• I struggled to make friends with other adults when I became a mother.
• I met a woman at a workout class, and we became close, so I opened up to her.
• She decided to end our friendship, and I'm struggling to let anyone else in.

I moved to a small Florida town after growing up in Miami and have been here for over 10 years. I still find it difficult to make friends in the area — whether it's because of cultural differences or just because it's more difficult to connect to others as an adult.

But a few years ago, I met another mom after a workout class. She approached me and initiated a conversation. We immediately found that we had a lot in common. We were the same age and each had a child the same age.

I was initially skeptical of her motives. As an adult, I had never become friendly with other people my age outside work. I hadn't realized until then how much I had shut myself off from the possibility of making new friends.

Since my son was about 3 at the time, and I hadn't successfully made any other mom friends even though I had tried and wanted to when he was younger, it felt like I should let myself open up to her. I had to allow myself to trust that she was simply interested in becoming friends. When I put myself in her position, I thought it was brave of her to approach me without knowing how I would react. I admired her for that.

She became the first adult friend I ever made, but it wasn't a happy ending.

I opened up to my new friend

We became friends quickly. She wasn't shy about calling me just to talk or inviting my son and me over for visits. She was so candid that it made me feel like I could be the same as her. Soon, we weren't just acquaintances but friends who were more like family.

After living away from home for so many years, I had forgotten how nice it was to have a friend like her nearby. She listened to me when I opened up — something I rarely do.

Since all of my best friends live three hours away, I became increasingly grateful to have her in my life and so close by. I don't think long-distance friends are less true friends than the ones you can see every day, but it's definitely different. In times of need, we could literally be there for each other right away.

She wanted to end our friendship

One day, with what felt like no warning, she told me that she didn't want to talk anymore. I could tell by her tone that she had given this decision a lot of thought. She didn't give me a clear reason. Out of respect for her and maybe my own pride, I didn't try to talk her out of it. I said OK, accepting that she no longer wanted to be friends.

I was devastated.

I had endured painful friendship breakups when I was younger, but I had never been through one as an adult. Beyond college friendships and romantic relationships, I had never opened myself up to anyone as much as I had with her.

The end of our friendship felt different from the end of one with a significant other because I viewed dating with the realism that it may not last forever. When it came to friendship, I saw it as something more enduring.

I'm even more closed off than I was before

I don't regret allowing myself to be vulnerable with her. I'm glad we each opened ourselves up to each other. When I look back at everything that was going on in my life at the time, I am so thankful to have had a friend like her to count on.

But since I was already so closed off to the possibility of making any more true friends past my college years when I met her, the way our friendship ended was traumatic for me.

Since then, I have found myself talking to new people less and being much more closed off in social situations. While it's been almost five years since we stopped talking, I still miss her. I'm glad I was able to experience an adult friendship to the degree of closeness that we shared. But the way it ended has made it even more difficult for me to believe in making any more new friends as an adult.

These days, I'm working on not closing myself off completely.

• Whenever my son comes home with an invitation to a big birthday party, I'm filled with dread.
• The birthday kid can't connect with everyone, and making small talk with parents is awkward.
• I prefer our tradition of small family pizza parties.

My son is turning 11 this year, and it's the first time he has asked me if he could invite some of his friends from school to his birthday dinner. I told him that I wanted to maintain our tradition of having just our family over to celebrate his birthday, but that next year, we could plan something additional for him to do with a few of his closest friends.

However, no matter what, we'll still keep doing our traditional small family party, and I can't imagine that will change anytime soon.

My son's pizza parties have become a family tradition

Since my son was born, we have invited our close family members for a pizza party to celebrate his birthday. There ends up being about 10 of us, and since it's just family, it almost has the feel of a holiday get together. After pizza, we have cake and then he opens his presents. The entire time, my son is the center of attention, but I'm glad, because I want him to feel loved on his birthday.

Since we keep the guest list small, everyone knows each other, and my son has time to truly visit with everyone. Plus, the fact that it's the same group of people that come every year makes it more special. It feels like everyone there is partly raising him and has the privilege of getting to watch him grow up.

Even though it's not a big party, I still decorate so that it doesn't feel like just another day. Plus, because my son has a December birthday, the Christmas decor has always doubled as party decor. When my son was really little, I think he thought Christmas was for him, so the time of year has always been on my side.

While my son likes going to big parties, I do not

I am filled with dread whenever my son comes home from school with a birthday invitation. While he has fun at these parties, I do not. I have always disliked the large kids' birthday party, as I find myself wandering around and trying to supervise my son and his friends or awkwardly trying to make small talk with other parents.

