Girls need girlfriends. It is one of those non negotiable things. Girlfriends are there for us, they listen and give advice. They like to shop and lunch and giggle. A funny thing happens when we get married. We feel like we don't need girlfriends. We are told our whole life that when we get married we will come together with our husbands and complete each other... we will become a whole person. Most people I know interpreted that to mean we don't need friends anymore.
Friends are hard for newlyweds. Each had friends before the marriage, and sometimes the new spouses don't get along so well with the old friends. Some couples feel like they have to be friends with the whole couple, and that they can only do things as a couple now that they are one.
I think it is worse for women married to men who have SSA. There are so many qualities that make our men so much more desirable to women. They are sensitive and caring, they are emotional and in touch with feelings, more than their OSA (opposite sex attracted ) counterparts. This makes them more attractive to women. They can get a long with women! They often identify more with women. They can relate to them. This makes them the perfect husband, they can be our husband and our girlfriend! It's a two-fer :)
I think it gave me the license, a person who doesn't want to put myself out there, to not need to make an effort to stay connected with my old girlfriends, or make new ones. I think having children just made it worse for me. Now I had even more people who depend on me, I don't have time to make new friends.
One problem with this is that as our husbands get healthier and start to make friends, we can get jealous ( a different post about jealousy). Another problem is that as they draw closer to becoming whole men, they move farther away from being our girlfriends.
Now comes our challenge. We have spent years, some of us, turning away the chance for friends, close girlfriends, in order to be there for and with our husbands, and now they don't need us in that way, or want to be our girlfriends. Sad. Now we need to learn how to be and make girlfriends. That is my goal, to make new friends and to be a good friend. I want to be there for my new friends, I know there are women out there that I can help and that need my help. I hope there is a way to find them, or that they can find me.
