Sex and the City?!?! The Friendship Edition

I’m really tired of trying hard to be friends with everyone. There was a day when I had so many groups of friends, there was never a night where I didn’t have something to do. I always imagined that my late twenties would be exactly like Sex and the City, except I didn’t want to date a lot of guys, I just wanted a group of girlfriends like Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love having a night off, or two. But there are some things that I need to prioritize in my life and one of those things is friendships.

I realize the importance of having friends. And I feel like I can make friends fairly quickly, but recently I’ve been so tied up with moving into my new place (which involved moving away from everyone and everything I know, since it’s on the opposite side of the city), and a new job that takes up a lot of my time.

I’ve also picked up some hobbies, hobbies that take up a lot of my time. When I’m not at work, I’m so busy doing everything else that I rarely have time to even send a text message.

I know this is no excuse, but when you start to grow up and have other things to do, you don’t have the time you once had to spend every moment with friends.

Today I was reminded of the two friends that I’ve had for a long time and, that no matter what, will always be there. But at the same time I was reminded that the friendships I thought I have made are not real. They are fabrications of what I wish a friendship was.

It’s silly, but this is a constant reminder that I really need a friend that is my go to person. Someone who isn’t my boyfriend, though I love having him to talk to.

I feel like I don’t have that friend in my life where I can just hang out with, talk to about nothing, and just be myself.

5 years ago I never would have thought that I would be sitting in on a saturday night, thinking about the fact that I don’t really have a “good friend”. Because 5 years ago I swore everyone was my “good friend”.

Maybe that’s where I went wrong.

When I was in university, I wanted so bad to be a part of this group of girls. I wanted to be “in” with them and when I clearly wasn’t, it tore me apart. To this day I find it hard to see pictures of them all together, still friends. However, I don’t blame anyone but myself for what happened with them.

And this is what is happening now.

Maybe it’s jealousy… no, it IS jealousy. I’m jealous that they all get a long so much better than with me…. and this is something I need to figure out. Why, why do they all get along better with each other than they do with me. Why do my current friends/acquaintance get along better with each other than they do with me?

I realize I’m a little crazy… in the sense that I have a very mild case of OCD. This applies to things like having control over a situation, cleaning, where things are placed/misplaced. I could tell you EXACTLY where something is placed, as long as I’m the one who put it there, or it hasn’t been moved since the last time I saw it. I can tell when one little thing has been moved, and it actually bothers me. I can’t stand messes, so if I’m having people over, more than half my night is spent tidying up. The boyfriend pointed out that this is a problem.

I’ve also realized that this has caused distances within my friendships. I know that I’m a difficult person to live with because of this, and I may be a difficult person to be around (especially when it’s in my home) in general. But is this the reason I can’t keep long term friendships?

I kind of feel like I’m in grade 10 gushing about why I don’t have a boyfriend… Now I have a boyfriend and I am gushing about why I don’t really have any friends. 

This wasn’t on an episode of Sex and the City… though if it was, it would end with me and three of my best girlfriends out at a VIP lounge having a cocktail.

New Love

New love *sigh* it’s a beautiful thing!

It’s a feeling of complete and utter happiness. You get butterflies in your stomach just thinking about the person. You find yourself wanting to talk about the person all the time and finding little ways to slip their name into a conversation. You drop everything and anything if it meant you could spend even 5 more minutes with that person. You smile more often and day-dream about them.

Sometimes you get so lost in new love that you forget about your friends. A couple of weeks go by and you stop and think “oh my, I haven’t talked to ____ in so long”. But you forget to send them a message. And then a month or two fly by, you’re busy doing everything with your new love. You’ve gone on a small road trip, or have seen a couple of movies. You may have met the family one Sunday afternoon. You still haven’t messaged that friend. But it doesn’t matter because you are so in love.

You made plans months ago to go on vacation with your friend, but how could you possibly spend a week away from your new love. You want to spend every waking moment with this person. So you cancel your plans. You feel a little guilty, but you know that they will get over it. You have never cancelled on plans before so this one time won’t hurt.

