Posts Tagged ‘friends’
Monday, December 5th, 2011
I have survived Buddha’s Boot camp only to find myself preparing for battle. I have gone from Meditation to Mediation, that one little ‘t’ representing two concepts that are worlds apart yet strangely complimentary. Mind over matter doesn’t get me what I want but it sure helps me not sweat it for more than a few minutes before letting it go … even though we have effectively turned Marital Art into a Martial Art and I find myself searching for an appropriate place in the divorce agreement to insert something that disallows shouting out of context. I also search through the division of assets and wonder where the column is that indicates the division of friends. It seems the wake of his contact with mutual friends is plagued with being snubbed, hung up on and, in one very puzzling case of hypocrisy, being excluded from the wedding guest list of a guy I have known for three decades who proposed to his now-ex wife while she was still married to another man.
It’s none of my business what anyone thinks of me and if my ex-to-be wants these people in the settlement, he’s welcome to them … I won’t defend myself to people who have known me for years yet make no attempt to find out how I am faring in this saga.
As Paulo Coelho says, “Don’t explain. Your friends do not need it, and your enemies will not believe you.” So I don’t. I just continue to be my authentic self and, through my own interpretation of the truth, I get to keep the friendships of real value while he gets the duds. In terms of the settlement, however, if I can just insert that extra column, they should at least weigh up nicely against a couple of pieces of furniture. There is still a chance the friends will discover the truth and neutralize their judgment. Furniture isn’t so fickle though – it’ll still be mine.
Tags: assets, divorce, friends, judgment, marriage, mediation, meditation, Paulo Coelho, truth, Vipassana
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Monday, July 26th, 2010
I was caught up in a cheesy email chain letter (try and say that fast) recently. It was about friendships, relationships and those people who drift through our lives passing on a little wisdom, or gathering some, before moving out of our lives again. Being close to those midlife crisis years (allegedly) has given me cause to seriously reflect on the words in the email even though I feel slightly ashamed to have passed it on. Having a baby shifts things with friends, as does getting a divorce. You change, situations change, others change … and you shift up and down rungs of friendship ladders all the time. Yet you still feel like mourning the loss of a friendship regardless of whether the parting is good or bad.
Escaping to Durban meant my child was away from his school friends again for another month. He forgot their names. Everywhere we went he played with other children, behaving like he had a new best friend each and every day … only to forget that person the next time he met someone new. I couldn’t help but wonder why we fixate on the breaking down of long-lasting friendships when often the best thing to do is just let them run their course and then let go.
There are a few friends that have just drifted away and then there are those I have turfed out intentionally. I can count on one hand only the ones I have turfed intentionally. They are: the girl I shared digs with who slept with every guy I brought home for ‘coffee’ … hence having to wait an extraordinarily long time before I could find someone to harvest my cherry tree; the guy who almost beat up my husband on a small road in Putney outside the house we shared with him … I suspect it had something to do with pent up frustrations over my forbidden fruits; and there is the guy who I have known for longer than I have known my husband who, like all good gentlemen do, has backed the horse he feels will come out tops and is giving my husband advice on our divorce.
I used to obsess over the severing of these relationships as though they were limbs I could still feel even though they were no longer there. But through my child I am learning to look at what I have right in front of me … not only the magnificent friends I have and love but the incredible people all around me waiting to be delved into; waiting for that spark that begins it all.
Tags: baby, children, divorce, friends, friendship, relationships
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Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
Part 2:
There are also those of my friends who are so keen on parenting that they are on IVF for their seconds and those who have turned to adoption after trying that option for so many years and it just not working. Then there is my friend who tried everything for eight years and then went travelling. Travelling is my answer for everything … but it didn’t help her fall pregnant. Or perhaps it did. On her return, she and her husband found a surrogate, put two fertilized eggs in her and put a third one back into my friend … as a last ditch effort.
They all took and she’s expecting triplets in August.
