My husband (32m) keeps pushing me to join "mommy groups" and find friends who are into more family oriented activities... but I (26f) don't enjoy them

I have a pretty full social life already. I have a close set of girl friends from college, a couple good friends from the gym, and a couple close friends from work.

I honestly already find it hard to maintain all those friendships that are important to me, while also being a mom to my 3 year old son. But I make an effort, to keep in touch with my college friends even though they're scattered around the country. To keep going to the gym even though it's less often. And to make time to go to happy hour with my work friends occasionally.

All those people are very important to me, I really value the friendships I have right now, and I don't want to lose them or lose my identity now that I'm a parent. I've known some people who just vanished socially once they had kids and I never wanted to be like that.

My husband has been kind of frustrated with my social circle though, he says that it would be way nicer if I could foster friendships with other parents of kids around our son's age. He'd have more kids to play with, I'd have a lot more knowledge about parenting that really comes with having a support network of other parents. (I admit we are flying blind here, he's our first kid so we're figuring it out as we go)

And also "friend time" and "family time" wouldn't have to be so separate for me, if I had other friends who had families.

That all made sense, but I really don't in how workable it would be. I've met other parents through the "new parents" class we took when I was pregnant, and through arranging playdates. And those kinds of activities aren't really conducive to forming the deep kinds of friendships that I value. You can't talk about anything and everything with the kids around. Unfortunately I've found a lot of new parents can be a little competitive and catty, so if I speak to someone honestly and without pretense, I've felt judged.

I'm sure there are other parents I could become great friends with, but it's hard, and I'm already having trouble balancing all the friendships I value right now.

I also feel like my husband is trying to get me to replace my current social circle to some degree, which is something that I would hate to do. I know it can be frustrating to have social activities that you can't really bring kids to, like happy hour, the gym, skype calls with friends across the country, but I enjoy the time just for myself.

My husband hasn't had as much trouble finding friends who fit a family lifestyle, one of his buddies from college has a 5 year old girl, and some of his work friends have young kids too.

I just wish he'd understand what works for him doesn't necessarily work for me.

tl;dr My husband wants me to join mommy groups and also seems to dislike my current social circle. I wouldn't be happy like that.

Submitted May 02, 2019 at 07:59AM by dansina22 http://bit.ly/2GT7YX9