Family and Friends

I got to thinking after yesterday's blog that one thing that might be keeping us from staying in touch or being connected with old friends for many years is our FAMILIES. 

Now, families can keep you distracted from life in both good ways and bad.  We all have the family of origin - well I guess the majority of us do - and feel a need to be forever connected to them.  How many of us go to activities with families out of an obligation, and THAT keeps us from having a large social group of friends.  Do our new relationships as we age come from groups that include the parents of our children's friends?  Or from our work environment?  But how many of us exclude those groups because we think we should be focusing on our primary relationships with family?

I'm being more philisophical than making any statements.  I just wonder whether our generation is still as connected with our families as we were 30 years ago, or are our primary (adult) relationships with friends.  What is our priority outside of taking care of the kids?  I, personally, have moved into being more connected with an aging parent than with friends.  I'm not sure I prefer it that way, but that's the way it's played out in my life.  I'm seeing more and more of my friends that are starting to think about aging parents and getting the kids through school, than I see of my adult friends maintaining those adult relationships.

They (whoever 'they' is) say that we are in the "sandwich generation" - where we have both our parents and our children to consider in making life decisions.  There aren't that many good and economical options for caring for the older generation.  Do any of you get stressed because of these decisions?  Are you struggling with finances of both college tuition AND elder care?  Since I don't have kids, I'm only on the elder care side of things.  So far its working out fine, but longterm is what I get stressed about.  I'm afraid I have truly allowed adult friendships and "fun" to be overshadowed by other life events and situations.  I'm starting to rethink the priorities, but I'd like to know what others are thinking about these issues.

Now, I KNOW there are a lot of you reading this - I can see that on my blog files - but nobody has had any comments yet.  SO, I'm just gonna keep on writing about whatever comes to mind, and hope you're enjoying at least some of it!

Until tomorrow....