Tags: destiny, friends, parenting, relationships, travel, triplets
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Thursday, March 11th, 2010
Let’s take a break from children and talk about friends …the adult variety. I got all flaky on myself this weekend and threw a copy of Psychologies into my shopping trolley. I read it cover to cover and found it quite disturbing that I have reached the age that I can devour a self-discovery magazine with as much relish as I once poured over Hello. The article that got my attention though, was not the one on saving my relationship but the one on breaking up friendships.
When you have a child, the dynamics of friendship change completely … as does your relationship with your partner and yourself … But that’s not really what I want to talk about here, mainly because I inadvertently brought a child into the article.
I want to talk about a great friend of mine. Well, she used to be a great friend of mine until she discarded me and made me question myself and the reasons she felt I wasn’t ‘good enough’ to be her friend anymore. What I discovered was that it had nothing to do with who I am and everything to do with what I did. I changed the dynamics of our relationship.
Our friendship I thought was based on a strong bond that revolved around common goals, interests and the fact that we had similar aged children (there I go again). We were somehow always there for each other and discussed problems over tea, coffee, sushi, anything going, almost every week. What I only realised once the friendship was over and she claimed she needed to create some space in her life was that all the problems we had discussed were hers.
And the reason the friendship ended? Well, it was my fault entirely. I asked her advice one day about a big problem in my life. I changed the dynamics of the friendship and broke our contract. I made it about me and that wasn’t the deal.
Tags: advice, balance, frenemy, friends, friendship, goals, power, relationships
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Thursday, February 11th, 2010
I’ve never really found myself bothered to get to know the children of my friends … that is, until I stayed with friends with children without my own child. And I really got to know them.
There is a definite shift when you don’t have your own child around as your entire focus moves from making sure your child is polite, doesn’t wreck anything, hurt anyone, spill anything etc etc …
I was on holiday and that helped – no routine and a stress-free existence of not having to jump as soon as there were tears and it was someone else’s problem when there were cries of “mummy, mummy’ in the night. My friends were worried I couldn’t sleep with the disturbances but, honestly, it was bliss. If only I could feel like that when my own child is around. I’m sure the world would not stop spinning if I just cared a little less about all those ripples when something sets him off.
Let him just be? I could try.
Tags: control, friends, sleep
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Thursday, August 6th, 2009
There’s this thing where people don’t invite childless friends to their children’s birthday parties (one unwittingly excluded while on fertility treatment for the umpteenth time!) and the person who brought this up with me was a childless friend who has never RSVPed to my child’s party invitations. I thought she was rude or just disinterested in children and, therefore, above the need to attend any event where the short people outnumber the tall ones. Turns out she gave her phone away and didn’t get any of the invites. I let it slide because of my own insecurity; the one that has turned into a little voice in my head telling me that I am different now that I have a child; and I kinda understood how she might be averse to attending such events … after all it is only recently that I have given up my need to drink copious amounts of champagne at children’s parties, despite the fact that most are held mid-morning.
Tags: friends, parties
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Monday, August 3rd, 2009
I know now why all those ex friends and acquaintances kept encouraging me to do the child thing … they just wanted to be able to be my friend again. I used to find it shallow that they couldn’t be friends because I hadn’t given birth … like they were part of some secret club and I didn’t know the password. But I have found myself guilty of a similar thing lately – I have been befriending people I haven’t seen in years because they have since had a child. Once you have had the identity crisis that having a baby brings, it is just so much less intimidating being around people who just may be on the same wavelength as you are.
I find myself trying to play it safe, play down the parent thing, when out with childless couples. I feel boring talking about my child and wonder why it is any less boring than a friend talking about their job … but that’s how it is; it’s my new reality.
The biggest problem … and this is quite huge … is when you don’t like your friends’ children or your friends don’t like yours! There’s also that thing when people become their children. I’m guilty of it … as is every parent I know … you have to get through the invisible shield that holds all the child-related angst and bullterrier-like protectiveness before you can get to and engage with the real me.
