Thoughts on friendships after marriage & setting appropriate expectations
This is a topic that I have been holding to myself for quite some time, mostly because I didn't know how to quite phrase what I wanted to say. I still don't think I am going to do the best job but I wanted to hear what other peoples thoughts.
I'm someone who has always valued my few friendships very highly. My dad drilled into me at a young age that it is better to have fewer, high quality friendships than a plethora of not very meaningful relationships.
As people age and move on to different stages in their life, I completely understand that some people might not have the same amount of time to give you in a day that they previously used to. People get busy, have relationships, get married, etc. Which brings me to my situation and how I feel:
I have a friend who I've known since high school, and we're both 30 now. We've always been pretty good friends and in our later 20's we got even closer. I would say that we both deviate from the 'typical' unemotional guys who don't share how they feel with others. Both him and I would let us know what's going on in our lives and how it made us feel, etc. During this time, he was in a relationship (which he was not super happy with, due to some actions his partner did), but would share some of his more inner thoughts with me rather than her. They weren't the best at communicating with one another.
Fast forward two to three years, I got married, my friend broke up with his then partner. He moved back to his parents place, and the time before my marriage (I lived with my parents and had access to a car) I would try and visit him as often as I can just to hang out at night, or to see how he's doing. I've even driven over at midnight just to hangout with him until 4 AM because he was feeling lonely.
He congratulated me online (my wedding took place in another country, and I know none of my friends could afford to, or would not want to, travel just for a ceremony, so I didn't really invite anyone) but also indirectly told me he was jealous that I was married and stuff and he wasn't. For him, getting married is a much bigger deal than it is for me, I never really minded being single or alone. Please don't misconstrue this as me not being appreciative of my wife. She is very dear to me and I always to provide the best for her.
Fast forward another 2 years, and my friend got married to someone he met online. Since then our friendship has been mostly one sided almost. I had to initiate almost every conversation, and it's like messaging a blank wall, there's no reciprocation, and if there is it is very shallow. On top of that, we hang out much less as well (which I get, you do have to give a certain amount of commitment and attention to your spouse) so messaging is the main way to keep in touch.
Don't get me wrong, I've had this happen to me plenty of times. Mostly in university, had a couple of really good friends (or so I thought), as soon as they get a girlfriend, most of them forget I even exist. Maybe I expected more because I've known him for so long, or maybe I should expect less and accept that in the way our current society is shaped people start forming a bubble around themselves past a certain point in their life and you're no longer included in it.
Maybe this post came off as me being really entitled, I don't know. I just wanted to vent my frustrations somewhere. What does everyone on here think about relationships with their friends when you're married? Are you okay with seeing them less often? Is this just an expected outcome of being married?
Just wait until they have children; you'll never hear from him again. Look, life is tough and it's busy. Most of my lifelong friends never reach out to me. I make it a point to text all of my friends on their birthdays, but none of them do it for me. I know I'm busy and exhausted and can't maintain friendships, I know they're the same way. But I've literally made it a point, put birthdays in contacts so I get reminders, and I send a text to just let them know I'm thinking about them. I just had my birthday, and no friends texted at all (some family only). Putting peoples' birthdays in your calendar and texting them is literally the least you can do to let people know you still care about them. I feel like I'm putting forth such a tiny amount of effort, and yet nobody else does shit. And these are people I've had wonderful relationships with, and if we saw each other tomorrow it would be a glorious reunion.
We live in a crazy, isolated, capitalist hellhole where you have to hyper-focus on your individualism. You need to cut the people you love some slack because otherwise you just become another cog. It's only going to get worse as you get older and get further from the real relationships you had with these people, but that's just the way our society is constructed. It's sad and it just fucking sucks. Focus on meeting and loving new people who fit better into your current lifestyle, and don't mourn them too hard if/when they dissipate. Enjoy the great times you've had with great people, and just keep growing.
I find birthday wishes these days to be meaningless noise, particularly if it’s one of only a few contacts with someone a year. We (broadly) send and receive them because our calendar/facebook/seeing-others-post reminds us and there’s a social expectation, not because we’re genuinely thinking of and missing each other.
This doesn’t apply if the birthday wishes have some real effort behind it to reconnect, like asking and telling about specific things in your lives. Think snail mail letter rather than “it’s been a while. how’s life?” If we can’t be bothered to write the former, I’d rather nothing than a generic “Happy Birthday!” “Thanks!” exchange with everyone.
