Life/friendship
I’m Jealous of My Best Friend’s Single Lifestyle
There are seasons in life and in relationships.
I’ve been a married woman for quite some time now. I was also a single woman for quite some time in the past. In a way, I guess you could say I’ve experienced the best of both worlds.
Throughout it all, I’ve always had my best friend supporting me and vice versa — since we were both 12 years old.
My best friend and I have many similarities as far as some of our romantic relationship patterns. We both got married in our 20s and were both divorced by our early 30s. During this time, we always stayed in touch, despite the thousands of miles between us. We would talk and text one another about our lives and relationships.
One of the biggest differences between my bestie and me in regard to our first marriages was that she had two children with her first husband and I didn’t have any children with my first husband. This was a huge contrast.
Once I was divorced, I was essentially free to engage in whatever lifestyle or romantic relationship I wanted, whereas my best friend was still bound by the massive responsibility of caring for her kids while also navigating custody issues.
During this time, there was definitely more of a divide between us, simply because our lifestyles were so different. She was a newly divorced stay-at-home mom while I was a newly divorced working girl with free time after work and no responsibilities besides paying my own bills.
Fast forward a few more years. I was still single with no long-term partner, and my best friend was enmeshed in a bitter custody battle with her ex-husband.
My best friend had her kids most of the time and was slowly testing the waters of dating again. She eventually got a new boyfriend who lasted several years, yet blending the kids with this boyfriend didn’t work out so well. He didn’t have children of his own and felt overwhelmed by parenting responsibilities — so she did the majority of the parenting on her own. That relationship didn’t last and it was a major stress and heartbreak in her life.
My best friend has always killed it as a single mom. I have always admired her for this fact. I didn’t quite get how much work she was putting in until I became a mother myself.
After I met the man who would become my second husband and became a mother myself — as well as a stepmother — my lifestyle changed drastically. I ended up quitting my job to become a full-time stay-at-home mom.
Fast-forward many years and I’m in the parenting trenches while my best friend’s kids have grown older with regular visits to their father’s house after working out the custody situation. This means that my bestie has a lot more free time on her hands — like whole weekends — and since the kids were older she could leave them at home alone if needed.
Most recently, my bestie has a new boyfriend and she’s been extremely happy with him. They go off together for weekend getaways, stay in cabins together, go kayaking together, and lounge in bed for 12 hours at a time — sometimes during the day.
Am I jealous? Absolutely. Super jealous.
I envy her time away with her man where they have total privacy away from the kids. My husband and I have had rare moments of privacy lately, with a teenager on the other side of our paper-thin bedroom wall and an elementary-aged child who always wants our attention. When and if we do have sex these days, it’s got to be ‘library sex’ as I call it — meaning don’t make a sound.
I know my bestie deserves this life, this love, and the adventures. There is no doubt. This doesn’t mean I don’t wish I had this kind of lifestyle as well. However, I understand that there are seasons in life and in relationships and that we make choices that bind us to a particular lifestyle for a certain amount of time.
Now in my 40s, I certainly hope that by the time my husband and I are able to live a more carefree lifestyle without the kids around all the time, we’re able-bodied enough to do so.
In the meantime, I ponder what it would be like to lounge around naked in a cabin with no disturbances or wi-fi in the middle of nature or to get whisked away every other weekend on an adventure.
Looking back, I took my own single-life freedom without children for granted, not knowing what any other kind of life would be like whilst my best friend struggled in the trenches of divorce and parenthood.
My very best friend deserves every ounce of joy she feels at this point in her life. I’m still insanely jealous, but only in the most loving way a best friend could be.
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