{"id":239684,"date":"2023-07-13T19:37:13","date_gmt":"2023-07-13T17:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.discoverwalks.com\/blog\/?post_type=columnist&p=239684"},"modified":"2023-07-13T19:37:13","modified_gmt":"2023-07-13T17:37:13","slug":"the-challenges-single-mothers-face-in-making-mum-friends","status":"publish","type":"columnist","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverwalks.com\/blog\/columnist\/vanessa\/the-challenges-single-mothers-face-in-making-mum-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"The Challenges Single Mothers Face in Making Mum Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was 23 when I found out I was pregnant, so you can imagine that a good number of my friends were not mothers yet, I belonged to a group of young adults and if you think about it, I had only been out of my teens for 4 years and now I was having a baby. I wasn\u2019t exactly a single parent because the dad was there at times, however, we were not married either, and we didn\u2019t get to do the whole matching outfits and the bump photo shoots (I wish I did one alone). No one tells you that having a child alone can get very lonely. If you\u2019re a young mum, your friends go on with their lives without you, and you hopelessly watch their lives on Instagram at 3 am as you try and burp your newborn baby.<\/p>\n

There are different types of single mothers: those who are in the middle of a gruelling divorce, those who are co-parenting but are with the kids 90% of the time, and then there are those who are solo throughout because the other parent does not exist, whatever the case, single mothers across all groups, in my opinion, face challenges when it comes to making mum friends.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the first reason that may rub you the wrong way but in my case have found it to be true. In my quest in finding mum friends I became intentional about talking to single mums, you know the kind that would understand exactly what I meant. I had envisioned that I would find a charged-up mum friend with whom our kids would be best friends, we would gossip over a bottle of wine as the kids played and we would encourage each other when things got tough.<\/p>\n

This person was supposed to be my confidant and I hers, it sounds great theoretically but then there was this challenge I came across in most relationships with single mothers! When traumatized people come together, they sometimes tend to form a connection or relationship centred on the trauma, you tend to want to keep sharing these experiences to show just how alike you are and it becomes a unique way of bonding. At first, you feel heard, you feel like wow, I am not alone and to an extent, you tend to even compete but not the healthy kind of competition where you play water sports at your child\u2019s sports day, but the kind where you tend to see who has more problems than the other. The conversations tend to be about baby daddies, co-parenting and the missing father, for introductory purposes, these conversations are usually quite important, but when it becomes repetitive it weighs you down, you turn into a self-pity group that seems to be cursed and unable to move on, it\u2019s a relief to get someone who understands your plight but at the same time it\u2019s not exactly encouraging.<\/p>\n

The other major reason why it\u2019s hard for single mothers to make mum friends is because of comparison. I\u2019ve already spelt it out to you on how most single mum groups are, but why then can\u2019t they make friends with the married group of mums? Because it\u2019s hard! I watched a reel of a lady acting exhausted and her caption was \u201cMe being exhausted because I can\u2019t take my kids to their dad\u2019s house since we are in a loving and committed marriage\u201d for happily married couples, this caption was hilarious, at first I thought nothing of it and as usual I looked at what everyone else wrote in the comment section, a lot of mothers felt as if this was a bitter pill to swallow because the video caption felt as if she wasn\u2019t grateful enough since doing it alone is a lot harder and especially for those who don\u2019t get the occasional breaks. A lot of single mums make decisions by themselves, which essentially means when they\u2019re out with married mum friends it may be irritating when they have to consult their husbands about certain things. To put it simply, it\u2019s triggered for the unhealed single mum to see a family that looks perfectly happy because it\u2019s a reminder that she doesn\u2019t have that, she may feel sorry for herself or may keep having flashbacks about what she could\u2019ve been. The mum friend reminds her that she\u2019s doing everything alone and she tends to be bitter about this especially when they\u2019re going out somewhere she has a tinge of envy that her husband sent money for her lunch, no matter how independent the single mother is, no matter how much money she has, she\u2019ll remember that she\u2019s alone.<\/p>\n

The other group of mum friends that single mothers find hard to bear are the judgmental ones, they could be married or single themselves but they seem to be more successful than her. This kind of single mother is figuring things out, she may occasionally want a break from her children and sometimes tends to down a bottle of cheap wine by herself, she\u2019s frustrated with her life, and finances and her baby daddy won\u2019t pick her calls. The only place that this kind of mum will find comfort is with her friends who are not mothers, why? Because they will not judge her, they\u2019ll sympathize with her but they\u2019ll never ask her about her baby weaning processes, they won\u2019t ask her if she\u2019s saved enough school fees they\u2019ll assure her that she\u2019s doing a great job, so she feels safe. Mothers innately tend to be competitive but there\u2019s a time it gets toxic, the healthy way of being a safe space when you\u2019re competitive is by giving positive criticism or feedback, it\u2019s not what you say, it\u2019s how you say it.<\/p>\n

What most single mothers fear when it comes to making mum friends is rejection, she tends to feel the need to say bad things about herself and her only identity is talking about all the negative experiences that she\u2019s had. Society already deems her as a failure and other mothers may this worse for her by constantly comparing or treating her like a charity project that needs to be helped because in most cases she\u2019ll need a bit more support than those who are happily married and living in a cute fenced home. What I will say is, you don\u2019t have to hide from other mothers, you\u2019d be surprised at just how many other mothers end up going through the same emotions you do even though they\u2019re married, the judgmental ones are mostly insecure about their parenting styles and one thing you all have in common is that you have one hell of a job. Your story to your friends doesn\u2019t have to be about how much money you don\u2019t have, how horrible your baby daddy is or how he left you in the middle of labour. Yes, I understand you, your story is sad because one parent ditched and you didn\u2019t, but guess what? That shouldn\u2019t stop you from telling a different story, how about being confident in the fact that you\u2019re a strong woman who is doing a two people\u2019s job? Do you know how many people want to confidently take that leap of faith and walk away but cannot? But you do it, don\u2019t bond over your problems, bond over your strength.<\/p>\n

\n

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      Check Amazon\u2019s best-seller list for the most popular travel accessories. <\/a>We sometimes read this list just to find out what new travel products people are buying.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1691,"featured_media":239685,"template":"","categories":[],"tags":[4777,4776,4775],"topic":[4069,4070],"class_list":["post-239684","columnist","type-columnist","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-challenges","tag-mum-friends","tag-single-mothers","topic-family","topic-parenting"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Challenges Single Mothers Face in Making Mum Friends - Discover Walks Columnist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I was 23 when I found out I was pregnant, so you can imagine that a good number of my friends were not mothers yet.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwalks.com\/blog\/columnist\/vanessa\/the-challenges-single-mothers-face-in-making-mum-friends\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Challenges Single Mothers Face in Making Mum Friends - 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