

Otherwise? Email. With phone calls I a) have to be in the right mood and b) I need to be alone/under-hassled (almost impossible) because I despise interruptions.

LIVE in Cali

livin, lovin

it's love in Cali, LIVE

hard to live in Cali without lovin', iirc

CALIFORNIA LOOOOVE

I miss talking on the phone aimlessly for like an hour, I hardly ever do it any more at all, it's become a rare bird in my life

I still like to talk to ppl on the phone, but I think that's just bc I have family/friend in Aus so phone is a necessary evil. I mean, I skype with whoever I can, and email, but phone still helps make far away ppl seem closer :)

Ha ha yeah

"hey stay up til like 1 am, I'm gonna need to call so we can talk about whether I should dump my bf"
"ok I'm so there"

People who hate talking on the phone to the point that they don't speak to friends - what is it about talking on the phone that you hate so much? (asking for a friend)

I have a bunch of friends in sales who spend all day talking on the phone, and they Haaaaaate after hours phone anything.

For my part it's just impossible to arrange b/c we all have kids and busy lives - just trying to get stars to align. Don't hate the action but it's a struggle to make it happen.

I have a few college friends (~5) that I really love but live far away, so I make sure to talk to them on AIM/facebook at least once a week.

In person visits every other year

Damn I envy this

I don't even know that I can articulate why I don't like the phone. I'm often tired/unfriendly/peopled-out/wanting downtime in the evening, when I can actually get in contact with my friends across the country. I also like to be alone, and have an open window of time, and be at home, I'm rarely alone, free, and without plans.

I'm often tired/unfriendly/peopled-out/wanting downtime in the evening

This.

Also I just much prefer talking to someone in person where I can see their expressions and stuff. Plus, the person I'm talking about in particular is a slow talker and being on the phone with her is sort of painful. I really should be better about it because I'm sure that some people think I'm an asshole or a bad friend. I'm going to make an effort of call at least one of the 3 I'm thinking of this coming weekend. That seems doable.

talking in person > talking online in text > talking online face to face > talking on the phone

I also like to be alone, and have an open window of time, and be at home, I'm rarely alone, free, and without plans.

This sounds about right for me, too.

It feels wrong for me to say that I don't like talking on the phone, because I really don't, but I tend to dread calling people that I haven't seen in a long time and I think that's probably it. Priorities, really, and maybe I find long catch-up calls a little exhausting. Also we have shitty SHITTY cell phone reception in our house so there is one place I can sit and hope to keep a signal.

Everyone finds long catch-up calls exhausting -- even the people who instigate them!

Yeah they're really exhausting. The longer it gets the longer the call will be and the less I want to make it!

I feel the same way about out-of-touch friends who always say "I miss you!" but make no effort to see me where I am, ie visit me, call me, write to me, send me one lousy text, a picture, ANYTHING. I don't think you actually miss me all that much, or you would make some effort to talk with me! Friendship maintenance is not solely my job just because I don't have kids.

Everyone finds long catch-up calls exhausting -- even the people who instigate them!

― Laura Lucy Lynn (La Lechera), Thursday, March 8, 2012 1:28 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I always THINK they're going to be exhausting but usually they end up being invigorating and I'm like why don't I call more often

NB I am a terrible correspondent who happens to be friends with same, and I guess at this point my closest friends are so familiar that even "it's been a couple years" check-ins are rarely earthshaking and mostly like ah good the world still spins on its axis

Two of my best friends from high school still live in my home town, and I really only see them/catch up with them when I'm home, which is maybe once every 3 or 4 years. But we're all pretty much able to pick up where we left off, it hasn't really hurt our friendships as far as I've been able to tell. Neither of them are really online all that much, and have jobs that kinda preclude much phone talking. I don't mind it so much.

I am a very active and involved friend -- it's just tiring to be the one who always has to make all of the moves. I gave up trying hard maybe 5 years ago; now I give medium effort and the results are the same, so it could be my problem for throwing so much energy at the wall.

"could be" = is

I did learn that moving countries placed most of the responsibility of staying in touch on me, since everyone else's life was pretty much unchanged, they sort of adapted pretty quickly to me not being around, and it was my job to say hey I'm over here missing you guys what's up, etc. I was never that kind of friend before that, so it was a big adjustment. But fuuuuuck it helped me so much with homesickness etc.

All my friends either post on ilx or twitter and that ambient awareness of them is how I keep in touch.

i misread as "ambien awareness" O_o

even "it's been a couple years" check-ins are rarely earthshaking and mostly like ah good the world still spins on its axis

Guilty lols. At Christmas, I saw my college best friend for the first time in over 10 years. Apart from the fact that she went back to school again for something else, lost a parent, got married, bought a house, and had a kid, nothing had changed at all.