Tags: babies, children, friends, parenting
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Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
I had friends … you might call them acquaintances … in London, who have moved back to South Africa, had children, and totally dropped under the radar. I know it is normal to change friends when you have a child … after all you have a new identity and you need to be comfortable with that new identity without feeling like a total fraud because you have become a totally different person. Then there are the friends you have that are even better friends for the very same reason.
And then there are the Facebook friends … the people you once knew but who have now become their children – even on Facebook. I battle to get even a glimpse into the lives of people I haven’t seen in years because they have placed themselves behind their new personas as parents. There is the tricky issue of new last names … an argument I won’t get into as I kinda get the deal even though I am totally anti the idea myself … and the fact they use pictures of their children for their profile pictures. And all they ever discuss are things to do with theirs or other’s children and child-related things.
It’s fine to be proud of your children – obviously I realise that – but surely you lose yourself if you never let yourself see the light of virtual day. Somewhere behind the parent lurks the free-spirited singleton … surely!
Perhaps it is my own character that is flawed in thinking that no one could possibly be that attached to parenthood to want to become someone else in order to fulfil a stereotypical role. But is it too much to ask to just have my friends back the way they were even when I know they will never be the same again …?
Tags: Facebook, facebook friends, friends, identity, stereotypical
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Monday, July 6th, 2009
A friend has left. He has emigrated. He reached a stage of his life … call it the mid-life drama thing … that has forced him to confront priorities in his life. Or maybe he has been stuck for so long thinking he has time to change/shake things up a bit and he now feels he is running out of time. It’s the right decision … except for all those he is leaving behind.
This world is changing so quickly that we have to keep redefining ourselves. This is often tricky as we can, as a result, fall out of synch with those around us, so we have to move fast when the urge takes us. It’s hard to take the path less travelled; it’s hard to have to justify certain decisions to all those around you … so we end up making these decisions – possibly years too late – when we can blame them on something like a mid-life crisis.
I’m going to miss him and his wife and will live with the thought that I probably took them for granted … believing they would always be around: around when we all came out of the early childminding fug; around to pick up where we left off pre being too damn busy to make enough effort; around to be the role model for my child. I didn’t quite grasp the impact his leaving would have until my child ran up to him to say goodbye and hugged him so tightly that I wondered if he would ever let go.
Tags: emigrating, family, friends, mid-life crisis, parenting, role models
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Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
This post started out with the intention to be about the MTN Science Centre – it’s chaos, things are broken a lot of the time … and it involves going to a mall! But it’s fantabulous fun for an incredibly active child.
It could even be about sending my child to a friend and each time having to retrain him back to normality on his return due to his exposure to extraordinary behavioural quirks.
But it’s about something far more pertinent to me right now.
A friend of mine more than implied that I pander to my child. I don’t take criticism (constructive or otherwise) at all lightly as I tend to analyse everything that is said. I was firstly shocked that she said it at all and then I was shocked that I of all people actually pander to my child. The horror of it! I started feeling like a total fraud.
I took it away and thought about it … a lot! And what I came out with is that I don’t pander to him at all. In fact, it’s shocking how little I let him get away with and how he has actually been on the verge of rebelling … at the tender age of 10 years pre-teen. ‘Defiant’, is what his teacher calls it.
I should have known better, having studied developmental psychology … and using it more on my dog than on my child. When someone is constantly abused by someone else, they will eventually reach a point when they have to let some of it go … and it invariably ends up being dumped onto the people they care about most. Something like kicking Pavlov’s dog. It’s sometimes hurtful, it can often be shrugged off … but then there are those rare occurrences when you can use someone else’s rubbish to clean up your own home.
Two days of a little more pandering and his defiance is already on the wane. We’re all dysfunctional; we just have to learn to share it around a little.
Tags: children, conditioning, critism, defiant, dysfuntional, friends, fun
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Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
I have a friend who believes in this concept – amazingly, just the one. There are those who get really uptight if you so much as reprimand their kids for such indiscretions as smacking, kicking or even biting your own precious offspring. And then there are those who believe that bringing up baby all on your own is a lark and if not for the input from all around, your child would not be quite as balanced as one would wish. Perhaps all the breeding for more and more kids has a lot to do with parents trying to create their own mini-village … who knows. I certainly don’t have a clue what it’s all about and I could spend this lifetime and the next trying to figure it out.
