The Difference

Recently, I heard an article on NPR about why it's hard to make friends in your 30's. You can read it here, but I've cut and pasted my favorite excerpts:

"It was like one of those magical blind-date scenes out of a Hollywood rom-com, without the “rom.” I met Brian, a New York screenwriter, a few years ago through work, which led to dinner with our wives and friend chemistry that was instant and obvious. [...] As Brian and his wife wandered off toward the No. 2 train afterward, it crossed my mind that he was the kind of guy who might have ended up a groomsman at my wedding if we had met in college. That was four years ago. We’ve seen each other four times since. We are “friends,” but not quite friends. We keep trying to get over the hump, but life gets in the way."

"As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other, said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. This is why so many people meet their lifelong friends in college, she added."

"External factors are not the only hurdle. After 30, people often experience internal shifts in how they approach friendship. Self-discovery gives way to self-knowledge, so you become pickier about whom you surround yourself with, said Marla Paul, the author of the 2004 book “The Friendship Crisis: Finding, Making, and Keeping Friends When You’re Not a Kid Anymore.” “The bar is higher than when we were younger and were willing to meet almost anyone for a margarita,” she said."

We've been here in "purgatory" for over a year and a half now, and I've had a revelation.

The difference between civilian and military friends is this: Civilian friends don't need you.

At a regular duty station it's not unreasonable to invite a new, potential friend to come along to try whatever festival is on that weekend in a nearby town. People come over for dinner. People invite you to lunch (you know, so if things go south they/you can always beg off saying you have to get home for nap). You're at someone's house on any given weekend for no reason other than they invited you over and that is how you make friends when you're a million miles away from your old ones.

Military friends need to make new friends because they're probably new, too. And if they're not new, their close friends probably just moved away. And if neither of those are true, they are just nice people who know it's hard to be new and know Army life is easier with Army Family nearby. Here, everyone is where they've always been, around the people they've always been around, and therefore don't have the drive to make another friend - which, as I showed you earlier, isn't exactly easy in the first place. There is someone here that could easily have become a close friend if circumstances were different. But having kids/jobs/spouses make it hard to get together if you're not especially motivated and people here don't have the kind of motivation - because they don't need new friends. It's not wrong. No one is at fault. It just is what it is.

But all this becomes painfully evident when I admit, with a somewhat heavy heart (and bruised ego), that not one of our "civilian friends" came to Grant's birthday party. Only one of them had RSVP'd, so I wasn't pinning all my hopes on everyone coming - but in my experience, people outside the military are pretty bad at RSVP'ing so I was still hoping some of them would come and show my little boy how much fun birthday parties full of friends can be. But that didn't happen. And I suppose it was just as well, because after the cupcake and sangria debacle we would have run out of cake anyway!

I'm not a person who gets their feelings hurt easily. And I don't get embarrassed all that easily, either. But in this case I was both. I went through the trouble of planning the party, cooking, decorating, I even had Mandy separate the red, yellow and orange candies for a centerpiece for heaven's sake (color scheme, ya know... - and it looked awesome, BTW!). I don't mind doing all those things for my family and closest friends (we still had a full house of guests), and for my sweet baby's birthday, but I felt a little silly when all but one family that came was in on the decorating and the tear down. I felt a little awkward that the following Sunday at church I was met with a million more apologies (okay, maybe just 3) and "were going to come, but..."'s, all in front of the others, and I am CERTAIN there were sideways glances exchanged when they came to the realization that they ALL missed the party. I was gracious. (I don't have any right to be mad, and I'm not - people have lives, and I TOTALLY understand. The story just serves to prove my point.) And luckily, the others that came are great kids that he loves to play with and close friends and family he doesn't see often enough - and he really wasn't any the wiser. But he will be someday, and I hope it's when we're back near Army Family again - I trust military friends with my babies hearts a little more easily, I think. They know it can be harder than it looks to make friends and feel a sense of family on days that should be spent with you're whole family but can't be. They're the only ones who COULD understand.

Well... Or this could have happened anywhere because maybe we're just totally and completely unlikable and I haven't gotten the memo yet.