I’m glad to hear you get so many birthday wishes that they’re just noise to you! I’m not on social media, so people aren’t alerted to my birthday. If someone wants to remember my birthday, they have to purposefully do it. And as little as I care about my birthday, a quick text from a friend wouldn’t be noise to me. Social media wishes seem fake and vacuous, because social media is often just minor connections and many people feel they must perform. A personal text from a legitimate friend is as far from noise as you can get.
If you’re just texting on their birthdays though, how legitimate is it?
Just because you don’t talk to people for a while doesn’t mean you’re not friends. It just means life is getting in the way.
I never really developed a good habit to celebrate people's birthdays. A big part of that is because I don't particularly care about my own.
But I'm making a better effort to remember them for others. We had a close friend staying with us a couple months ago and she mentioned that her birthday had recently passed and hadn't heard from me. Knowing that she noticed resonated with me. So every time birthdays come up I'm diligently adding calendar reminders and adding them to contacts so that I don't miss as many.
An important principle to me is that we don't build connection communicating "our way" but my understanding how to communicate to others. I wouldn't care at all if a friend didn't text on my birthday, it would be more meaningful if they texted on a random day to catch up. But if birthdays are important to the people I care about I need to make the effort to show up.
I whole-heartedly disagree, although I understand why you view such birthday wishes as noise.
I get that for some, the only reason they get prompted to reach out and say hello is because social media tells them when someone's birthday is celebrated. For others, life gets so busy between the career, children, family life, and such that it's easy to let communication fall through the cracks.
Speaking for myself, I wake early (~5-6am local time) to get off to work, and return home late (~5pm local time). When I get home, I spend the time with my kids, my wife, and my dog. When dinner, reading books, and bedtime are wrapped up, it is often past 9pm - and in my personal belief, people don't really want to be cold-called, even by friends, that late.
So for me, phone calls and the like often fall to weekends - when people are their most busy with their personal lives. I schedule the calls when I can; but asynchronous text messaging and stuff like Facebook messages helps to keep me in touch in those brief moments when I can catch my breath.
This is my struggle as well. I'm trying to be more conscious about my low value internet time. I might scroll instagram for 15 minutes, or I could send some texts to people I haven't talked to recently.
For me, it really comes down to the message itself, like I mentioned.
A bare “Happy birthday!” or “happy birthday! How’s life?” are practically automated. Lowest possible effort, not a single thought necessary, and in most cases just a reflex prompted by social media (or a calendar alert, functionally the same). Those are the noise.
On the other hand, something more thoughtful and personal which shows they actually spent time thinking about me and us, is wonderful. Less Tweet, more letter. Not this exactly this of course, but you get the idea: “Happy #th birthday! Jeez, time really flies. How’s [spouse] and [kid]? They must be starting [grade] now. Saw you picked up [hobby] this year. Finally! Now we can [hobby] together!” Ideally followed by a conversation, or at least a few back and forth semi-letters.
I suppose we have very different opinions about the nature of keeping in touch with people then.
Thanks for the effort in the reply. I do have some questions for you though.
If you are doing the bare minimum like you say you are, and your friends are essentially ignoring you for years on end (I'm assuming so with the way you wrote your message), do you have a threshold for when you would consider them your 'ex-friends'? Personally if I had a friendship which is at the level your current ones are, I probably would not consider those individuals my friends, peoples entire lives can be switched over a long course of time, and you're not there to partake in any of it, they might not even be the same person that you remember. Of course, this is less likely when you're older and thought processes and personalities are more concrete, but in your 30s I would like to think that peoples minds are still more malleable than not.
They’ll never be my ex-friends. When I eventually see them again sometime in life, we’ll pick up where we left off. You’re young now, but in another decade when your friends spread out even further, necessarily have to focus on their own lives and families instead of you, I think you’ll understand a bit better. Friendships ebb and flow. And honestly, friendship is a two way street. If I reached out to any of these people, they’d happily take my call and we would catch up. But I don’t do it, they don’t do it. Life just gets away from you sometimes, I guess.
I've lost touch with many people I consider friends over the years, I would consider none of them ex-friends. There's only one person I consider an ex-friend and that's because I've deliberately chosen to cut them out, as they committed some pretty serious crimes and then went to prison for it.