These large gatherings always make me question my own decision to keep my son's parties small, so I've always paid attention to the child whose birthday it is. I have noticed that there isn't enough time for them to visit with everyone that comes and that their family members get the least of their attention.

These children want to play with their friends, just as my son would if he had a big party like that. The events remind me of my own childhood parties, which were large, or of my wedding as an adult, where the party is a whirlwind, and I'm left feeling like I missed out on seeing everyone.

I feel I've made the right decision in keeping our celebrations simple

While my son is getting older and his birthdays will change to a degree, I'm glad I've kept them small. I know he has a great time. This year when everyone left, he said he didn't want his birthday party to be over, and I knew it was because he loves to spend time with everyone that came over.

His relationship with his friends is different, so as he gets older, he can celebrate with them as well, but separately and in a different way. What I have always wanted for my son on his birthday is just for him to know he is loved, and I think the smaller, more intimate gatherings achieve that best.

When my son was little, his father and I went through a custody trial and agreed on a holiday-sharing schedule. It outlined that if my son spent a holiday with me, the following year, he would spend that same holiday with his dad. So if I got Christmas Eve and Day with him one year, the next, his father would spend those days with him.

Initially, my son's father and I stuck to the original holiday-sharing schedule. I observed that while my son never had a preference for who he spent the holidays with, he did miss the parent he didn't get to see. After a few years of splitting holidays up, I was compelled to work with his father on a better arrangement. While it doesn't always work out perfectly, we have found that it's best for our son to spend time with each of his parents on any given holiday.

We do our best to come up with a plan that works for the whole family

Our new arrangement is informal, and I think we each try to work with each other based on what's going on with our respective families that year and how we divided up the holidays the year prior. While initially we had every holiday divided up until my son turns 18, I think the way we work with each other now is far more realistic.

One downside to co-parenting around the holidays is that I always have to tell other people that I need to talk to my son's father before we make any definite plans. Sometimes, I've wished I could just book a vacation over the winter break. However, I've realized that not only does his father deserve to spend time with his son on the holiday as much as I do, I know our son prefers it that way, too.

My immediate family understands that I may not have my son for certain traditions, so they factor this in when they're making their plans. They will ask me ahead of time on which days or times I'll have my son; not only are his father and I working together to make sure my son gets to see most of his extended family, but our families do their best to work with us, too.

It doesn't always work perfectly, so there have been exceptions

There are certain holidays where the division is an easy decision, such as Thanksgiving. Growing up, I always liked watching the parade in the morning. Every year, I had an aunt who would suggest we just eat our pie for breakfast, but no one ever went through with it.

When I had my son, I had the opportunity to make our own traditions. So now, he and I make pumpkin and apple pies the night before Thanksgiving and then have some for breakfast the next morning while we watch the parade. Since his father's family has a big dinner in the afternoon, we usually just split the day in half so that my son is with me in the morning and with his dad in the afternoon.

It might not be a perfect system, as my son is missed at our family's dinner on Thanksgiving, but after co-parenting for a decade, I've come to accept that his father and I always need to work together to come up with a plan that works best for our son, even if that means dividing up every holiday. Sometimes it doesn't work out, so we've learned to address every holiday individually.

Last year, my son's father wanted to take him up to New England to spend a week with his family that lives up there, and I was hesitant. My son and I had never spent a Thanksgiving apart before. When I asked my son if he wanted to go, he was excited. Not only does he rarely get to visit with those family members, but we live in Florida, so he had never seen snow before. I made sure he understood that he and I would spend Thanksgiving apart, and while he was sad about that part, we agreed that because it was a special opportunity for him, he should go.

Our new agreement feels right

This year, his father asked for Christmas Eve since I had my son for Christmas Eve last year. Then, my son will come home Christmas morning and spend the rest of the holiday with me, which is what he did with his dad last year. While I love to have my son on Christmas Eve, it's nice when I have him on Christmas Day, too. After spending alternate years without him on either of those days, I think our way of dividing up the holidays works out so much better.

Not only do we each get to share our traditions with our son every year instead of every other year, but my son can count on spending the holidays with both of his parents. It's always a little sad for him when he is separated from one of us, and that emotion is amplified on holidays. But I think it comforts him to know that his father and I will always work together to make sure he doesn't have to spend the holidays without seeing one of his parents.

• As a single mom having another baby wasn't something that seemed possible.
• When I met my now-husband we talked about another baby, but the age gap felt too big with my son.
• Also the idea of having to start all over again with a newborn depressed me.

There were times when my son was young when I thought about what it would be like to have another child, but as a single mom, it just wasn't possible.

