Tag Archives: friendship

Girls Night: It’s a Must!

I’ve started a new little tradition with a couple of my closest girlfriends. Every other weekend we try to have a night just for us girls. We go out to dinner, raid thrift stores, do crafts, and talk about anything and everything until all hours of the morning. For a long time I didn’t make my friends a real priority in my life. I was going to school full time, raising a child on my own, and trying my hardest to keep up on everything. I didn’t feel like I had time for friends anymore. It wasn’t until this past … Continue reading →

Finding Support from Your Friends

We’ve talked extensively about how important it is that we keep friends outside of our marriage.  And that doesn’t mean that we have friends who can’t also be friends with our spouses.  It just means that we look for emotional connections with more people than just our spouses.  I know it’s very true for me; my two best friends give me things my husband never could, and not just things like watching the six-hour BBC “Pride and Prejudice.” It’s a real romantic notion – both in the love and in the story sense of the word – that our spouses … Continue reading →

Interfering in Children’s Friendship Problems

I don’t know why I do it…but alas it has happened again. It is parental intervention in a friendship problem with my child. For some reason I really struggle with letting my children work it out. I hate to see them hurt or not getting along with someone, so I attempt to patch things up. However that almost always backfires. When my oldest son was in middle school he had a lot of difficulties with his best friend. The problem is that his best friend’s mother is also my very good friend. Needless to say it ended up causing friction … Continue reading →

GivingTeens Space to Work Things Out

It’s really difficult when you know what the right thing to do is and you try to express that to your child, but they reject it. In fact, it’s downright frustrating but yet as a parent you know that sometimes you have to just let your child figure things out on their own. In my case it is an issue with a friendship, one that has existed since one of my children was a toddler. They have been best friends, growing up together both in the church and at school. We also live close to each other so they spend … Continue reading →

Lasting Love

Did you notice recently when I posted the article about the seven Fs I read about, that you need in a marriage the first one mentioned was friendship? That struck me at the time. The thing you might expect would be love. But no, it was friendship and food for thought. The trouble is love today has come to mean many other things. People talk about ‘falling in love’ when often it is a physical attraction or it’s tied up with lust and the sexual appeal of the other person. It’s how they feel when they are with them. We’ve … Continue reading →

Coping With Social Exclusion

Does your preschooler have friends? I know that some say that preschoolers are too young to have true friends. They don’t necessarily understand the social dynamics of friendship. After all, four-year-olds have just moved from solitary play into parallel play and now into social play. My daughter does have a few four-year-olds whom we might call her friends, and although they are not always happy with each other they get along remarkably well, all things considered. I always need to remember that these children were just born four and a half years ago. We expect a lot from them socially. … Continue reading →

What People Say About Marriage

It seems everyone has something to say about marriage and not all of those who talk about marriage portray it in the best light. Famous books and famous authors have had something to say about marriage. Which of these quotes sounds most like your marriage? ‘In marriage, happiness is just a matter of chance’ – Pride and Prejudice. ‘I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make my marriage vows mean what they say. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh’ – Anna Quindlen, A Short Guide to a Happy Life ‘No man or … Continue reading →

Essentials for a Happy Lasting Marriage -Part 2

Yesterday I looked at five essentials for a happy lasting marriage. Today I am continuing with another five essentials. 6. Forgiveness Married life isn’t always go to go along smoothly. We all do things wrong and things that hurt or upset our spouse. It’s how we choose to deal with those things that is important. We can hold grudges and sulk but it never achieves anything, or we can choose to forgive them and move on. Forgiveness doesn’t just happen. It is a choice, a decision of willingness to forgive. The old adage about not going to bed angry is … Continue reading →

Avoiding the Pregnancy Conversation Trap

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If two people are having a conversation and at least one of them is pregnant, the conversation will most likely go in one of four directions. Negative: 1. The pregnant woman will ramble about her pregnancy and the other will get sick of hearing about it. 2. The non-expecting party will keep asking about the pregnancy, and the pregnant women will get sick of talking about it. Positive: 3. The discussion will be completely overtaken by baby talk and neither party minds. 4. Both parties avoid the subject altogether. This happens when one or both parties are either not interested … Continue reading →

When Friends Divorce

When a couple divorces it can affect not only them but friends as well. Mick and I found this years ago, when a couple we were friends with divorced. We used to get together on a regular basis with this couple for a meal and to play cards – five hundred was usually the game of choice. We thought we were good friends and would have said they appeared to have a happy marriage. Then one evening we got a phone call to say they wouldn’t be coming. Soon after that one of them rang to say that they were … Continue reading →