- wcky711
- 2 years ago
- Wedding: September 2020
For reference, he is 32 and I am 29.
For reference, he is 32 and I am 29.
So, not only have my friends never done a LDR, they’ve never dated someone with a child. (Both are firsts for me.) It is a completely different situation than anything they’ve ever expereinced, so of course it’s difficult to understand. I definitely need to ask them to dinner and talk it out. Like I said in an earlier post, I’m really non confrontational, so I usually let things just lie, but the last thing I want is there to be resentment that could have been avoided by a good conversation.
If I were on the outside of this (IE the friends’ position) it would look like my friend was prioritizing a man who wasn’t prioritizing her – he chose to be gone for weeks, months at a time, and when he finally was home, the onus was always on my friend to go see him. And to boot, she makes clear that our friendship plays second fiddle to her relationship with a man who doesn’t seem to make her a priority after two years of dating.
I am NOT saying this is the truth of your relationship, only that it might look that way from the outside and explain some of the resistance you’re getting.
I say this as someone who has been in a long-term LDR, a short-term LDR, and had friends flake on stuff because they needed to be home at a certain time to Skype their long-distance boyfriend and the like. So I have been on both sides of this.
I also have to wonder why your guy can’t come and see you with his daughter if it’s only 1.5 hours?
If there are no jobs in his hometown, why not move to where you live?
What will you do for work once he no longer travels?
It could also be what some other Bees have mentioned. These friends don’t understand your relationship and from an outsider looking in it seems that you’re putting in all this effort and your bf is putting in next to none. It’s hard to watch a friend do something like that, especially if you don’t even know the guy.
So I thought this was going to be your traditional ‘I’m ditching my friends every week and now I don’t see why I don’t have any friends’ kind of post but to me it sounds like you’re a great friend. You have been keeping your relationship with your boyfriend and making him a priority while still attending friend’s events and making them a priority as well.
I dealt with a similar situation at my last job actually. All of my coworkers who were married (I was just dating my now husband at the time) acted like their time was more precious with their husbands and I shouldn’t have been spending too much time with my then boyfriend. I hung out with my girlfriends ALL the time too. But they would make snide remarks on making time for my boyfriend. Well we’re married now so maybe that’s why I was prioritizing him People are so rude!
In your friends’ place, I probably would make less of an effort too if it seemed like you only were looking to hang out because your boyfriend wasn’t available, and I would have a hard time not expressing my concern that you seemed to be giving more than him, which would turn the night into a less than fun time. Having also been in an LDR with my now husband, I understand the balancing act. D.H. didn’t always want to spend a day hanging out with my friends when we only had two days together before not getting to see each other for 4-8 weeks, but we were able to find a compromise (i.e. spend the day just the two of us, and meet my friends out for drinks/dinner or go to brunch and then do our own thing).
When I was long distance with my now husband, I frequently traveled to see him on the weekends he worked and couldn’t come home. On the weekends he could come home, I visited his family with him, because they also never got to see him. As a result, my weekends were booked up, and my family made several comments about it. I love him, missed him, and would do anything to get a few more precious hours with him. I also made sure to always catch his nightly call. I realize to some that would be annoying, but I think that all couples reach that stage where they prioritize each other over others, though some to a stronger degree. When my BFF started dating her now husband, she started doing everything with him and asking to bring him on all of our hangouts, and they weren’t even long distance! I never did that, but I did decline some weekend events with my group of friends to be able to see my guy.
Now that my husband and I are no longer long distance, I’m able to spend more time with my family on the weekends, and not have to worry about travel or missing him, but I’ll admit I still prefer Netflix and chill nights with him, over a girl’s night out. We do more friend outings together as a couple now.
I’m sorry, I know I’m not much help, because the only thing that made this better for me was for the long distance to end. Maybe try to hang out with more of your single friends on the weekend? Though I know this also can lead to difficulty, because if you’re like me, all of my single friends only wanted to go out drinking to try and meet guys.
Thank you ALL so much for your thoughts and comments. I am really trying to look at both sides of the situation, since I know it’s our nature, as people, to hold our own opinions in a higher regard.
There are definitely things that I could have done better, and I’m trying to keep an open mind to that; I hate to think that I have made anyone feel that they don’t matter (or don’t matter as much as another person) to me.
I suppose this weekend is a perfect example of the “predicament”:
On boyfriends job, for the last two months, they have been working 12 hour days Monday-Saturday and 8 hour days on Sundays, and the town he is working in is 6 hours away from me and another 1.5 hours away from his hometown. So he is taking four days off of work (all that he was able to have approved). If he leaves Friday morning he should be here by the time I am off work, then it’s another 1.5 hours to his hometown which would put us there by around 8 if we stop somewhere quick for dinner. That’s too late to drive out to get his daughter, so we will probably visit with his brother and his wife that night. Then we have Saturday and Sunday to spend with his daughter and will have to leave around 8AM on Monday morning to come back here so he can drop me off and head back to the town where he works. He will probably get back there by 6 or so and get to sleep around 8:30 (they begin work at 6:30 every morning). And, unfortunately the way this job has been, he won’t be able to come back home for another 8 weeks.
Its not ideal; it’s not a perfect situation. But we have one year left to get through. When that year is over he has work lined up in his home town, it just doesn’t pay the kind of money that he makes on the road.
I can’t help but, at the end of all of this, feel just a little sad and frustrated. I really try to make sure everyone feels that I love them and am present in my relationship with them; I don’t like to let anyone down. Truth be known, I spent more time celebrating the friend who has been most outspoken about this than I have with my boyfriend in the past 15 months (read: two engagement parties, a five day long bachelorette party at the beach (the weekend that boyfriend got home from his last job), a bridal luncheon, stock the bar party, wedding/rehearsal, and now two baby showers). I have never missed anything and go out of my way to make known how much she means to me. I know this sounds very defensive, and I have really tried not to make this about the “numbers” in my head – I don’t like to quantify my time spent with the people I love. I definitely need to sit down and have some more honest conversations so that we are all on the same page.