She No Longer Has a Single Complaint

They missed us at the Fourth of July party this year. We skipped the drive to Pasadena and had a few couples over for barbecue instead. And we won’t be heading out tomorrow to the Labor Day picnic we’ve attended for years.

My family is celebrating at home more these days, with a new cast of characters that reflects a change in social status so subtle, I’m not quite sure what to make of it, or how to measure its losses and gains.

It’s an old adage, voiced time and again by people tallying the cost of failed marriages: When a relationship dissolves, the newly single often find themselves cut off from couples whose lives they once shared.

“It’s like they think it’s contagious,” huffs a friend of mine, whose dinner invitations stopped before the ink on her divorce was dry. “The husbands think I’m going to corrupt their wives, and the women think I’ll steal their men.”

It may not be that calculated, but the social bias against the uncoupled seems indubitably clear to those of us--like me--on the single side of the divide.

“People who are single are told by society, ‘You’re not whole,”’ says Judith M. Harris, an Encino therapist who counsels couples and hosts relationship seminars for singles. “Couplehood is valued--coveted even. There’s a great fear of being single.”

When people become single, she says, “they’re expected to function different socially. They’re seen as being ‘out hunting,’ and that can be threatening to married couples.”

Sometimes, the newly single opt out of social circles themselves. “It’s not spoken about or addressed,” Harris says, “but they feel excluded, unwelcome ... because they’ve internalized the societal view that they’re damaged goods.”

So the single person retreats, and the couples close ranks. And the rupture disconnects the newly unattached not just from a social network, but from a history, an identity.

It took years after my husband died for me to realize my social standing had suffered.

I was too busy working and tending three kids to pay much attention to how often the dinner invitations arrived.

But gradually, I realized that I was no longer on the radar screen of couples I’d once considered friends.

My social outlets had dwindled to occasional nights out with the girls and sporadic dates with fellows I’d just met.

The mere absence of a man had reduced me, it seemed, to fifth-wheel status among my married friends.

Fortunately, I made new friends, and I was blessed with co-workers who expanded their families’ routines to include my daughters and me. There were weekends at the Goldbergs’, holidays with Kimber’s clan, birthdays with the Chavez family. Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve ... thanks to other families, my family still had places to be.

Then I met a man who would become my boyfriend, then my fiance. And I watched my life shift back again, my image burnished by his presence.

“Sandy and the girls” became “Sandy and Johnny” in others’ eyes. I found myself consulting him--considering him and his children’s needs--before I accepted invitations or arranged family outings.

And I wound up with a new coterie of friends--couples, who include us in their weekend plans and seem to enjoy our company. Now I’m rediscovering the simple pleasures of a grown-up night on the town with married friends.

But I am also struggling with misgivings about how easily I’ve embraced a lifestyle that once abruptly shut me out and now so easily invites me in.

It is inevitable, it seems, the ebb and flow of friendships that occur in our lives over time. Relationships are built on common ground, and they are bound to shift as our circumstances change. We marry, have children, change jobs, divorce ... bonds loosen and tighten, and sometimes give way, in relation to those forces.

And it is natural, I suppose, to be uncomfortable with the process as it occurs. I mourned the loss of old friends and traditions when my marriage ended. But I learned to value the tradeoffs, as well--my new friends, the companionship of my children, my unchallenged autonomy.

Now I feel guilt at moving on, at having less time for those who were so kind to me when I was alone.

There is a new relationship to consider, with new benefits, burdens and challenges. And sometimes I am swept along by all it offers and all it demands.

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Sandy Banks’ column is published on Sundays and Tuesdays. She can be reached online at sandy.banks@latimes.com.