When I met my husband, we talked a lot about having another baby, but by the time we got married, my son was already 8 years old. That meant that even if I got pregnant right away, my son would be nearly 10 by the time I had another baby.

Having a newborn and a nearly 10-year-old boy seemed like what would be a large gap between siblings. Plus, with my son getting closer and closer to the age of 18, the thought of having to start over again with another baby was more depressing than anything else.

It felt like I was halfway to the finish line, and the thought of beginning again from square one was not appealing. The older my son got, the closer I was to being "done," and that felt like a relief.

When it came to being a mom, I was already so tired

I had been a single mom for seven years, and while I still look back fondly at that time of my life when it was just my son and I, I found motherhood to be exhausting. I sometimes wonder how I accomplished taking care of the two of us all on my own, and the only answer I come up with is survival. I can remember thinking when my son was born that I would never sleep again, and while that isn't true, I certainly never slept in late again. Even before I met my husband, I was already so burnt out.

Ultimately, my husband and I decided not to have a child together. One of the main reasons that contributed to our decision was that parenting my son was already a lot of work. While I had already parented solo for years, he had become an overnight involved stepdad. We are on the same page in that parenting is a full time job on top of our careers, so there is little to no time left for us to rest. When we aren't working outside of the home, we are at home working as parents.

My husband and I were well into our 30s by the time we found each other

There is no doubt that our age played a factor in my husband and I deciding not to have a baby together.

Since I already had a child when we started dating, he and I have never had the opportunity to experience our relationship outside of being parents. When my son graduates from high school, my husband and I will both be in our mid-40s. If we had decided to have another baby when we got married, we would each be almost 60 by the time that child graduated from high school.

While we are still relatively young, we want to experience life as a couple without kids. We want to spend our time working less and traveling more as soon as we possibly can.

Initially my husband and I leaned more towards having a baby than not

I wanted to experience having a child with a supportive partner, while I think my husband didn't want to miss out on having his own child. So I was nervous to introduce my hesitation to have another baby into our conversation about having kids. But I'm glad I was brave enough to ask him to entertain the idea of what our life would be like without having another child. Until I brought it up as an alternative, he said he hadn't really thought much about life without a baby.

I have always felt like I'm not allowed to say how much work being a mom can be. For a long time, I felt ashamed for being exhausted by parenting. I always felt that the expectation was to have more than one child. When I found my husband, many people assumed that having a baby together would be the next step, and I know he felt that expectation as well. We're both glad that we allowed ourselves to even consider not having a baby, because in thinking carefully about that, we realized that having another child wasn't what we wanted. It was what others expected of us.

Every once in a while I'll think about what it would be like to have another baby. Mostly it's when I walk by an adorable set of footie pajamas in a store or encounter a storybook that I loved reading to my son. While on one hand it does feel sad that I'll never have a baby again, I always circle back to the same conclusion, and that is that we made the right decision.

Having my son brings the fulfillment to our lives that being a parent can provide, but footie pajamas are not a strong enough reason to have another child. I am no longer ashamed to admit that I'm already too tired for a second child. While being a mom is something I'm proud of, I am also very much looking forward to the next part of my life once my son is grown.

• When I married, changing my last name to my husband's felt like too much work.
• Three years later, I still haven't changed my name and realize I don't want to.
• The tradition feels antiquated, and I don't want to erase who I am.

Before our wedding, my husband asked me if I would change my last name to his, and I said I would. I wasn't lying. I had every intention to do so.

But before I walked down the aisle, I began to think about the hassle of going down to the Social Security office, changing my name at the bank, and updating my ID on every credit card. It seemed like a lot of work I didn't want to deal with — especially after planning a wedding.

At my bachelorette lunch, I discussed with my closest girlfriends — who all happened to be married — their decisions to change their names. All but one had put no thought into their name change, saying that it was something they had looked forward to or hadn't questioned.

I felt like the outlier, and I'm still learning to be OK with that.

Changing my name for my husband feels antiquated

After the wedding, I simply viewed my name change as another to-do on my list and kept putting it off. But as time went by, I began to question why I had to change my name in the first place.

Growing up, I had never fully understood the tradition of changing your name to your husband's. In my gut, it felt more antiquated than romantic.

I decided to consider my husband's opinion and ask him how he felt about me not changing my name yet. I had no idea until I asked him that he had been wondering why I hadn't done so. When I asked him how he felt about the tradition growing up, he explained that it was something he had always imagined his wife doing. He liked the idea of his wife taking his last name.

The whole conversation made me feel like I was disappointing him by dragging my feet, which made me lean toward just going through with the name change.