Over the next few months you make a point in spending a couple of hours with this friend. Maybe you get your nails done, or you go out for coffee. But it’s nothing like it used to be. You don’t want to spend an entire day/night away from your love so you make as little plans as possible. “But you’re still seeing her” you tell yourself “so it’s ok that I only want to spend a couple of hours with her”.

And then a year goes by. You may have seen this friend enough times to count on one hand. It makes you a little sad, but so much time has passed, how can it ever be the same as it was before?

The new love turns into much more and he proposes *yey* and you think “who am I going to ask to be in my wedding party?” The friends you once thought would be standing next to you sharing your special day are no longer your close friends anymore. You’re stuck with your sister and his sister and hopefully a best friend. What happened to “I have too many friends, how am I ever going to choose who is going to be my bridesmaids?” You lost touch with so many “friends” over the course of your new love.

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My biggest fear: Not having any good girlfriends.

I’m guilty of the above. Over time I’ve lost touch of some dear friends. Some of which are friends I thought would be standing next to me on my big day (not that it’s happening soon or anything). But as my “friends” start to get engaged and get married and I see pictures pop up on Facebook (the devil) it makes me think about my own situation.

I had to use this picture, it was just too cute

And as new relationship bloom around me and these trends begin to happen, I fear losing these friends.

My biggest fear is turning 30 and not having a single girlfriend to celebrate with me. Or getting married and (as much as I love my sister to death) only having my sister standing next to me.

As we get older our priorities change. My priorities stand with my career and my future family. My boyfriend is my number one priority. But that shouldn’t mean that my best friend(s) come last. They still hold a special place in my heart, but how do I stop myself from forgetting about them completely? And, as we get older our priorities vary from person to person. Just because I want to focus on my career and my future doesn’t mean my friends have the same ideas.

Its reasons like these that I feel “girl time” is so important – even if it happens only once a year.

New loves can consume you. But everyone forgives the blindness a new love causes. You just have to make sure that it doesn’t last forever. You usually gain your sight back after a year or so.

Never Foget Your Cell Phone!

I forgot my cell phone at home yesterday. Who knew how much I could miss in only a couple of hours? I’m addicted to my phone, it’s pretty much attached to my hand. I’m not necessarily texting all the time, but rather reading tweets, checking out what’s new on facebook, and reading bbm status updates as they come.

I got home yesterday after what felt like the longest day of my life! But that’s a whole other story. It was around 8pm while doing the dishes when I realized I still had not checked my phone. So I run upstairs with the dishtowel in my hand and grab my phone. 3 bbm messages, 26 emails and 11 facebook messages later I finally felt caught up. Well, that was until I got around to catching up on the million bbm updates and actually looking at the what’s new wall on facebook when I saw it, one of my high school friends got engaged yesterday.

It’s not like she is the first person from my high school to get engaged, or married or has kids, but she is the first one of my actual friends to get engaged. My roommate from university got engaged, but we stopped talking a few years ago. So this friend is the very first friend, who I still talk to, that is engaged. I’m not saying this means anything, or that I’m even invited (we’ll have to wait and see) but it’s given me this feeling all day that I can’t explain.

Part of this feeling is realizing that I’ve kind of grown up; we’ve kind of grown up. I mean, I’ve always known I’ve “grown up”. I have a grown up job, I’ve moved out of my parents (but kind of moved back), I’ve bought a car (but sold it), I’ve been saving to buy a house etc… but having one of my close friends from high school get engaged is completely different. That’s like REAL LIFE! Marriage is real, more real than living on my own or buying my own car or having a real job. It’s combining two lives into one, for life (at least that’s what we hope for when we make those promises at the altar). And generally kids come after marriage, and if that isn’t real then I don’t know what is.

The other part of this feeling is a bit of sadness.

I’ve always wondered what it would be like when my friends started getting married. I always questioned who would be first.

I have a small group of friends from high school that I still talk with, and an even smaller group from elementary school. I even remember having the “who do you think will get married first” conversation with these friends. We all guessed I would be last, which I still think is most likely the case. But we could never decide on who we thought would take the plunge first.