If we've just lost touch, we've lost touch, but we had a good time until then. Relationships are transitory and are there at particular times in your life and not in others, that's just how it is. Some persist, most don't.
I'm in a very similar situation to this! I also have my calendar with friends and family birthdays, and I shoot them a quick text to say happy birthday and ask how things have been. Most can't be bothered to reciprocate. Things really fell off a cliff when I deleted my Facebook account what feels like ages ago now. I feel like people just lazily relied on that to feed them my birthday, and when it stopped showing up in their feed, they never questioned it.
I don't mind being the one to put in the majority of effort, I just don't want to be the only one doing so. If things do become a one way street, I'll just start to put in less effort with those people and seek to place it elsewhere. Making new friends in your 30s is difficult but not impossible.
Like OP, I had a similar situation happen to me with one of my best friends. I empathize with their situation a lot. There wasn't a particular moment I could peg the friendship as having changed, more that it slowly kind of just seemed like they were less and less interested in the relationship.
I agree with your general message. But regarding birthdays: personally I prefer to send people messages when I see or hear something that makes me think of them. I don't really care too much for giving or receiving birthday messages.
For example - a friend of mine really likes Tiki bars. So when I went to a really nice one I told him about it and even got him the bar's cocktail book later as a spontaneous gift. I don't think I've ever sent this guy a birthday message, though.
Meh, I don’t really think birthday wishes are the least you could do. I mostly don’t wish my friends happy birthday unless I happen to already be talking to them on or right near their birthdays, and the same goes the other way around. It seems like just such a default, meaningless thing to do, such that the only people who consistently wish me a happy birthday are random acquaintances I don’t know that just saw it pop up on Facebook or something.
I would say the bare minimum for friends to do is to reach out, unprompted, every few months or so. If someone doesn’t do that for me, I no longer really consider them a friend. Birthday wishes don’t really matter to a lot of people, so before you get upset at other people for not doing them, you should consider that.
oooof. I feel this in my soul. For all those I have lost, I always hope that they have found someone.
How long has it been since your friend got married? I think getting wrapped up inyour relationship is common enough when you move to a new stage in your life like that, but obviously it lingering for a while after that changes the calculus there.
Ftr, you don't come off as entitled to me in this post. I don't think I have much good advice for you unfortunately, but you come off as perfectly reasonable to me.
A couple of months. However he's been living with his wife for last 2-3 (they had a long distance relationship at first)
Combined with the long distance bit, I think it's possible this is a phase that will pass naturally. I obviously can't guarantee that, but I do think just continuing to be there and reaching out to him occasionally for a while may result in him opening back up to you eventually. It's easy to lose yourself in a relatively new relationship scenario like this for several months, especially if you quite recently made another big transition like moving in together from a formerly long-distance relationship.
Oh that's very fresh still.
When I was a kid I looked at my parents' "friendships" and scoffed: they haven't even seen each other for like, 10+ years! Now that I'm their age, I understand that sheer distance and number of things going on make them that way. They were real friends still, even if they didn't want the friendship to look like that
If you'll indulge me for a moment, and please don't take this as a criticism of you or your decisions - but rather, as a perspective you may not have considered. This statement jumped out at me, because it rankled me a bit (emphasis mine):
I understand that your wedding took place in a location that made it prohibitively expensive and/or time-consuming for people to attend. But to some extent, the way you framed it ... you made that decision for other people, including your close friend, for whom you'd drive out at all hours to spend time with. It is entirely possible that they took it as a slight that you didn't even consider inviting them.
For my part, I value being invited to events, even if I can't actually make it. To me, it means that I am included, that those whom invited me value my presence in their life. I value the invitation even if the expectation is that I would be unable to attend, because at least it becomes my choice.
All of that said ...
I'm in my 40s now. The nature of what friendship looks like to me has changed, even since my 30s. Friendship used to take the form of afternoons spent playing videogames on the couch, or jumping in the car to get up to some good-natured mischief. Then, as I grew out of high school and into college, it became going to parties and training in martial arts together.
After college, when me and many of my friends went our separate ways in the world, it became online gaming together. It became phone calls and text messages too. It became visits to other cities, when able, to spend time together. Over time, those things became less frequent - friends got married, they had kids, their careers developed to the point that they had little free time.