Like any crisis that happens en mass, people tend not to individualise in order to better contain it. This seems to be what happens with parenthood – it happens to everyone who has a child so parents are grouped together into one collective and a rule of generalisation is applied to everyone in the collective. But, behind the scenes, there are people screaming in pain at the stress of it. Broken marriages, non-existent sex lives, grey hair and emotionally screwed up children.
It is not easier being part of the collective … ‘the collective’ is not the same as ‘the village’.
Tags: children, collective, family, friends, new parent, parenting, village life
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Friday, August 1st, 2008
Call it the self-righteous attitude … and I have no doubt it has a little something to do with it … but just when you think things are settling back to normal, you realise that the friendship dynamics have gone all screwy. People’s need to procreate excludes them almost completely from regular social contact. And I don’t mean only the actual act of procreation which, in itself, takes that time and effort which no one (in their right mind) is (or ever should be) loathe to give when the circumstances are right (be it fruit-bearing or not … if you know what I mean). I mean the 2.4 children syndrome—yes, syndrome!—that causes families to retreat into their … well, families … and leave little room for friendships. I have most likely mentioned this before because it has a huge effect on me and mine. I am one of four children and never did that prevent my parents from interacting with numerous other families on a regular basis so we could interact and socialise. They didn’t have so many children as an excuse not to do this … what I mean is that they didn’t have subsequent children to provide playmates for previous offspring. (Eish, this is called talking myself into ever decreasing spirals.) More to the point, and what I am really trying to say, is that, as the mother of an only child, I wish people would be happier letting their kids out to play with friends than procreating siblings as a way of creating an insular family that has no need for others. Perhaps knowing my child would always be an only has prompted me to promote in him an independence when it comes to heading off to play with whoever he chooses. I can’t, obviously, speak for others and their reasons for all these quirks that come out of such a natural human condition … but I’m pretty sure whoever came up with 2.4 should be audited.
Tags: families, friends, independent, norm, procreate, self-righteous, siblings, stereotypes
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Friday, February 29th, 2008
People don’t see what you’re doing well as what you’re doing well … they see it as what they aren’t doing well enough
Having studied Developmental Psychology, I always had wonderful (so I thought) snippets of useful (so I thought) theoretical information for those friends in maternal crisis. Not being a mum though, I was always knocked back by the just-wait-until-you-have-a-baby-of-your-own-then-you-will-understand! retort to all of my good (so I thought) advice. So, being a veteran of withstanding this comment, it stands to reason that, having had a baby of my own, I would have the practical back-up experience to offer up advice when a friend-in-maternal-need is having a crisis.
With other mums, there is no reason, no logic and no rational thinking in general. You cease to be the know-it-all and become the know-it-all-mum.
Tags: advice, crisis, friends, know-it-all
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Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
Never believe you can have it all ever again. From the moment you have a baby, there will be oh so many more choices to make and none of them involve choosing the best of everything.
Friends are the first to go … the non-parent friends, that is … and then the holidays … the ones that involve a ticket and a backpack and not much else … and the shopping trips that don’t include formula, toys and Steri-nappi.
I chose to keep the heels. Shopping one day for shoes, with a sleeping baby in a pouch on my chest, I tried on a wicked pair of heels and a pair of flats, trying to decide between the two. A ‘sister’ trying on shoes (out of my zone) caught my attention to offer a very unwelcome piece of advice: “You’ve got a small baby now; you’ll break your neck if you wear those heels.” I had deliberated long enough. “I’ll take them,” I said to the shop assistant … “actually I’ll take both, and I’ll wear this pair now”, I said defiantly pointing at the heels. I shot the turncoat a smug look as I strutted out of there, baby still deep asleep on my chest.
I now wear heels more often than I ever did before. There are some things I just can’t compromise on and there are some things that I just need to make a point about.
Tags: compromise, friends, heels, lifestyle, shoes
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