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Comment by jcims | Hacker News Reader

I sometimes wonder if I’m broken when I see comments like yours, which seem heartfelt and correct and as it should be (the desire for friendships that is). Maybe it’s because my wife and kids fill the void, but I just have no interest in making or maintaining friendships. My wife has a really cool coworker that tries to get me out of the house but i just kinda flop on him. I live in a secluded spot that you can’t see from the road and work from home 95% of the time.

I see it in my youngest daughter as well, and I do worry for her and am applying gentle pressure to get her to socialize...but I’m pretty much good to go. Maybe things will change down the road but I’m in my mid 40’s sooo.

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>Maybe things will change down the road but I’m in my mid 40’s sooo.

My dad was like this, his free-time basically revolved around us kids when we were younger and we had a great time. Then we got a little older and I could tell he'd be a little disappointed when we'd be busy with friends/other stuff on the weekends, but we'd still be together most week nights. Then when we went off to college/adult life, he really had nothing to do. My mom had friends to hang out with, but for him, she was all he had really and I think at that point it was too weird/hard for him to branch out and make new friends.

I'm not saying you shouldn't put family first, but it's not a bad idea to maintain some relationships or else that empty nest is going to hit you HARD eventually.

I also really, really second this. I am currently studying and took some interest in how other parents managed the situation (because of how my parents dealt with it).

If your life revolves around your kids you have to keep in mind that this is not for life. Loosing all your hobbies and all your friends will lead to a bad awakening when you realize that your previously laughter-filled house is now quite, your children left for university and only you and your partner are sitting at the dinner table. Now the house is too big, there's nothing to do in the evenings and you're kinda lost.

A suprising amount of marriages failed and some parents really lost their way. When you don't have any real friends, friends that help when you struggle, it gets tough. You can't fill that void with half-assed hobbies. Eating out on wednesday and going to the gym on friday are probably not really helping.

Writing this, I think I realized something. I think one of the problems is that parents understimate the speed of change and are taken fully by suprise when they move out. One moment they are 16, quite grown up but you still notice the children in them. But then they turn 17 and then there's only one year left until they move out, until they live by their own and explore the world on their own. They maybe move to another city and that turns your complete life upside down. That's a rapid change and it's only 2 years.

I’m in my 40s also and I find most of my social needs are met by my wife. She has two groups of friends that she likes to spend time with but I’m okay spending time alone when she is out with her friends.

I have a couple of friends that we force ourselves to get together at least once every other month to at least have lunch but we are all in the same boat - married, jobs, hobbies, side projects or studying so we have to explicitly schedule it on our calendars.

I don’t think it is healthy to depend on only one person for your emotional support and my wife isn’t interested in hearing about the latest geeky stuff that we talk about it. I have another friend who is across the country but we try to catch up once a month.

>I see it in my youngest daughter as well, and I do worry for her

It's good that you worry. As children of staunch loners, my siblings and I all turned into loners as adults. Edit: We don't even talk to each other.

This is an important point for jcims' situation: If you want your kids to get out, then get out yourself. You have to be a role model for getting out - both in the sense that the kids see that you had fun doing so and as a model for the skills used to master the situation (e.g. casually talking to people, gift culture, helping each other out and so on. The specifics obviously differ for different (sub-)cultures).

The role model thing is often overlooked when parenting. If you want your kids to do sports, let them see you doing sports etc.

I sort of agree with this but my parents constantly had people over when I was a kid. That and my oldest daughter is a raging socialite at college, lead RA, secretary for the university student govt, just got invited to box seats with the university executive leadership for a football game, has 3-4 friend groups and a core couple deep friends that she meets constantly.

A little nature a little nurture, but to be clear I do agree with you that it's better to model than not.

Yes, we are in full agreement here :) The parental role model part won't override the Big Five in most cases. Parental behaviour does help in expanding the possibilty space a bit, though (e.g. an extravert can - to a certain degree - learn to relax while being alone and vice versa).

The other caveeat I conveniently ignored is that parents are usually adults, so the image they provide is for adult behaviour. Kids won't necessarily transfer that fully into their current situation. It does shape their inner image of adult behaviour, though (which starts to become more relevant as the kids enter the early teenager years).