Now, in my 40s, I don't have a lot of close friends that live locally. Part of that is because of the person I am/have become, and a big part of that is because of a life juggling two small children, a wife, a decades-long career, and a dog. I do not spend time with my friends the way I used to - and they cannot spend time with me (or others) the same way either. One of my dearest friends lives a few hours away, and we hardly see each other except for rare opportunities. Even then, we still text each other.
From everything you've said, you're still in the early years of marriage, and your friend just got married themselves. You've both got a lot of time-juggling to attend to. I imagine the pressure is now on you and your spouse to have kids; your friend may be feeling the same pressure despite the early stage of their marriage. This is all on top of having busy jobs/careers too, along with other responsibilities. You're not getting any younger, and neither are your parents or the rest of your family - with aging comes even more responsibilities to attend to on that front.
There's a lot of things that are certainly demanding time of you and your friend alike. It can be easy to feel slighted when communication isn't as snappy as it used to be; I would give your friend (and yourself) some grace on that front. If they don't reply as quickly or as thoroughly as they used to, it might not be because they don't value your friendship - it might be because they've already got a lot going on.
I should have given a more thorough explanation about this part, sorry. At this time, COVID was at its height with the omnicron variant, but I still personally reached out to three of my friends (one of them being the one mentioned in the post above) saying 'you're all more than invited to come to the wedding, and it would be great if you can, but don't feel pressured at all if you cannot, I completely understand.' Or something along those lines.
With the way the current socioeconomic conditions of the country I live in is, fortunately I do not have plans to do so any time soon, if ever.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply :)
Distilling complex issues only from text is always fraught with error, so if I end up being full of shit, feel free to ignore me.
I don't think this is particularly normal. I think all of us have had this happen with a friend or two, but it certainly shouldn't be the norm.
It made me wonder - do you think it's at all possible that you were taking the place of a girlfriend for these guys, emotionally?
You put a lot of emphasis on the deep emotional connection as well as how much you were there for them:
It's difficult because there is nothing wrong with being present for guy friends. That's not what I'm trying to convey. It's only because you're saying that most of your guy friends vanish after they start seeing someone that makes me think you might've been ending up in the "intimate partner" emotional space accidentally. Did you find that almost every time you hung out was an emotional affair with a lot of discussion about feelings, etc? Did you ever simply have fun?
Haha your comment was the most thought provoking (in an amusing way, I enjoyed it a lot, thanks).
I've only made a 'friend or two' in university myself (I don't easily consider people I meet a friend, I put a lot of weight on that word) so my sample size is quite literal. I could have just had bad luck twice in a row. I don't know if I was filling in an emotional void that they wanted to fill, or they were more communicative with their problems than 'the average guy', but it was more than I expected I guess. If I were to humble brag, I've had multiple people (girls and guys alike) saying I am extremely easy to open up to, so maybe the felt less judged as well? I'm not sure.
Oh yeah, with the individual I mentioned in the OP, we've had lots of fun together, from sleep overs, being out late, playing video games (both together and online), and various other things. It definitely was not just sessions of emotional therapy or whatever lol, sorry if I made it seem that way.
Cool. Glad to hear that wasn't the problem!
As the saying goes:
People are selfish. Yes even the good ones. As with anything else, there are degrees of what someone is in certain areas. Some are less selfish, some are more. Same as some are less or more adventurous, less or more studious, and so on.
Which is to say, people write you out of their lives when it's either convenient for them, or when keeping you on the page is more complicated/difficult than they're willing to accept. Marriage is a huge lifestyle change that often precipitates this.
Sometimes it's because of the influence of their new spouse. For example, someone I knew got married, and the spouse - who had been a regular member of the circle of friends - decided to be a homebody and that their partner needed to be as well since "if (they) love me, they should want to be with me." That was pretty much the end of the friend being able to be out and about doing more than very minor, casual friend things. No more weekends, no more multiple nights during the week; nada. Go home and be with the spouse.
Sometimes it's because they themselves are more interested in (pick any of a variety of words to replace interested if you think it fits better, such as eager, or desiring, etc) in spending time with their spouse. You used to have a role, filled a need for them or offered something they wanted, and now they have their spouse so they get their needs and wants filled mostly from that.
And of course the usual life stuff, like time, and energy, wondering how to fit it all in between work and sleep, and so on.
