I married a wonderful man almost a year ago, and moved from my downtown condo out to the burbs, bought a car, and became a commuter/grown-up/wife.  As such, I've found myself growing further and further away from some of my girlfriends - especially the ones the hubby is not overly fond of.  I've tried to manage these friendships to ensure I can still hang out with them, usually in a ‘girl's night' setting, but without the freedom to woop it up on weeknights (the drive home), it's been tricky to find time on weekends since we are all generally doing 'couple' stuff.

Two of my favorite girlfriends, one a friend from high school, the other a long-time roommate, have grown closer to each other because of this distance.  The other day, one told me she was pregnant, and literally an hour later, the other told me she'd secretly gotten married to her long-time boyfriend.  Now, this is all very exciting news for which I'm very happy for both of them - until I find out that they both knew about each other's secret, for some time. I can't help but feel incredibly hurt by this, but I'm also jealous of their friendship as I feel they were my friends first.  I miss being close with my girls! L

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there’s nothing more important than having some ride or die bitches in your life.  So L, I’m sure it’s been really hard to be away from them and not have that close connection around all the time.

But this is what happens when we grow up - life just gets more complicated.  Trying to hold on to exactly what we had in our twenties isn’t as easy as it used to be.  We have stupid responsibilities like car payments and babies that take us away from all that unbridled freedom.  It sucks, but thems the breaks.  Having said all of that though, friendships, the true ones, shouldn’t be hard to hold on to.

I’ve been living across the country from my best friends for the last 8 years and while I don’t know all the minute details of their everyday lives, we are as tight as ever.  Friendships, like all relationships, require effort from both parties, so I do have to wonder if you might have been the one to drop the ball a bit in the friendship department.  

Also what’s this sh-t about your husband not being “fond” of some of your friends?  Is he laying down some crap about who you can or can’t hang out with?  Because if he is, that’s majorly lame and you’ve got to put a stop to that.  You can’t allow him to dictate your life that way. 

So I’ve gotta ask L, can you honestly say you've been putting in more than you've been getting out?   Just because you moved to the burbs to become a wifey doesn’t mean you can’t stay invested in the lives of the people you care about, you know? I mean, there are so many ways to be tapped in:  phone calls, emails, texts, skyping, tweeting, touting…..so you really have no excuse.   What I'm saying is you can’t expect to check in and out of your friends' lives and hope that they just wait for you.  If you’re allowed to change outside of the friendship, they are too.   And that’s what happened: while you created some distance they became closer.  You can’t be mad about that.

Now I don’t want to beat you up too bad because I know you didn’t do any of this on purpose and I can tell you’re bummed about the distance between your besties, so if I were you if I’d put this sh-t behind you and press refresh.  Put in the phone calls, invite them over for dinner parties, dig out those downtown duds and hit the big city more often – start getting back into the friendship.  Trust me, that’s all you need to do to make this better.

Thanks for writing in! xx