> I sometimes wonder if I’m broken when I see comments like yours,

Or maybe other people have the wisdom to know that the kids will move out, the job will change, and that looking past the present moment and planning for the future includes developing hobbies and relationships outside of your immediate family

Think about it this way. If you find friends that vibe well with you, you're reducing the pressure on your family later in life to keep you connected. It is a real concern.

The risk is what you'll do when your kids are grown and move out. I definitely recommend, for your own mental health, to build some kind of other life outside your kids before it hits you like a ton of bricks.

You're not broken. If your family is your number one interest and responsibility, then you're doing life correctly. Don't let anyone else tell you differently.

Just be careful not to smother your family with your interest in them. I've met some parents with broken relationships with their kids because they failed to recognize that they needed some space as they got older.

Yes my family is my number one interest, but not my only interest. My (step) sons who loved to spend time with me when we met and they were 9 and 14 - now one doesn’t live with us and the other is 17 with his own friends and interests.

My wife’s interests and my interests are well enough aligned that we like spending time together, but she has her own interests and own set of female friends.

Then you should consider your life a success.

No Silicon Valley billionaire's fortune can compare to the responsibility and reward of raising a good family.

> my wife and kids fill the void

This is pretty common among men, but what happens if you get divorced? Any plan-b?

What is interesting is that most people understand the concept of a plan B when it comes to things like what university they will attend, their careers, their financial safety nets, etc. But they assume their marriage will last forever. As you imply, it’s a big mistake.

Assuming your marriage lasts forever is kind of the point. It's an existential leap-of-faith.

You or your partner will die at some point, and your marriage will end then, right? What happens after that?

That's a personal question that you can't really answer until you're at that point.

But I don't think that has much effect on the marriage itself. If that is how it ends, then the marriage truly did last "forever" in a way :)

I don't think my marriage would be as good if I went into it with an exit plan.

For instance, it would be easier for some things, especially huge things, to be "her problem" instead of "our problem" if I had an escape hatch present in my subconscious.

Neither of my grandparents "escaped" (by which I assume you mean divorce), yet it still ended, and my grandmother lived over 30 years alone.

Sure. That's typically in the vows.

I was more saying that people don't vow to be together "until I get a few promotions, you get fat, or I contract chronic FOMO-itis". Those who have expectations like that tend to be hurting themselves too.

I think that making the husband socially dependent on the wife is bad for the same reasons making the wife financially dependent on the husband is. You can say that it goes against the spirit of marriage, but I'd say that those things makes people stay in unhealthy relationships.

I didn't say anything like that.

Where are your children supposed to find role models on how to have healthy relationships with friends if their parents aren't being that role model?

Sitcom characters? Lord of the Flies our schools are?

In this area, their mom. As i said elsewhere my oldest really couldn’t be more social. I just think our youngest isn’t catching that same wave so I’m stepping up my efforts to round out what she sees.

The problem is that it’s going to be fake, which gets back to the core of my question.

> but I just have no interest in making or maintaining friendships.

There's a possibility that bowling alone often becomes so common that its hard to imagine bowling with others.

You're not broken. I've always been the kind of person who's happy to have one to three close friends, and that's it. After getting married, I stopped feeling any need to reach out and try to make new connections.

There may be value to the perspectives given by others as to the value of making friends now before the kids grow up, but I just wanted to chime in and reassure you that you're not the only one who feels no need right now. :)

> I sometimes wonder if I’m broken when I see comments like yours

I'd wager a guess that most of us feel broken, some way or another. But that's just a guess; I imagine that some psychology or sociology journal has empirical data on that.

But even if you're an outlier, it seems like you're pretty content and not making other people miserable, so I wouldn't really call that "broken".

My parents were like this. I ended up feeling resentful of their attitude as a kid. They whenever I changed schools, it took me a long time to make friends because I didn't have good examples to follow. Even when I did, I always felt like the odd one out because all my friends parents hung out together, but I wasn't invited since my parents had no social interests.

Do you have a hobbie that's not your work?

Nope. That is, my hobby is my computer.

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