Something that's important to someone, they make time for it. That's just the bottom line. Someone who tells you "I'm busy" really means "I'm too busy for (whatever was being asked about)." Because if that same person, in the same week or whatever, has something they do care enough about, they'll have time for that. And that could be a concert, or seeing someone, or engaging in an activity, whatever. If they like that sufficiently, they'll probably find time for it; and if not immediately, then in the future because they'll take steps to restructure things so they can engage in that, since that makes them happy.
People change. People are selfish. Even really nice people. Being selfish doesn't necessarily mean someone's a manically cackling villain; it just means they're prioritizing themselves. They could talk to you, come over, invite you over ... but they're not. Why? Because whatever they're doing with their time, it's more important.
Sometimes you don't even need to have a body on hand to find out if someone's actually a friend. Sometimes it could just be that they stop having time to talk on the phone, or come to game night, or stop in at the bar.
Real friends help you movie bodies. Acquaintances often won't even help you move, body or not. You know because they disappear about the time boxes might show up.
Good advice from an acquaintance of mine: Friendships are like the sea. Sometimes the tide is in, and sometimes the tide is out. The fact that you don't see them much right now doesn't mean the friendship is over. Things evolve, and it's okay to let them be.
All of that said... I'm sorry you're going through this. I can empathize. I recently noticed that I was always the initiator for a group I hang out with, and that they seemed fairly... indifferent when we did hang out? I stopped initiating and the get togethers stopped happening. I've decided to put my energy elsewhere, but of course it still stings.
I'm sorry you had to go through a similar scenario :/
Sucks that you took all the onus to organize hangouts with your friends and they didn't seem to care. I hope you're able to meet new people who would be more willing to reciprocate your efforts.
In an ideal marriage (which very few are, mind you!), your spouse should be someone like your best friend: it's awesome to be with this person, you enjoy similar activities... and forgive me for sounding like a (hopeless) romantic, but you want to be with this person as much as possible, because you're happy being with them. After all, you married them- you're going to be spending a very significant portion of your time and life with them. They're going to take priority over anything else that's not 100% essential to life. This means that a lot of friendships get lost along the way.
(and all this coming from a single guy who hasn't even dated in months... so feel free to take what I say with a grain of salt).
And this is just talking about marriage. Often, adult friendships are hard- I've found that if I'm not dedicating a very specific time to hang out with my current friends, I'm probably not going to hang out with them at all. Between day jobs keeping people busy and then feeling exhausted at night, to wanting to use weekends for personal recharge (this varies on the person, mind you!)... in my case, I can't just do a "Hey let's meet up for some time and hang out and chat" kind of thing these days- I have to schedule this kind of thing. And then it depends on what their own schedule is like...
Haha, I appreciate your passion for the subject, but I would say I am definitely not a 'hopeless romantic' type. Like you said, I married my partner and I intend to spend the rest of my life with them (which hopefully will be a decent while), why can't I then have the 'luxury' of spending time with my friends who I shared so much of my life with previously, when I know I am going to be spending the majority of my remaining life span with the same person?
And you're 100% right, adult friendships suck compared to highschool university ones... I'll always miss the free time I had lol.
For me, relationships with my friends aren't impacted by the fact that I'm married.
My husband and I tend to share friends (just seems to happen naturally as we get to know them while they're around our spouse,) and we tend to develop relationships with our friends' partners as well. When people date or marry in our friend group, it generally just seems to add to the little community we have around us. I am lucky to have had no problems getting along with any of our friends' partners, as they tend to either have great taste in partners (or simply not date people for very long or often.) We have married friends, dating friends, and single friends, and I wouldn't say any of the friendships are different from one another based on their relationship status.
If anything, our friendships with solid married couples are little less ...intimate, maybe? Because we tend to hang out 2x2 rather than any of us getting together 1x1.
Have you met this friend's new wife? If not, and you'd like to continue a relationship with your friend, maybe consider communicate your interest in meeting her. When people are moving into new phases of life, it can be good to communicate your interest in that phase of their life.
I'm not sure what's going on with your friend, of course, but if I were in your position and wanted to give the friendship more chances, I'd lean in that direction and try not to make assumptions about the wife or what role she may have played in the friendship becoming distant.
If he doesn't respond, or continues to be standoffish, the friendship may have finished its course. Which is sad, but also a very normal part of life. The feeling of awkwardness passes with time. To me, the most important thing it to give it a decent chance before giving up, so at least you know you tried and it wasn't just caused by miscommunications/assumptions. (I am not accusing you of making assumptions, just mentioning that since a lot of friendships seem to fade due to assumptions that one or both people don't want to continue it. Many of us don't communicate with our friends as much as we could.)