I got increasingly annoyed at the idea of changing my name

Most people assumed I had changed my last name already. When they realized I hadn't, they wanted to know why. Their questions made me uncomfortable.

While most women seemed not to question the tradition, others felt free to question my decision. One person even blatantly said they could see how it would be easier for me not to change my name "if anything were to happen." I didn't like the implication that my marriage was viewed as temporary or less than because of simply not changing my last name.

The more I thought about how I felt, the more I began to view the adoption of my husband's name as removing my identity beyond my marriage. I thought taking my husband's name would negate the accomplishments I had made independently. Since I'm a teacher, my students address me by my last name, and as a writer, I have been published under that name.

Becoming someone else on paper felt like having to become someone else entirely. It also felt like I had to forget who I was before I was someone's wife.

Once I considered my feelings without considering everyone else's, I stood by my choice.

Changing my name just for other people doesn't feel right

I've considered surprising him with a name change when I feel terribly in love and want to make my husband happy. But the main problem with this is that he would know it was something I did for him and not something I really wanted to do.

While I know he'd prefer me just to change my name, I think my independence and strong will are qualities he finds attractive. Changing my name wouldn't represent my own values and, therefore, wouldn't yield the romantic result I've envisioned at times.

The pressure and judgment I feel from others reinforces that it should be my decision. Appeasing other people is not a good enough reason to do something I'm not sure I even believe in.

• I always told my son I'd never let him play tackle football. The idea of him getting hurt scares me.
• But at a birthday party recently, I saw how much he loves it — and how good he is.
• For now, we're compromising on flag football.

I have always feared the idea of my son playing tackle football. I've just heard about too many young men getting hurt playing the sport, and I've also never been a fan of the violence. I hoped he wouldn't be drawn to the sport so it wouldn't be an issue, but a few factors have led to his love of the game.

My son's father played football in high school and his stepfather is a big college football fan, so both male parental figures in his life are fans of the sport. He's heard stories about his dad playing football and has grown up watching it on TV his entire life. By the time my son was in first grade, he started asking me if he could play himself. Instead of giving him an outright no and hoping that he would lose interest in it, I just said that we could talk about it when he was older.

Since we live in an area where youth football is popular, many of his classmates and friends play in leagues for boys his age. The more friends my son made who played football outside school, the more he asked me whether he could join a league, too. Since he had the opportunity to play flag and touch football in school at recess, in PE, and during daycare after school, I told him that was plenty. But he was persistent in his request to play, so I finally had to have a real talk about why I didn't want him to; I thought tackle football was just too dangerous.

I had to tell him the truth about why I didn't want him to play football

I explained that I didn't want him to have a serious injury this young — or any age, for that matter — because of something like football. Fortunately for me, both his father and stepdad agreed with my concerns. My son was upset, but the more he saw that I wasn't going to change my mind about it, the less he asked. We had compromised on him playing in high school if that was something he still wanted to do, though I held onto hope he would grow out of it by then.

When he got invited to a football-themed birthday party recently, I watched him play flag football with the other boys for two hours straight. Other moms told me that their sons had told them what a good throw my son had, and as I saw him in the yard with his friends, making plays and catching tosses, I realized something that I hadn't before. I was keeping my son from something that not only made him happy but that he was also really good at.

After adamantly refusing to let him play football for years, I had taken a less harsh stance by the end of the party. I still don't want him to play tackle football — ever, if I'm being truthful — I am going to let him play a season of flag football this spring.

While I watched him play at the party, I asked the other moms about the football leagues their sons played in. Every other youth session offered during the year in our area is tackle football, but the spring session is the only one that's flag football. Since the only part of my son playing football that scares me is the tackling, I decided to let him try out a season of flag football with his friends. By the end of the party, I had signed him up for the season on my phone through a link that the other moms had sent me.

I don't want to be the person that keeps my son from what he loves

While I realize that allowing him to play flag football may lead to my son wanting to play tackle football even more in the future, I don't want to keep him from experiencing more of what I saw at that party. Not wanting him to play football has been a constant internal struggle for me. I've worried about the effect of keeping him from trying out something he clearly loves, but have also felt conflicted about going against my instincts in allowing him to do something I believe is dangerous.

For now, a season of flag football feels like a healthy compromise for both of us. If the conversation on tackle football comes up again, I'll have to deal with it to the best of my parenting abilities when that time comes. While I haven't wavered in thinking it comes with hazards, especially for young boys, I have changed my mind about not wanting to be the person who keeps my son from doing something he genuinely enjoys — and might even be destined to do.