Friends that you and dh have in common (other families or couples)

[plain jane]

How did you and dh come to meet and get to know other couples or families that you are friends with and get together with?

 

I just realized that in the 15 years dh and I have been married every single one of those couples/families have been women I met first and then invited over for supper, etc. Never once has dh branched out and introduced me to anyone new. This isn't an issue except that now several of those families have moved away and dh and I are left with little in terms of other families/couples we get together with. I feel like the onus is on me to go out and meet new people but that can be a hard thing to do when I am trapped in the house all day teaching my kids. :p I feel like if I want to make new friends to replace the ones that have moved away it's up to me and that's a tall order- to find not only a woman I click with but also that she has a dh I think mine will get along with as well.

 

I have several of my own friends that I see regularly (weekly) but we do not do things together as families outside of just us and the kids. No weekend meals or outings together. I'm ok with this but I miss having other families we'd share a weekly meal with or hang out together and go places.

 

I was just wondering if we're really weird in this regard and how other people have come to meet their friends.

[Koerarmoca]

In the past usually we met other couples through church. Now that we moved across country kinda feel like we are on an island.

[Kelly1730]

All of our couple friends are people we meet through church. We are blessed!;)

[Dandelion]

I don't think it's all that unusual.

 

DH and I used to have more *couple friends* that were mutual friends of ours (we all worked together at the same company for the most part). Over the years, we've moved or our friends moved, so as far as local friends go, we now have separate groups of friends. I have girlfriends that I see on a regular basis. Several of them are divorced so there's no husband for DH to hang out with. DH has his own friends. We have couples we're friends with who live in other states that we see on occasion when we visit or they come here. I would like it to be different, but it just hasn't worked out that way. In the grand scheme of things, it's more of a "nice to have" than a "must have" for me.

[JumpyTheFrog]

The number of families I know where the men are actively involved in inviting people over is limited. They all belong to our previous cultic church. Outside of there, it seems like men just don't think of it or care. The wives do most of the social planning.

 

Based on my family and DH's family, I'm pretty convinced that if all the women died, the men wouldn't get together even for Christmas.

[In the Rain]

My dh has had coworkers over for dinner. Sometimes I have hit it off with the wife of the couple, and we have all become friends. We have mainly made friends through church, or by dh finding things in common with the husbands of my hs friends. We seem to entertain often. It gives us lots of chances to interact with different people.

[bobbeym]

DH and I don't have a lot of mutual friends. Most of my friends are ladies from church or moms from our HS group, plus the few friends that carried over from my own high school years. But I do want to share a funny story of how we met our best friends.

 

When DS19 was a junior in high school, his best friend J gave him a very large box of old Magic:The Gathering cards since they both play the game. Turned out that the cards belonged to J's stepdad "C" who didn't know they had been removed from the garage until he'd gone looking for them. Thank goodness DS19 hadn't done anything with the cards, or we would have been dealing with felony theft!

 

I came home one night after work to find a strange family in my yard. The men had apparently bonded over mutually played video games and tv shows, and in the awkwardness of the moment, I chatted a little to the wife. Somehow we stumbled upon our mutual love for all things Doctor Who related, and have been BFFs ever since. Our younger boys are only about 9 months apart and ended up becoming best friends after being tossed together so often b/c of the parents. We get together with them at least once or twice a week, not counting church services.

[Kelly1730]

 

 

Based on my family and DH's family, I'm pretty convinced that if all the women died, the men wouldn't get together even for Christmas.

 

This is my experience as well;)

[Wildcat]

Based on my family and DH's family, I'm pretty convinced that if all the women died, the men wouldn't get together even for Christmas.

Same here. It's not that there is animosity, it's just that the women tend to be the 'planners' and the guys just go where they are told to go. If there are no women planning, the guys just sit there.

 

[Dory]

My dh knows most the people in town since it's a small town, but the only reason we've developed a friendship with any couples is because I enjoy the woman and invite her whole family over for a meal. My dh is social enough that if I never did that, eventually he would, but it would take awhile before he would feel motivated to do it.

[LostSurprise]

I've also noticed that the majority of families its the women who make the effort to form new ties.

 

In our family that's not the case. DH invites co-workers over. I'm an overwhelmed introvert who doesn't like to talk on the phone. I prefer to see people outside of the house. Instead of inviting folks over I tend to join groups (Bible study, homeschool group, boardgaming convention with dh, Girl Scouts/Boy Scouts, support groups) where I can attend when I'm feeling up to it. In a medium to large group I don't feel like I need to carry the conversation and I can get to know people well enough to make deeper relationships on the sidelines.

 

Friendships can come at the strangest times. I remember trying so hard with one woman I met when I moved here. She seemed like great friend material and dh really liked her husband, but she would never move beyond dinner once a year a 5 minute conversation at church. I put a lot of effort into that relationship. We've met a few great couples in the last year who are 10 years behind us in life experiences, but much more like us in personality. I probably wouldn't have guessed that would work out so well. Having a few casual interactions really set off a great group.

 

So what's my point here? Hmm...I think I'm trying to get across that different people have different friend needs and sometimes certain times in your life support meeting and inviting over and some don't. I also think that its possible to over-think and try too hard when it comes to making friends. Its okay to recognize friend-making weaknesses (such as not trying to meet new people or not making an effort with the people you know) but don't push people who aren't in a place to respond to your overtures.