I've met her two or three times. She is nice, but not someone that I think I would find a friend in. But two or three times of meeting someone in a very limited scenario is a relatively poor sample size, so I could be wrong about that.
Yeah, this is something that I empathize with a lot. I have two friends that have been in my life since I was kid (also in my thirties now). We went to school, played sports, all went to separate colleges but still played video games online over the weekend, and got together once a year for occasions. But things started fracturing for us after we all wrapped up with university.
Friend A - very similar to your friend. I was there for him during times of need and we life advice between each other for years. We stayed up many nights playing video games until like 2-3 AM. But he started a job and got a new friend group, and then things started changing. He eventually married someone from that friend group and had a kid. I didn't know he got married until two months after when he finally told me for whatever reason. I couldn't make it to his baby shower, so instead of buying airline tickets and hotel, I bought the most expensive thing on his list. Not even a thank you was sent for that. Just last year I put together one last friend group meeting on his birthday and paid for his flight and a lot of the activities. Not even a thank you again. Sometimes he will text us and say he misses us, but when talks to us he doesn't even ask about us or out lives. He doesn't even know I am married now. After his birthday, I just decided to pull back everything and stop putting effort into the relationship.
Friend B - probably my longest and best friend. Doesn't call, doesn't text, and won't initiate any conversation. He has never travelled to any of the places I have lived or taken me up on any offers to come and visit with all travel expenses coming from me. He works six days a week so I don't really hold it against him. I was planning to buy a house near where he was living but ultimately, I just felt I should do what is best for me and do my own thing.
My dad said something that resonated with me prior to deciding to pull back, "It sounds like they don't love you the way that you love them."
And that is true. I put a lot of work into the relationships and did my best to keep them glued together. If they want to talk to me, I will always be available. I'm a phone call away with an open door for them and their family anytime. I just have to move on and forge my own path, making it what I want instead of lamenting what it could have been.
Wow, you definitely went above and beyond for those guys. I am slightly envious of the way you're handling it frustrated on your behalf that they treated you that way. You have a much bigger hear than I do, I think lol.
If I had a 'friend' that I deemed my best friend, who doesn't call, doesn't text, and never even talks to you in the first place, I just don't know how that would fit my own definition of 'friend', never mind best friend.
Well the thing is that Friend B just has a different life than me. I traveled all over the US and been around the world, have a high paying job, and I am married. Until recently he lived with his parents, never been in a relationship, and is always working. Nothing inherently wrong with his lifestyle, but maybe he needs some space to grow, branch out, and do his own thing. If there is space for me in his life, I can make room in mine. Friend A, I'm not so interested in being his friend as he is right now. There is a bit of self centeredness that I can't look past from the past five or so years.
To be honest, it also doesn't sting as much anyways because even my own family doesn't call or message me unless I make contact first. For example, I call my dad once a week usually but if I don't, he won't call me. One year, I only talked to my mom twice because again she never calls me. I can count the number of times I have had a phone conversation with one sister in my hand. The other sister I call more often because she has kids and we can chat whenever I am free.
The biggest thing I can think of is just the way Americans engage with each other these days just isn't based on direct messaging and calls anymore. I am not on any social media site so maybe not being in that mindspace just doesn't translate to reaching out more.
One thing that's really helped me cultivate kindness for friends that no longer have time for me is to start viewing friendships as seasons. Relationships will wax and wane, sometimes dissapearing for months before coming back for a short stint. Some relationships that were once really good will just slowly fade away, their season being over - it was just time for it to end. Though there are still those friendships which will endure and not waver, I no longer begrudge those friends whose time to move on has come. This viewpoint has really softened the blow with a couple of lifelong friends who I just know won't ever really be there in the same capacity that they were before, we live on different continents now and they're in a different stage of life with kids.
