Book Review: MWF Seeking BFF

After reading Kelsey’s review of MWF Seeking BFF by Rachel Bertsche, I jumped on the bandwagon, and checked it out from my local library. I haven’t read for pleasure in a few months and it felt good. It was very much along the lines of one of my other favourite reads this year; Gretchen Rubin’s the Happiness Project .

Parts of this book made me laugh – sometimes really hard - but mostly I felt I could relate to a lot of what the author was writing and I loved the tidbits of research interwoven with the story-telling because I'm nerdy like that. Unlike Bertsche, I am not new to my city. I have spent most of my life in this area. But I am in a different life phase from many of my childhood, teenage, university, and post-graduate friends since I am married with two kids.  Consequently, while I have remained close with some friends, I have understandably drifted apart from others.

Some of my takeaways from this book:

Friendships take a lot of time and this I already knew. Follow-up is a key part of being a good friend and maintaining friendships. 

Interestingly, I wrote on maintaining relationships with family and friends earlier this year. However, I’ve been working so hard on maintaining relationships with my childless friends, since we lack the common experience of family life to draw us together, that I have not focused as much attention on fostering new friendships or maintaining friendships with people who have children. I need to do more of this! Most of my mommy friends are mainly bloggy online friends or those who I tend to keep in touch with online rather than in the flesh. The bonus to maintaining and building on these relationships is that my children are welcome accompaniments to get togethers. Being a busy working mom, meetings that satisfy multiple purposes with friends/family/children are most welcome since I have less time overall to spend with family and friends.

I should stop trying to nag encourage my husband to seek out new friends. He likely has enough friends already and doesn’t need the face-to-face kind of friendships I do as a woman, but rather the side-to-side activity buddy type. He works all day along-side guys he has come to think of as friends. He even travels to and from work with some of these guys. When he does do things with friends outside of work, the plans usually revolve around an activity like golfing, wakeboarding, or playdates – yes, I am slightly embarrassed to say that in the past year my husband has arranged more playdates with his friends and their kids than I have. Just more proof that I have to up the ante in that area!