Sometimes I miss girls.
Before I was married, I lived with women and I worked with women and I traveled with women. I love my husband and I'm happy to be married, but I miss daily interaction with women.
When I fuss that I need girlfriends in Scotland, Steve offers to have "girl talk" conversations with me. He assures me that he can discuss feelings and not problem solve, which is his stated understanding of the difference between male and female conversation (based on my apparently woefully ineffective descriptions of interactions between female friends). And then he tries to find me friends at church and at his university, because he's nice. Really, though, when I complain that I need girls, I mean that I want my sister and the Coordinatrix and Kirsten to come live in our backyard. We have a lovely drying green that I'm sure they'd all enjoy.
Women at church are so lovely and mothers of the children Steve and I work with tell me to call them if I need a chat, but that strikes me as an awkward proposition. I'm not sure how to make girlfriends with married women yet. It's a skill I need to develop, but since Steve and I have been married, most of my conversations with married women have come to a point at which I get asked about our plans for a family, followed by long, and progressively more gruesome, birth stories involving forceps and lawsuits. I do not find these conversations pleasant.
My darling, red-headed Lydia's mother was the most recent person to extend a 'let-me-know-if-you-need-a-chat' invitation, but I think it would be easier to call up Lydia and ask her if she wants to come play charades and eat brownies (which, in my experience, is what she always wants to do). I would be guaranteed a forceps-free conversation with Lydia.
Anyway, I can put off Learning to Be Friends with Married Ladies for a bit, because my friend Alice is coming to visit from the US this afternoon. She's fully qualified in girl talk and she's never ever tried to discuss forceps with me. Whee!
3 comments:
That is so funny! I was just talking to my friend in Edmonton who is feeling the same way. You feel so isolated when you do not have children at church.
It is also hard once you are married adjusting to everything. I found that I did not know how to talk to men anymore. They scared me. All the women in the ward thought that I was 18 or 19 since Ed and I had just married. That annoyed me, since thyey treated me like that. All they wanted to do was talk about kids anyway. Then the people at my new job were not very nice either. It sucked.
So needless to say I know what you are going through. I remember thinking that the marriage had been a nice experience and I would like to go home now. I loved Ed I just hated being away from my friends and my old job. Anyway I stuck with it and new people came to work with me and I made some friends, it is much better now.
It will get better there too. I promise.
Perhaps I can tell you some great forceps stories next time you call so you will not want me in your backyard anymore. Or is that not what you were after? p.s. after almost ten years of marriage and four children I don't feel much like I belong to the married-with-children club myself, so it might just be genetic.
And I thought I had it bad being around single women that it's hard to be friends with. I don't want to talk about how hard school is all the time, or if I think the sales guys are cuter or not than the missionaries. But I hear ya on the married women thing. It's always birthing stories that come up, or "I know more about children than you do because I actually have them" remarks in my direction. And the ever-present "When will you get married because it isn't THAT hard to find someone" either because they were married young or forgot what it's like to be in the dating world.
*sigh*
I'll play a round of Dalmuti in your honor.
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