I am really dismayed by all the people here giving support to the notion that having a new SO, spouse, or even child, means that it's expected or even acceptible that you will never see those people again. It's not and that very idea is a negative construct of our society. Anecdotally, I know many couples who still manage to socialize even with children. Taking turns going out, integrating their whole family into celebrations and get togethers, or even having a sitter to get some time for themselves. Couples who have trouble maintaining any semblance of a social life, even as parents, are falling victim to needlessy overcomplications of modern society. Mostly this means that they are very lacking in quality time, in a variety of senses. Electronic distractions and endless consumption can make people feel like they don't have a lot of spare time and can also disrupt restful periods needed to recharge. Research also shows that in the case of parenting, quality of time is much better than quantity of time. Despite modern predeliction to helicopter parenting, it's okay to step away to live your life and expect that your children will not be worse of from it. In fact, children may be better off with quality time with parents who are rested and socially recharged. I've found that in my own personal life something as simple as putting my phone away when I get home and concentrating on hobbies, rest, and face-to-face personal connections has greatly improved my quality of life and decreased my stress levels - my never ending sense of being overly burdened and burnt out quickly evaporated as I started giving myself quality time and that allowed me to give others quality time with myself. I was nevergiving people the best version of me as long as I was a ball of stress and tired from a poor night's sleep.
Now it would be pretty difficult to convince your vanishing friends to disengage from technology, step back from their children, and give more focus to themselves and their own well being and that being rested and fulfilled allows us to give the best of ourselves to others. Difficult but not impossible, it may be worth a try if they're the type of friends open to these kinds of conversations and willing to try something different in their lives. Otherwise, it's not a lost cause. There are in fact people who recognize everything I've said above and manage to remain social despite life changes, challenging schedules, and the task of even raising multiple children. Find those people and cultivate a community of people willing to celebrate that community routinely and openly and also, hopefully, a community who are willing to be their with each other to help pick up the slack of each other's lives in one way or another in order that everyone in that community has a moment to breath and live.
I've seen the type of people who cultivate communities and quality time and they always have a few traits in common: they value human connection, they tend to be (but not always are) less consumerist (more money, less stress, less trips to stores), and use technology and especially social media less than most. They also usually have an air of intentionality probably because they actively reflect on life and are more sure about what they want from it. Again, these are all things afforded by giving ourselves quality time.
I'm so sorry for what you've gone through with your friends, I've been there mself. It's not easy and despite what society tells us, the death of a close friendship can be painful like the end of a romantic partnership or the death of a loved one. Please try to be charitible with your friend, most likely there is no spite from his side it's just the season of that friendship moving on. Take this as a learning lesson of what you want and need from friendship and try to find friends who are more likely to stick with you through thick an thin. I know that's not at all easy as adults in the modern age but if you find the right people who give themselves enough quality time, they will be ready and able to give you time as well
Most people are busy, far too busy to think about setting up social events when they have a million things they need to do. It is a symptom of our society which places too much emphasis on work and consumerism, leaving too little time to oneself and relaxation. I know that I have two days off, meaning all the things I want to do or accomplish are restricted to those days (fix the car, exercise, be creative, be an engaged parent, etc.).
My only advice is this: I can't recall the term, but it was essentially being the "friend sherpa". If you feel like you're lacking socialisation from your friends, be the "sherpa", carry the communication burden and reach out. Organise a hang out, with objective times and dates - nothing ambiguous. Shoulder that responsibility and see how much more social your group may be. If you find they can't, or won't, reciprocate, then decide if its worthwhile continuing to be the organiser. Think about how busy you are, and understand that they are the same, and are not doing this to spite you. Just as you are not avoiding reaching out to others in spite of them.
Having recently gone through a separation, it is so so important to maintain friendships. Couples tend to start amalgamating friends (hence the disappearing friends), and then when there is a separation, they tend to choose a side. You need to have some support networks, and the best way is to begin reaching out.
I don't have any advice but wanted to say that I share your experiences, I've not gone through some of the things that you have but some themes you brought up I've noticed in my own life.
Now the main problem I've found is, it's really hard to make friends at my age. It often feels like no matter what you do, you'll always end up putting more effort than you had to previously for the same or less benefit. All that said, wanna be friends?
Just jumping in to say that be careful of thinking people are selfish because it's human nature to be selfish. It is not.
Being selfish is a product of our society. It is a two way street. There is no such thing as human nature.
That said, I am recently married and living in another city 2h away from my hometown. Luckily my friends are the same friends I grew up with since I was 8 years old or less (we are all almost 40 now). So once or twice every month I'm back to visit my parents and we all hang out to drink and chat.
In my current city my only friends are my dogs and wife. It's funny because she is more shy and introverted than I, but she made friends at work and sometimes we go out with them. She even traveled together with her work friend.
I think woman have an easier time making friends because they tend to open up and bond more easily.