On Mastering the Mom Friend Flirt

I am not what you would call a shy person.

I’ve always been extroverted and comfortable in most social situations. I love to meet new people.

Which is why when I discussed my new problem with the people closest to me—my husband, my mother, my former colleagues—they all looked at me askance.

“This just doesn’t sound like you”, they said.

I’m talking about my newfound shyness and my seeming inability to properly execute the Mom Friend Flirt.

The Mom Friend Flirt is an adaptation of the Girlfriend Flirt, in which women put on their best, warmest, most come hither manners when meeting. They don their cutest outfits and flirt, for lack of a better word, when getting to know one another, all in the hopes of communicating, “You’ll like me. I’m charming and witty and know the best places to get your eyebrows waxed. I’ll bring fabulous appetizers to your cocktail parties, memorize your favorite drink order and have it ready for you when you’re running late to meet me, and tell you it’s completely your husband’s fault when you fight. You should definitely ask for my number. You want to be my friend.”

The Mom Friend Flirt, as the name would suggest, is the Girlfriend Flirt slightly modified to attract other mothers into one’s social circle. The subtle undertones of this flirt might go something like, “Yes, your baby is exceptionally beautiful. No, you don’t look tired at all. Of course I can babysit while you and your husband have a date night. I will share with you both my foolproof recipe for homemade apple baby food and my lactation consultant’s phone number. You and I should be friends.”

Tragically, I have developed Sudden Adult-Onset Shyness Around Other Mothers.  Yes, that’s right. I suffer from SAOSAOM.  For whatever reason, I feel my flirt slip through my fingers when confronted with a group of women with which I have, on the surface at least, so much in common. And it rears up at the worst possible times. At library story times, in the pediatrician’s waiting room, even playground benches, I can barely force myself to get past the introductory pleasantries. I clam up. My palms get sweaty. I struggle for segues to keep the conversation going.

It’s terrible.

I find this new social reticence especially interesting in light of a completely opposite condition I suffered while pregnant, Chronic Pregnancy Oversharing Syndrome. CPOS strikes those afflicted with a compulsion to share the most personal and intimate of pregnancy symptoms with fellow preggos, usually upon first meeting. In the waiting room during my 24 hour glucose screening, at my prenatal yoga class, even on the T, I was struck by the ease with which both I and other expectant mommies could and would describe, in lurid detail, the full extent of some of pregnancy’s more…um… colorful symptoms to perfect strangers.

So what’s with this timidity now? Why am I suddenly so bashful?

Perhaps it’s because I’m still ever so slightly unsure of myself in this role, as any new mother would be.  All transitions in life take getting used to. It took me time to get comfortable making schmoozy small talk at author dinners or to feel totally relaxed in the presence of my in-laws. I suppose it will take me time to open up to new women who are also in the throes of this major life change.

Perhaps what holds me back is in part the fear of being drawn into the dangerous cycle of the baby comparing game. You know, the whole “my 8 month old recites ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ while doing backflips” thing. More on that in another post…

But I am absolutely working on my SAOSAOM because I know the value of friendship and the special camaraderie that females in the same place in life can offer one another.

And we all want the same thing, don’t we?  To connect, to bond, to find solace and wisdom in the journeys of our fellow mothers. To have a mirror held up to our experience and be understood. That’s all I’m looking for in some new mom friends.

To have someone concur that one needs a BA in finance to understand the couponing/rewards bucks system at Babies “R” Us.

To affirm that time has never gone by so fast.

That you have also found that long after the baby weight has been shed, there are parts of your body that remain virtually unrecognizable to you.

That you too think someone needs to design a pacifier that when dropped doesn’t immediately roll to the hardest to reach place in your home. It’s like they have homing devices for dark corners, right?

To say that like me, you are simultaneously awed and ecstatic, exhausted and terrified by this entire experience.

That nothing you’ve attempted before this has ever been so hard or so wonderful. And that you understand that just because it is hard doesn’t mean it’s not wonderful. And that just because it is wonderful, doesn’t mean it’s not hard.

In the meantime, I’ll be pushing myself out of my comfort zone and trying to engage with my fellow mamas.

So if our eyes should meet across the park, or in the diaper aisle at Target, and I toss my second day hair and bat my hastily mascaraed eyes at you, I hope you’ll flirt back.