I have two kids under 2 years old and I have a friend who has a daughter the same age as mine.

My wife is friends with his wife and they talk often. She recently told my wife that my friend wants to have another kid, but she doesn’t appreciate how little he showed up with this first child and she wants to wait for his “dad instincts” to kick in before they have another child.

I found this surprising as I have gone out several times with my friend where we have taken our daughters for play dates and he always seemed like a kind and caring father to me. Very attentive to what his daughter was doing and always running after her. I also did not understand what “Dad instincts” meant.

So a few weeks ago we arrange to catch a game together at a local bar with a few other friends. I have not been able to get out much as two kids are very demanding, but I was looking forward to catching up with my friend because the other people we were meeting don’t have kids and my friend and I would have something common to talk about.

So we meet up and we initially talk about our kids. I ask how his family is and he does the same. I’m telling him all the things my kids have been up to and I can see that he is nodding and smiling, but did not seem to be listening to anything I was saying.

When I finish talking he suddenly says, “Hey look at who I have for my fantasy lineup this week,” and he breaks out his phone and starts showing me.

That was the moment I saw it. Exactly what his wife had been complaining about. I feel like my life has grown so much, but he was reminding me of what we were like 5 years ago or more.

Our friends showed up later and he does not bring up his family once. All he talked about with them was going to play golf and out to restaurants. He was making all these plans for the next two weeks and all I thought about was, “What about your wife and kid? Won’t they need you on those days?”

I didn’t know what to think of it at the time. I was just shocked that his priorities seemed so different when he has the same responsibilities I do and people counting on him to be around.

  • IWW4@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    Do you notice your friends have wildly different priorities as you grow older?

    Absolutely and that happens long before you get the parenting approaches.

    I was part of a really tight knit quartet in high school.

    The composition was me, two dudes who went to my school who were one year ahead of me and another dude who was one year behind me and went to a different school. There were also a number of peripheral folks who often hung out with us.

    Starting halfway though my tenth grade year, I was with those three dudes all the time and it is fair to say there was at least five other folks who we all always Unguru out with.

    I graduated and went to a different university than all those guys and it was wild how fast we grew apart. One of the went to university and he and I had a lot in common. After the summer of my first year that quartet was done.

    Now when it comes to how much parenting impacts your long term relationships it is wild. It is amazing how bad so many people are at parenting and not just the guys.