Having your own social circle

some of Apple's fashion collection from 1986

One piece of advice for a Rev's husband I've read somewhere is to join some sort of club - so you can build up your own circle of friends locally.

And I can see some of the sense in doing that - so that as well as friends at work (hopefully!)  - you've got friends near where you live.

But what the advice doesn't seem to take account of is the temporary nature of a posting as a curate.


As you may remember - we moved to a new market town for the curate posting my wife got.  But my wife is only going to be a curate for 3 or so years.  After that - assuming her training incumbent and the bishop give her the all clear - she'll be free to apply for her 1st substantive post somewhere in our current - or any other - diocese.

So ever since we moved I've known that we're only going to be here for 36 months or so.  Now of course that hasn't stopped us making some new friends - but the friendships are mostly with people in the church.

For me it didn't seem worthwhile getting involved in some local club - only to move on again after a short while.  I do sometimes wonder what Rev husbands in similar positions do.  In this diocese the Rev's Partners organisation doesn't much help in making contact with other Rev husbands.  Its still very much a Rev's wife dominated undertaking.

Anybody care to share their approach to the temporary nature of the curate posting - from a Rev's husband perspective?

keeping in touch with old #friends and making new ones

When my wife first started exploring whether she was being called to be a priest we'd lived in a village for about 12 years. Having moved there from a south London suburb we'd enjoyed the more friendly atmosphere villages often generate. And with a school and church in the village we quickly made contact with others - particularly with those who had children of a similar age. Over time those contacts became good friends - as our children went through school and life events together. So when we moved out o the village to the place my other half  was going to be a curate we wondered how well we'd manage to keep in touch with our old friends in the previous village.    Of course social media has helped a bit on this - as it does with keeping contact with others who are abroad. And as we're only an hour or so drive from our previous village its not to hard to drive over. So what we've found works best is arranging to meet every 4 months or so at a pub midway between us and our old village for a lunch, some drink and a natter. I know my wife has also found it helpful to keep in contact with old friends who knew here before she started putting a collar on the wrong way.  They have a certain distance from her day to day experiences now which - I think - is helpful. And although we have made friends in the community where she is doing her curacy - that friendship is different in its characteristics. Partly - and obviously - because the length of the friendships with those she has met as a curate is shorter. But also because its a different type of friendship - akin in a way I think to the type of friendship you might have with work colleagues.