Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.
Dear Care and Feeding,
How do you make and keep friends in middle age? My husband and I moved to our current town from a large city just over a decade ago, when we were turning 30. We made some friends early on, but not nearly as many as we’d had in our previous city. We resigned ourselves to this, enjoyed the few friends we did have, and listened when older folks told us it would be easier to make friends once we had kids.
Then we had our first child in March of 2020 (ha); clearly, there were no social events to be had. When he started preschool at 18 months, we’d hoped to befriend some parents, but we hardly even saw his classmates’ parents because of the COVID-era pickup and drop-off system. Fortunately, the world looks different now, but we are more friendless than ever. Our few pre-pandemic friends have moved away. We’ve met other daycare families and invited some over for playdates or dinner, asked fellow moms or dads for coffee or a drink (mom asking moms, dad asking dads, to be clear). Those always seemed to go well … but then they never invite us over in return. Literally hasn’t happened once.
Part of me thinks social norms may have changed and I should just continue to issue invitations, but part of me also thinks they would reciprocate if they wanted to befriend us. And all the more so because I get the feeling that we are the only friendless ones. I hear these other parents talk about getting together with friends, traveling with friends, etc. So is it us? I promise we’ve had good friends before, or I’d be sure we were the problem. What are we missing here? I grew up with parents who didn’t have friends and swore that wouldn’t be my future, but here we are.
—Need Buds in Nebraska
Dear Nebraska,
It’s Friendship Week here at Slate, so I’ve been saving your question up. This week the magazine is full of advice for making friends, keeping friends, knowing when to ditch friends, and more. Friendship is all we’re talking about at Slate Advice HQ, where they lock the doors, chain us to our desks, and force us to answer questions day and night. Good thing I’m such great friends with all my co-workers!!
This is a question very close to my heart, because our experience, when we moved from a big city to the suburbs, mirrored yours. I can’t even count the number of families we had coffee with, grabbed a beer with, played cards with, even invited on vacation—all of whom we thought we got along with great, and none of whom reciprocated the invitation. Truly I do believe that basic human interaction is sort of broken in America, and people simply do not practice the social niceties that once governed polite society. In some ways this is great (if your neighbor is a racist asshole, you are not expected to act friendly to him anymore!), but it also means that you cannot count on people to offer the courteous exchanges of invitations, one following the other, from which neighborhood friendships once were made.
And so, yes, one answer is that if you want friends, you have to keep on issuing invitations, even in the face of frustration. You have to follow the wise advice of the Care and Feeding podcast’s co-host Elizabeth Newcamp, whose husband is in the military and who consequently moves to a whole new city every three years and has to make all new friends. Her philosophy: You say yes to everything, you do stuff with everyone, and you invite, invite, invite. Does that mean that often you will be disappointed? Yes. Does it mean that you and your spouse will, at times, feel like you’re back in high school, rehashing every millisecond of a friend date to try to figure out where you went wrong? Oh yes. It sucks hard.
And yet! Remember that everyone is busy, everyone has too much going on, and no one (likely) is intentionally deciding that they hate you and you’re not worth it. It’s just that life is nuts these days, and families take precedence, and people generally are happy to settle for the friends they’ve already made, and it can be hard to break through that. If there is a couple whose company you really enjoy, and they keep saying yes to your invitations, keep issuing the invitations. What have you got to lose?
A little more practical advice, based on us eventually, thank God, finding some friends in our suburb we really love:
Consider looking for friends outside of your children’s day care, school, etc. There is no law that your friends need to be the parents of your children’s friends! Indeed, such adult friendships can sometimes be turbulent, if the kids have a falling-out.
Find a social sport, start playing bar trivia, join a church, initiate a volunteer activity—put yourself in as many situations as possible where you are with other adults, some of whom may be parents and some of whom may not.
If someone new moves to town, pounce.
Good luck, and if you relocate to our neighborhood, give us a call.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My son, 3 ½, is very attached to me, his mother. I am planning a six-day trip without him, which I am really looking forward to. How and when do I start telling him that I am leaving for a week? I was planning on just leaving without getting into it, but he is beginning to understand and remember stuff and I think he will notice my absence and verbalize it. But I’m worried that when I tell him, he will be clingy and panicky. His dad, grandmother, and nanny will be there while I’m gone, and he goes to nursery school as well. Prior to this, I have not been away from him for a long time. I do go to work, so he is away from me for nine hours a day, but that is part of a well-established routine.
—Should I Feel Guilty?