Over the years our group of friends has changed, people have grown apart and some have moved on. But I’ve always tried to keep in contact with everyone and stay in the middle (or out of the middle in some instances). There was a time when this friend (who just got engaged) and I were best friends; well there were actually three of us. We did everything together! But I was always the one who lived further away and it was harder for me to be around all the time, so naturally the other two were much closer. As we got older we changed (as anyone would) and we started to grow apart. And even though our friendships have changed and are not what they used to be, I’ve still thought about who would be the first to get engaged/married.

When it happened, it made me a little sad. I thought about all the things the three of us talked about, how we would all be in each other’s weddings, and who would be the maid of honour, and how we would decide that when the time came. Maybe those dreams about our perfect weddings with our best friends were silly, but they are the memories that bring a smile to your face when you think back on them.

I’m so happy for my friend and I only wish her and her husband-to-be a life time of happiness and love.

Quantity vs. Quality

I think my problem is my constant need for quantity over quality, especially when it comes to friendships.

It’s been the last few months where I’ve started to realize the importance of having quality friends over quantity. I have a few very dear friends that I try to spend time with whenever I have a chance. And I have a handful of friends that I don’t have to see all the time, but when we do hang out it’s like nothing has changed. And then I have “friends” who I have thought were my friends, but over time have proved me wrong. I’ve given these friends multiple chances, but no matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, we will never be friends. And then I have my work friends who I eat lunch with and maybe every couple months we go out for a drink.

The hardest part is letting go of the ones that just don’t care. You have memories with them that only bring back smiles, but sometimes those memories are meant to be just memories and nothing more. It’s like a break up. You have to move on, otherwise those feelings will never go away. Do you delete these friends from facebook, like you would an ex? Because it hurts just as much to see pictures of them together when you are no longer invovled. Do you remove them from your phone? Because it’s not like you ever talk to them anymore. Do you block them from BBM? Because their statues remind you that you are no longer part of that group. Or do you suck it up and ignore it?

I love the close friends I have, and I’ve come to realize that it’s those friendships that really matter.

It’s strange, but finding good friends is like finding the right guy. You go through some bad ones to find the good ones and sometimes you end up with the friends that were there from the beginning.

Top Ten: Things not to say on a first date (Men)

1. “Want to come back to my parents place?”
2. “I’ve slept with __ amount of girls”
3. “Does this rag smell like cloroform to you?”
4. “Can you pay? I’m currently out of work”
5. “I bet I could chug my beer faster than you.”
6.”My greatest achievement is reaching level 85 on World of Warcraft.”
7.”Oh shit, I’ve got a boner”
8.”Be right back, I have mud-butt.”
9. “Oh… you’re a woman?!”
10. “Could you close your eyes for a second, I just wanna imagine what you look like unconscious.”

I’m sure there are so many more things men should not say on a first date. Do you have any suggestions that can be added to the list? I would love to hear stories of things men have said on first dates that have totally turned you off of him.

The Subtext of a Text

The most embarrassing thing happened to me on Friday.

The boyfriend didn’t go to work on Friday because he wasn’t feeling too great, so rather than getting a ride with him back to his place after work I caught the Go train. I wasn’t sure if I would make it to the earliest train in time, so I let him know I may have to wait until the next one which wasn’t for another 20 min. However, with only one minute to spare I ran through the station, bought my ticket and hopped on the train just before it left. So I made the earliest one!

The boyfriend, however, didn’t have the confidence in the public transit and thought I wouldn’t make it in time. He prepared himself for the later train.

Since it is Valentine’s Day today, and we spend so much time together, it’s rare that we have any time apart to actually get each other a gift. So even though he wasn’t feeling great he made his way out to get me something (at this point I still have no idea what it is). He expected I wouldn’t be at the station until later, so his timing was off. While I was on the train we exchanged a few texts with instructions letting me know how I would be getting home from the station. I got one from him that I didn’t decipher the way he wanted me to “I am with my mom”, so I continued to text him some personal stuff (get your minds out of the gutter, we weren’t sexting, it had to do with the trip home) but I wasn’t entirely sure what he was trying to tell me.