 

And schedule something. Have a cook-out or pizza night. Invite a few couples over. Ask far ahead of time. Expect to hear no. Expect there to be friends where one of you doesn't synch as well as the other. Sometimes inviting mixed groups (I like some of the people, he likes some of the people) can make that a little better.

[DianeW88]

Church and our neighborhood. However, since I live in Utah, and I'm LDS...those two are the same thing. :D Our congregations are determined geographically, so we attend church with those who live near us. It makes for a very close neighborhood. We literally know ALL our neighbors.

[AnIslandGirl]

Do you share any hobbies or interests? I have found that some of our best friendships with other families have been forged over similar interests.

If you both play golf you could join a country club, enjoy sports- maybe there's a rec center near you, PTA or other similar organizations are all great ways to meet families rather than individual friends. Sometimes though, it's when you aren't looking to make friends that you just click with a family.

[NotSoObvious]

It's depended on where we've lived. Church, work, neighbors, etc. now that he travels a lot and I don't work, it's mostly people that I meet and invite over. It's just the season of our lives right now.

[Tap]

2 couples are from dh and the other dh being friends as teenagers.

 

The others are from me knowing the women from either work or homeschooling.

 

We have couples from dh's work that we have gone out with to work events (we ride together/sit together etc). And one woman coworker of his comes over to visit here at our house every once in a while. She and dh were partners for several years and were good friends.

 

I would say it is about equal for us.

[jujsky]

My best friend used to be my neighbor. She moved across the street 2 weeks after we did. We were both newbies in an established neighborhood, both fairly new to marriage, both young. We were casually friendly and became close after we adopted DS -- their DD was 6 months older. We got together a couple times/week and we'd do things together as families too. She and her DH divorced, she moved away, and remarried. Her new DH was laid off and my DH got him a job at his company so they see each other more than I see my BFF!

 

We met a large group of our close friends through DH. After college he moved to the same town one of his frat brothers was from. Frat brother and gf were moving away and had a going away party with several of their high school friends and a couple of his college friends. Coincidentally, I was college friends with one of DH's frat brother's high school friends. We met another set of frat brother's high school friends who had just moved back to the area. We had a ton in common (including Eastern European ILs). That couple became two of our closest friends. From there it sort of expanded -- some of their other high school friends became our close friends. Some of DH's frat brothers live in the area as well, but we see them infrequently.

 

We are also friends with a homeschooling family we met at scouts. They started a Lego team this year that we joined and they run a homeschool book club.

 

So I guess most of our shared friends were people we either met together or through DH.

[J-rap]

Most of our "couple" friends that we both enjoy are friends met through church events. However, this has never been easy, because my husband is a brilliant academic and he was kind of picky. :)

[sparrow]

All of our couple friends have been holdovers from our college days, but they were all dh's childhood friends first. Unfortunately, many of them have divorced, which means we keep the male friend and typically lose the female friend. I've kept most of my own friends since elementary school.

 

ETA: I've always hung out with a lot of guys, so keeping the male friend from our couple friends has been fine.

[BarbecueMom]

Our total number of friends is three people: one couple (who we haven't had a "couples date" with... since before marriage?) and one single guy who lives hours away. We've known and been friends with them since high school. DH has two coworkers that he'll occasionally socialize with outside of work, but we don't do couples outings. They are probably old enough to be our parents, have grown children, work full time, and have their own friends. We have nothing in common. We don't go to church or have activities. Neighbors aren't exactly friendly types. I'm just going to have to wait until my kids are older to find friends.

 

I'm seriously jealous of anyone who finds a Doctor Who friend in their yard. Why can't people just drop out of the sky like that for me?

 

ETA: Part of the problem is the "inviting people to our house". Our house is in no condition to have company.

[Amethyst]

My husband likes to play tennis. When he has met someone that he enjoys talking to, he'll invite the tennis player and his wife to our house. He has also invited co-workers and spouses to our house.

[Kareni]

We have two families with whom we socialize in which all members of the family are comfortable with each other. (This is different from families in which I might socialize with the woman but the men/children have no connection.)

 

One couple we met in Lamaze class. I encountered the woman at the pediatrician's office a couple of months later, and we've been friends since. (Those babies are now college seniors.) Both families moved after eleven years of friendship and now live in different states; however, we still get together to camp each summer.

 

A second family we met when our children both attended chess classes hosted by a homeschooling resource center. That friendship is about ten years strong now. We meet from time to time for dinner and games.

 

In both cases, I was the one who made the overtures.

 

Regards,

Kareni

[theYoungerMrsWarde]

*Sigh* My dh doesn't have friends. We met in high school. He was going out with another girl and hung out with a group of friends. When they broke up, you might say she got the friends in the divorce. He started spending most of his time with me (who only had 3 friends.) He kept a few guy friends, but they stopped hanging out and after high school he only saw them a few times. We've belonged to a small, older church until our recent move, and his co-workers are either girls or his boss or older than him. And my 1 friend and I tired to get our husbands together to hang out, but we never seemed to make it happen. :glare:

 

We are now in a new state, in an overwhelmingly large church, in a situation to where I have no idea how to meet people.

[regentrude]

Many of our friends we met at college/rock climbing when we were not yet married.

Most of our friends are colleagues, so we met them both.

A few of our friends are people I met through homeschooling or choir.

My DH sometimes introduces colleagues from out of town; some have become good friends.