Dear Should I,
No, you shouldn’t feel guilty! Parents deserve breaks, and you are part of a support system that will keep your son happy, healthy, and safe while you are gone. (Daddy, Grandma, and nanny? His cup runneth over!) You’ve spent three-plus years caring for him, working for him, and looking after him. You’re allowed to have some time to yourself.
When to tell him? I am never a fan of belaboring such news, or extending it over days or weeks. Especially if your child is a worrier, there’s no need to give him the kind of advance notice you give your employer. A few days before you leave, tell him about the exciting place you’re about to go. “Pittsburgh is a beautiful city with rivers running all through it,” you can say. “There are 446 bridges in Pittsburgh!” Tell him you’ll send photos of some of your adventures in Pittsburgh, and that you’ll call him on FaceTime and tell him all about what you’re doing.
The message here, which should be shared by everyone he talks to, is not that he should be sad or worried because he’s being left by his mother, but that his mother is going to do a wonderful thing for a while, and then she’ll come back. In families, you can tell him, it’s perfectly wonderful for people to sometimes go away for a little while to do something important to them. When people in our family go away on adventures, we’re happy for the opportunities they have, and even though we miss them while they’re gone, we know they’ll come back soon. And in the meantime—look at all the bridges Mommy took photos of!
However and whenever you convey this information to him, please remember that he will be just fine. He might become clingy for a while. He might cry. Conversely, he might remain so stoic through the whole thing that you become convinced he doesn’t even miss you. Don’t worry, you’ll probably find some reason to feel guilty—if your own brain doesn’t trick you into it, some judgey (or just unthoughtful) bystander will help—but put it aside. In the long run, this will have zero effect on him. It is absolutely, positively, 100 percent fine to be away from your kids for a while, whether it’s for work, for non-work obligations, or just for fun.
Enjoy Pittsburgh!
Dear Care and Feeding,
My son, who is 17, had a girlfriend (16) he dated for six months. They were regularly having sex, which I found out by accident. During the relationship, my son came to me because, during intercourse, his girlfriend had told him to stop, and he didn’t stop until she told him a second time. I told him she had every right to be angry. I told him to take responsibility, apologize, and make sure she knew it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t have to forgive him, and he needed to learn and do better.
I was surprised when she was back at our house about two weeks later. Apparently, my son’s approach made her feel that she could forgive him. She had previously gone out with a guy who forced her to perform oral sex and berated her for not doing it right.
After they reconciled, she was still angry with my son, insulted him, and used things he’d told her against him. My son finally told her that they couldn’t go out anymore. After the breakup, when her parents saw how upset she was, she told them that my son had forced her. She now isn’t allowed to come to our house after school. Her parents are very strict and, therefore, she lies to them regularly. I don’t think she could tell them the truth.
My son is having anxiety attacks over the matter and feels like he can’t move on. They go to the same school and he sees her every day. I’m going to get him counselling and I urged the girl’s mother to get her help. I also said that I didn’t want the kids to communicate any more. I left my number in case her parents want to speak to me again. Is there anything else I could do?
—Too Much Teenage Drama
Dear Drama,
I think it is clear that you have gone above and beyond, vis-à-vis your involvement in this relationship and subsequent breakup between your son and this girl. For someone who only found out about your son’s sexual activity “by accident,” you sure know a lot about it now—not to mention the information you have somehow obtained about this girl’s past sexual partners. (Seriously, why do you know that? That’s extremely not your business.)
It’s time for you to step back. I think you said the right things to your son when he confessed his transgression to you, but there is a limit to how much you can manage someone else’s stormy relationship. Her parents have done everyone a favor by forbidding her from coming over; these two young people are not currently good for each other. You’re right to arrange for your son to talk to a counselor; it would be useful for him to have an uninvolved, neutral third party in his life to manage his anxiety and discuss his issues with consent. Certainly, right now, everyone else in his life is an extremely involved third party.
When you spoke to the parents, how did they feel about what their daughter told them about the incident? She’s not wrong that, in important ways, he did force her—did, for some period of time, have sex with her when she’d revoked consent. (And that’s assuming he narrated the encounter accurately to you.) Or is it that she told her parents that all sexual activity between the pair was forced? It’s not at all beyond the realm of possibility that they’ll take these allegations further; have you decided how you will respond, how you will talk to him about it, how you’ll balance her word against his, and who will represent your son in any proceedings?
In the meantime, it serves no purpose for you to continue interacting with your son’s ex-girlfriend’s family. They have your phone number if they need it.
—Dan
