Man-fluence on female friendships

Do those promises of life-long friendship and fidelity hold up? 

The fragility of female friendships really hits you once most of your friends are married. You can no longer call them up with the abandon you used to or drop in on a spur-of-the-moment visit. If I need someone to talk to in the middle of the night, calling up an old friend becomes a dilemma setting off a chain of reservations: What will her husband think? Will she get annoyed because I didn’t ask before calling? All these petty things that we never cared about suddenly become important and the upshot is that I can’t call my married friends most of the time I want to talk to them — and I miss that.

Interestingly though, married people will have no qualms about calling us singletons at odd hours, because our lives are inevitably less busy than theirs.

When we were young girls, my friends and I would talk about our future, wondering what paths our lives would take. We formed friendship clubs, promising to take each other’s secrets to the grave and never ever drift apart. We were so close that we felt we could even predict which of us would be the first to get hitched. That prediction was only the first of many that were wrong– the friend we had expected to get married last, was the one who did it first.

And when she did, we were beside ourselves with excitement. I was so happy knowing that she would be settling down and starting a new family, that I never once thought this meant I was going to become merely one of her single friends — automatically deemed unable to fully partake in most discussions relating to her married life.

Over the years, as I’ve dabbed the tears off my face on the rukhsati of more of my childhood friends, I’ve seen just how radically getting married changes priorities — particularly for women. So, despite our promises that nothing would change  — “Of course, I won’t bail on you for movie night” and “I’d never ditch you for him!” — everything does. Marriage is such hard work for women, there is so much at stake, so much compromising to do, that someone has to suffer, and it usually ends up being the people you grew up with, as opposed to the one you intend to grow old with.

As young girls, we would quietly take in every detail of people’s weddings while pretending not to care and endlessly wonder what our own ever-afters would be like. We dreamed of big traditional weddings, gorgeous outfits and intricate jewellery for ourselves. And then, when our friends got married, we went the extra mile to make their grand day special.

I and other single friends would go off on a limb to attend friends’ weddings, dholkis, dance practices, pre-functions and such. As her close confidantes, we would often take on the unenviable task of calming down the bride. We would spend money on outfits which could only be worn to so many weddings in one season. We would have our hair drenched in hairspray and our scalp stuck with hairpins more times than was fair on our poor, unmarried groomed selves.

We had the time of our lives, but it was short-lived and it is now beginning to feel as though it may all have been in vain. When I am ready to be given away, none of my married friends will be as involved as I was on their big days, if they manage to make it at all!

A mother-in-law’s dinner, a husband’s work event, or a child’s birthday will inevitably take precedence, and all those hours spent learning to make my two left feet move in sync, will have been wasted. For one close friend’s wedding in particular, I remember putting my life on hold: flying to Pakistan especially for her mehndi, taking extra time off work and having endless arguments with my parents over how little time I spent with them on that trip home. Now, two years later, she has a child, we hardly talk and I secretly wonder if that time would have been better spent with my family.

Another thing that marriage did to my friendships was cause a shift in our normal conversations. My married friends suddenly can’t seem to relate to my conversations about the difficulty in finding a man, though I am always listening to how wonderful their spouses are. They tell me I don’t really want to be married — but like a single friend very aptly said, “That’s because they already are — and they have someone to turn to and love and be loved by constantly.”

Of course, navigating a relationship is far from easy. I, too, have been in a situation where I was so wrapped up in the guy that I would hardly socialise with my own friends. When we split, I had been so disconnected from my own friends, that initially I couldn’t understand how to cope with things. When a friend who seemed rather obsessed with her husband couldn’t stop talking about him, I tried to quote my own experience with my boyfriend. She quickly rebutted saying, “It’s different when you’re married — he isn’t my boyfriend anymore. He can’t just pack up and leave.” Though I found it bizarre how every single time we spoke, she couldn’t get over how amazing his work was, how much he was earning, what tie he was wearing, how dashing he looked in a suit and how many times she called him during the day — I obviously left it at that!

I feel that maintaining friendships is hard work as is, but it is doubly hard after marriage. I struggled when my sister got married, making regular phone calls and sending messages, but when the replies became shorter and less frequent, I stopped bothering. My single friends and I agree on this. We have always gone out of our ways for friends’ birthdays, weddings, and now anniversaries — but it is important for both parties to accept that friendships will change.

Watching my mother interact with her school friends and being best friends with their kids made me want to maintain the same bond with my friends. My best friend and I have been friends for sixteen years, and are like family — but I think the fact that we are single is crucial in our lives right now, because most of our other friends are married. We have been friends for long enough to have questioned our friendship many times and we are still going strong. I can only hope that this will not change with a husband in the picture, because sometimes it’s nice to share important moments in life with people you shared your childhood dreams with.

Published in The Express Tribune, Ms T, January 20^th, 2013.

Like MsT on Facebook for your dose of girl talk.