Why do some married people cut off contact with their good friends?
 

Some (originally) really good friends of mine recently got married and for some reason decided to cut off all communications with me and our group of friends. We were very close-knit throughout college and after. Their flakey behavior started when they got into WOW. They quit WOW and got married. After that no more responding to phone calls or emails then recently deletion of their accounts on myspace/facebook. Like WTF? We're all very perplexed by the whole situation. No one has been able to contact them to find out what is going on. Why do some people who get married abandon their friends out of the blue? I'm sort of pissed but realized what can you do? I guess let karma do its course.

Maybe they joined a cult!

Seriously, sometimes priorities in people's lives change and they make drastic changes on their own without consulting others. Maybe they felt they needed to "grow up" on their own and felt they couldn't if they had to confront their friends.

It's like the last chapter in A Clockwork Orange... some people just grow up and their needs, wants and tastes change. Some find it easier to sever their ties than to maintain them...

That, or they joined a cult.

Priorities change when you get married. My wife and I both stopped hanging out with our single friends who we hung out with when we were single and boozing.

Yeah, maybe they went and found some married couples for new friends.

How abrupt was the change? How quickly did all of this happen?

Kind of happened over time. Started with WOW. They somewhat communicated during their WOW days. It seemed like they still valued our friendship, even asked us to come visit. But when it came time to actually go visit they would flake out.

On a side note I had a friend who actually told me and his other friends I probably wouldn't hear from him anymore since he got a girlfriend. We don't hear from him. Fast forward 2 years later his gf breaks up with and now he has no friends. Got to love karma.

I figure I'll let karma take its course on this one. Just wanted to vent.

I think friendships are important in any part of our lives. You never know what can happen especially if you need someone to talk to or help in a situation. It seems like a lot of people who become domesticated become isolationists. What happens if you get divorced? You're pretty much fucked. No friends to turn to after you ditched them.

I'm fortunate to still have other friends who are married that I can still hang out with and shoot the shit.

I second this. It happens. You lose the wild and crazy party-types and end up with "couples night at the pottery place." :rolleyes:

crompsin?

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y29...uray_movie.jpg

Yeah, that was me back before the heavy drinking and shaved head era.

So... I'm a little confused here. Are you complaining about this trend, or just want people's opinions on why this might be?

If you are complaining/venting, why are you not friends with this one? He at least had the decency to warn you when he saw it coming. Logic follows that you would want to spend time catching up, not laughing at him for having no friends, then blaming Karma.

People change. Life moves on. People are busy. Between work, school, hobbies, and other obligations, there's hardly enough time for friends. If a person has 3 hours of leisure time/week, they'll choose to spend those 3 hours with the one who offers the most perks.

Tt and I try to spend a few hours once/week with friends. It's easy for us, since they all live in the same house, we can drop by and see them all at once without much planning. We might become more isolated when we move this Fall. Though we enjoy spending time with friends (single, married, whatever) neither of us makes friends quickly. Definitely wouldn't break contact with single friends, mainly because the few friends we have mean a lot.

My SO and I are friends with a number of couples. Most of them are old friends of ours who then became couple-friends. I doubt you would find any of us at the pottery place. Despite the fact that all of us are thoroughly domesticated, our social time as couples typically consists of drinking Busch and playing poker, watching UFC fights on pay-per-view, or having foosball tournaments. We may be coupled but we're not old fogies!

As to the OP: People move on. I have cut off ties with a number of friends over the years; I'm sure they're still mystified as to why. But it was something I needed to do, and sometimes it's just something that happens. I suggest you move on as well.

Don't justify your complacency to me!

...

Just kidding. I'm jealous. I can't wait to be neck-deep in the tame and content era.

As a single bachelor, I have "lost" many friends once they got married or got girlfriends. It's annoying, but I guess it's just life. I don't drink etc, I guess they just feel like they have to be like married people and stuff. Attending friends' weddings almost feels like a farewell to me now.

Just venting and getting people's opinions.

Why would you tell someone you are abandoning for a girl? What kind of friend is that? I'm friends with the same group of friends that he's friends with and we all agree it was a dick move on his part. Some of us have girlfriends and we still hang out every once and a while. Blame karma for what? You reap what you sow.

