Unfortunately for your friendships, that means a lot of what you probably liked about your friends vanishes, at least for a while. They aren't up for new adventures or building new memories with you because that's a weird B-plot now that would probably get cut in editing. In those first two years of a child's life, parents will mentally fast forward through anything that isn't directly related to their role as a parent. New moms and dads regularly set aside time for themselves every day to just look at pictures of their kid on their phone. They spend most of their downtime while the beast sleeps, sitting in the silent ruins of what used to be their apartment saying, "I just love him so much" or "She's so great, right? She's so great." Not even fiction is so bold as to build a scene where supporting characters do that about the hero.

Part of that is because parents are habituated to the oxytocin their baby's presence pumps through their brain, but mostly it's because they are terrified that if they aren't always thinking of the baby, they will get distracted and fuck up irrevocably.

Having a healthy child makes you feel lucky in a sickening way, a way that seems cosmically undeserved, like at any moment the world will take notice and set itself right again. As a result, we think about death a lot. I walk into a new room and I watch my son die a thousand times based on everything that can poke him, fall on him, electrocute him, or lodge itself in his trachea. Then, despite all of it, I have to turn him loose to explore for himself. I wake up in the middle of the night certain he is in our bed and that he's suffocating under the sheets somewhere near our feet. These situations play with such clarity in my mind that it's like I've felt it in some non-linear time, like I'm already practiced in losing him. If you can remember the feeling you'd get as a child watching a scary movie and being unable to emotionally divorce yourself from the fiction, it's the same feeling; the barrier is gone again and you are suddenly vulnerable to your own emotional Killer Klowns From Outer Space.

So if new parents seem like they are never fully present when you're together or like they're just not as fun, understand they are regularly weighing death, regardless of how irrational it is. The fear passes, but it takes time for irrational fears to give way to rational because they all look the same at the start.

Now, if you're thinking, "You're being over dramatic, I've had pets that I love like a child. I can still step outside of that love and live a normal life," then let me just say ...

It's not just that parents love their child more than anything, they love their child more than everything combined. It's an overpowering, throttling love that has to be tempered just to get through the day. Sure, certain moments help douse the flame, like when a child in your lap spontaneously rears back with their head and pushes your incisors up into your skull. Or when babies throw up in your mouth, or throw up in your eye, or pee in their own mouth while throwing up in their eyes. But during the quiet moments with an infant where you allow yourself to indulge -- to bend to the love completely -- hugging your baby is like hugging a lost love you would give anything just to see again, and then you got your wish.

There's just no room for anything else. It's why strong/healthy relationships can teeter on the verge of collapse in the sudden presence of a newborn; you have to intentionally carve out and set aside love for the other person, or the human larva just absorbs everything.

So if you are a friend to a new parent, the reason they lose their social priorities or context for what's interesting is because they've temporarily lost context for everything. They are so singularly obsessed it's easier to think of them as addicts. They may go to the movies with you, or dinner, or sit through meetings at work like a normal person, but they are never entirely there because they always know that this is just a detour to that wondrous, beautiful sack of heroine waiting at home.

And like addicts, you can't just give up on them, because ...

There's a very good reason it's so hard to talk to someone you haven't seen in years and then run into again in a grocery store: you can't possibly fill them in on everything and it's all those unshared moments that separate you. We're scrambling to make sure that never happens. We're holding the door for you to what's most important in our lives right now and hoping you'll follow us in. In the same way someone who starts running regularly, or juice fasting, or reading The Secret won't shut the fuck up about it, parents are so excited about this new thing and they hope that they can say or do the right thing to make you excited about it too. Granted, those attempts are frequently oblivious and clumsy but we just can't help ourselves. You need to love our baby, you need to see what this feels like.

When we invite you to our children's first birthdays or ask if we can bring our babies to your bachelorette party (I do some dancing on the side), we already know these asks are huge inconveniences. We know our presence will make any social situation objectively less fun. The kid aside, we are still secondary characters obsessed with death and dealing with a drug problem.

But we also know this isn't forever.

We're trying to do just enough to maintain our relationships through the hard part until our children become more autonomous and their continuing existence helps calibrate our fears. We're all at least peripherally aware that when we abandon everything in our lives other than parenting, it actually makes us worse parents in the long run. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, come to my kid's birthday. Spend some time around him, smell his head. Smell it. He's great, right? Man, wouldn't it be crazy if you just decided to have one? Have one.

Soren is a senior writer and editor for Cracked. You can follow him on Twitter here. Also, you don't really have to go to his kid's birthday, just say you have a thing.

For more check out 5 Things No One Tells You About the First Year of Parenthood and 7 Things 'Good Parents' Do (That Screw Up Kids For Life).

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