friends with married people

this post was originally published on my old blog back in 2014, but I’m republishing here because no one knows the URL for my old blog except for me :) enjoy!

In two hundred pages, Dr. Meg Jay obliterates the idea that your twenties don’t matter. Far from being “throw away years” your twenties are the defining decade of adulthood, an era where you become who you’ll be for the rest of your life. According to the doctor, one way to understand where you’re headed is by paying attention to your friendships. She had this to say about twentysomethings and their friend groups:

“The urban tribe is overrated. Best friends are great for giving rides to the airport, but twentysomethings who huddle together with like-minded peers limit who they know, what they know, and where they work.”

I think about that often because I don’t hang around a lot of people my own age. Over my last decade, my friendships have tended to involve married couples. It annoyed me at first because it felt like I’d missed out on a integral part of my twenties. I wanted friends with more familiar problems, ones who were less concerned with their mortgages and more interested in the latest indie movie. The dissonance continued to bother me until Jay’s book.

During her TED Talk on the same subject, she spoke about our culture’s tendency to trivialize the 20’s:

“What do you think happens when you pat a twentysomething on the head and tell them they have ten extra years to start their life? Nothing happens. You have robbed this person of their urgency and ambition."  

My perspective has changed, though, and I’ve developed an appreciation for married folks. Once you get past the early bedtimes, the crowded living rooms, and babysitting as a form of “hanging out”, you notice an opportunity to learn. Sure, it’d be nice if they enjoyed staying out later, but if having an earlier bedtime means more life advice, I okay with how things are.

This essay isn’t really about being friends with married people, it’s about being friends with people who are wiser than you. I used to think I wanted friends my own age, but I’ve realized that what I really want (and really need) are friends with a little bit more life experience than me. As my dad used to say: you can learn in twenty minutes what it took someone else twenty years to learn, if you stop to listen.

I stop to listen a lot now. It has never failed me