We stopped texting as I got off the train and made my way to his house. When I got there he was pulling into the driveway with his mother in the passenger seat (which at the time meant nothing).

The boyfriend then tells me that his mother was texting.for.him… I guess it never occurred to me that she was not keen on the idea of him texting while driving (especially since it’s against the law). Remember how I said I told him some personal stuff over text, stuff that I would NEVER, in a million years, think his mother would ever hear from me. I was so embarrassed, I couldn’t even look her in the eyes without laughing. I guess I learned that when he tells me he his with his mom, that is his way of telling me not to say anything embarrassing… I mean I get it, he was nervous and didn’t know how to get the message across that his mother was texting for him. I don’t know what I would have done differently. It’s not like he was expecting me to say the things I said.

How do I get myself into these embarrassing situations?!?!

The Sister

I’m not one to make promises and break them. And this weekend I promised I would dedicate this post to my boyfriends sister.

It was a hot summer night, before my boyfriend and I started dating. I was feeling down so I decided to stop over at his place for a beer and to sit by his pool and talk. While in mid conversation I look up from my half full bottle of beer and see someone standing in the shadows of the doorway leading into his parents house. The dark figure started to move closer and closer when it spoke “Oh Hai! I’m (soon to be)boyfriends sister”. I look up and respond “Hi, I’m Amanalynn”. She said a few more things, played with the dog for a minute and went back inside. “So that’s your sister?” I asked (soon to be) boyfriend. “Yep!”

That’s when we first met, from there we’ve grown into a beautiful friendship… or something like that.

So Lisa, this one is for you:

Ten Things I’ve learned About Relationships

1. Not all relationships are the same
Just because your friend’s boyfriend spends a ton of money on her as a way of showing he loves her, doesn’t mean all boyfriends will do that. Or just because someone you know moved in with their boyfriend/girlfriend only 3 months into their relationship doesn’t mean you will. Every relationship is different, and that doesn’t mean it’s any better or worse than the next.

2. Love isn’t always enough
When you love someone but you have very different values, doesn’t mean that love will conquer all. Sometimes you need to remove yourself from all the “love” in order to assess the relationship for what it is.

3. Opposites don’t always attract
If you are complete opposites then there is no substance to the relationship. How can you do anything together if you don’t enjoy doing the same things. Having common interests is important, otherwise you’ll be spending most of your time apart enjoying your own things.

4. Relationships DO take some work
If you go into a relationship thinking it’s smooth sailing, then you’re in for a rude awakening. However, if the relationship starts to take up more hours in your day than your actual work, then you should reconsider the relationship. There are things that can’t and won’t work themselves out, and sometimes those require compromising.

5. Your family’s opinion does matter
It’s amazing how different my family (particularly my dad and step mom) treat me and my current boyfriend over my past relationship. I wouldn’t listen to them when they had anything negative to say about my relationship, but now that I am in a good relationship with a great person, their attitudes have done a 180. They see I’m happier, and that makes them happy. So in the future I will trust their judgement. They have been through a lot more than I have!

6. My “ideal” guy is no longer the guy I thought it was
When I was 16 I had this image of what my ideal guy would be. But in the image there was no personality, no interests or hobbies. It was just a guy, with a specific look and style. I’ve dated that guy, and trust me he was nowhere near “ideal”. As I’ve gotten older my tastes have changed. I’m sure if you asked my friends if I have a type, they would say no, just a guy who treats me right (and of course a list of other criteria).

7. The right guy will be there until the end
My boyfriend and I have been through a lot, and from experience most guys won’t stick with you through that stuff. But the right one will.

8. There will always be baggage
Especially if you’ve been in a bad relationship before. We all carry a bit of baggage, but it’s the size of the baggage that can ruin a relationship. Whatever happened in the past should stay in the past and you should go into a relationship open-minded.

9. Even the relationships that look good from the outside are not always good on the inside
I’ve noticed that some people can put on a pretty good show. You go out with a couple and they look so happy and so in love, but behind closed doors they are unhappy. I was once one of those couples. I used to be jealous of the ones that looked incredibly happy, but it can be much easier to put on a facade rather than facing the truth. What may seem like the perfect happy couple could really be a volcano waiting to erupt.