So you're saying people don't have true friendships and only use people for "perks"?

I have been abandoned several times when my friends got into serious relationships and/or they got married (which is especially annoying after I was a bridesmaid in their weddings, and got dropped like a hot potato immediately afterwards). I just got used to it, basically, and decided it wasn't worth my energy to hold a grudge. In a way, they do come back to you, but not quite the same as before. That significant other has become a VIP in their lives, and you really cannot begrudge them that... if it's a relationship worth anything, their spouse is going to have a much higher priority over any other type of friend, in my opinion.

However, since I've been in a serious relationship/gotten married, I've tried quite hard to maintain contact (at least online) with as many of my old friends as possible... I did not want to be a hypocrite and treat them the way they've treated me. Not everyone reciprocates, and I have to decide if I still want to be in touch with those people who are not giving back what I give to them. Most of them, though, I just like too much to let them disappear from my life... so I just keep putting in effort (which is much easier since joining Facebook, and dragging as many of my friends on there as possible). I guess I pride myself somewhat on being almost annoyingly good at keeping in touch with people... I just never give up until I get a decent reply. :)

If you think your friends drop off the face of the planet when they get married, wait until they have kids. They'll leave the universe.

Honestly, this hasn't really been a problem for me. I was one of the last in my circle of friends to get married, but I stayed in contact with all the folks I valued. Now that I've got kids it's a lot harder to do since my priorities have shifted. I can't go for a beer after work like I would have a couple of years ago since I need to get home to help with dinner and bath time. And honestly I love those times and playing with Max in the 20 minutes between the end of dinner and the start of his bath are the best part of my day.

Perhaps your friends are having lots and lots of wild sex and don't have time for anything that doesn't involve shoving something into a moist orfice. And can you fault them for not giving you a call if that's the case?

Dave and I have been married 2 1/2 years now....in the last two weeks we've made the decision that we just dont wanna hang with the gang anymore, we've tried...its just nothing they do is of interest to us anymore, we have no desire for girl or guy nite on a work nite, we have no desire to party on the weekends to see how much we can drink from 7pm til dawn and then spend our sunday sleeping all day cause we feel like crap, or watching that the other married ones still behave as single and for some reason have no problem having their kids there for these drunk fests.

Im not saying everyone's friends are this way, this is how ours are. We were getting razzed and picked on because we just were no longer into that kind of "fun" so its been easier all around to just stop communication.

I can honestly say the last 2 weeks have been the most peaceful dramaless weeks we've had in 4 1/2 years

wow sad stories guys.

Well, I know this won't fly so well on these boards with some of my fellow posters, but when I hear WoW - I start to get negative connotations of social behaviors. Maybe I'm old-fashioned or closeminded - but for me that sets off alarm bells. Regardless, in these situations I tend to think of what it means to truly be a friend. If you really love someone as your friend (and to me a true friend is a special thing), then you should be happy for them when they make changes in their lives. Even if those changes don't involve you. I've been cut off before, and I'm sure I've cut people off. I don't recall specifically cutting anyone off whom I didn't have obvious problems with...but from the perspective of the cut-off-ee perhaps it's a different story. The point is that I trust and respect my friends to make choices about their lives. If they move in a direction in their lives that doesn't involve me, then I'm happy they're moving on with their shit and I wish them the best of luck. Maybe that relationship gets rekindled in the future, maybe it doesn't. Either way, I wish them the best of luck and I'd like to think that I'd be there for them if they needed me. Sort of like distant relatives. I don't hold it against them when they're involved with other shit - I hope they are happy and successful..completely aside from whether or not they're actively involved in my life. I would assume that they've got other things on their proverbial plates if they're unavailable for regular horseshittery...then again, I'm perfectly happy living as a hermit if I have to, so there you go.

What the heck is WOW? Are you talking about Warcraft gaming?

You know, it's tough enough for real committed couples to stay together as they grow and change. That's just a part of life. It's certainly much easier for a group of friends to grow apart and change, especially when some members of the "group" now have new groups they are a part of. You grow up and move on and form new relationships with people that you have more in common with.