10. There is always something to learn
A “ten things I’ve learned” list will never be enough because there will always be things I am learning about a relationship. Listing ten things I’ve learned is just the beginning.

Hypocrisy

There are a few things that I can’t stand, but one of the things I hate the most is hypocrisy.

I’m sure we are all guilty of saying one thing and doing another, but when someone is open about how much they hate something, someone, something someone did etc… and turn around and do the same thing, it totally gets under my skin.

I’ve slowly been learning a lot about myself and my relationships, with friends, parents, siblings, boyfriend etc.. and I think I am now at the point where I can predetermine who is good for what in my life. Some friends I can rely on all the time, knowing that no matter what, they will be there for me. They are the ones that will always show up, never cancel, and never judge. I know what I can rely on my parents for, which is a support system in every aspect of my life. I know that if I needed a shoulder to cry on, a helping hand, or just an ear to listen I can go to my mom. I know that if I need something fixed, or a man’s opinion I can go to my dad. If there is something I need to talk about with someone who is currently experiencing what I am going through, especially when it comes to girl stuff, I can go to my sister. And for almost everything else I have my boyfriend.

But then there are some friends who are there sometimes. They say they care, they say they would be there for anything, but then when times get tough they are nowhere to be found. And there are also the ones that you have grown apart from. The ones that used to be there, but now have other priorities. Sometimes friendships grow apart because your priorities change. I know that I am at a very different point in my life than I was three years ago. Some of my friends are still at that point, and some of them have grown waaaay beyond their years.

I like to live life as a 25-year-old. Not 21 or 29, but 25. Why? Because I am 25. I don’t want to spend the weekends at home doing nothing if there is another opportunity presented to me. Nor do I want to go out every weekend and get trashed and wake up not knowing what happened the night before. I want to focus on my career but at the same time have a social life I can look back on and think “Wow, I had a great time.” I want to save money, but continue to do the things I love. Sometimes it really is a matter of choosing to spend that extra $100 or not, but if it’s something I really want to do then it’s worth the $100.

I have a couple really great friends, and I would never change those friendships for the world, but it would always be nice to add a few more.

“Where Your Boyfriend At?”

I had a post all ready to go, but after my once over I realized that I didn’t like it very much. It gave off the impression that I was rubbing my relationship in the faces of those who are single, and no one wants to read that.

So instead I will tell you about my weekend.

Friday night I hit up a Raptors game, who, btw, suck cause they lost.

I wanted to go shopping in the U.S (for those who are not Canadian and haven’t figured out that I am, eh! Us Canadians pay way too much for our clothes, shoes, purses, makeup etc.. and we love to shop in the U.S because the deals are amazing!!) So I asked the BF if we could go for a day. He invited a friend as a shopping companion and I invited two.

Saturday morning we woke up to a snow storm, which was totally fantastic because we LOVE driving in snow storms (a little hint of sarcasm). It took a little while to get from my place to his so we could switch cars for safer driving.

Sadly one of my shopping companions canceled on us the night before. Which was too bad because it was a fantabulous day!! We actually made it to the outlet mall in great timing!! So the BF and companion split from me and my bff and we went about our shopping day. I got so much stuff and I didn’t even have to whip out the credit card because the deals were unbelievable.

Exhausted and sore (from all the walking, shopping and carrying) we make it home in time to get ready to go out.

So part of my goal in 2011 is to drink less, so I was trying to think of some drink options that have the least amount of calories (it’s not like I’m counting calories, but if I am going to drink I should have something that won’t make me feel bad for drinking), I decided on a gin and tonic. Well I hate gin! So after forcing myself to finish the horrid beverage, I ordered a glass of red wine. Which was delish!

I don’t know what it is, but ever since I’ve been with the BF I have been drinking so much more than I have in years. And he says the same thing about me. It’s not like we sit around drinking by ourselves, but we always have something to do that involves a few beverages. So I’m not drinking for at least two weeks (I figured shorter term goals in this category might be a bit easier).

No juicy relationship stories in this post. Sorry!!