Does anyone else not really have any friends?

@NewName24

I mean, aside from the actual historic facts, all this nonsense about 'my own little family' / my Mum being my best friend / not being able to do anything at the weekend because you need 'family time' for 48 hours every week has only appeared in the last few years. I personally only see it on here, although I concede it may ell be on other forums or platforms.

Theres definitely been an uptick of this since the pandemic particularly with this new fetishisation of “being an introvert” (which actually is fuck all to do with being an actual introvert it’s people rebadging misanthropy and social anxiety to make themselves sound interesting.)

I think a lot of it is a toxic mix of psychological trauma from the period of enforced social isolation but there’s an unpleasant whiff of anti feminist sentiment in the idea of retreating into the family bubble.

OK maybe standard isn’t right. My point is it’s much more understandable for a woman born 80 years ago than one who has lived through feminism. As most of these posters have.

As has already been pointed out, this is laughable.
I mean, aside from the actual historic facts, all this nonsense about 'my own little family' / my Mum being my best friend / not being able to do anything at the weekend because you need 'family time' for 48 hours every week has only appeared in the last few years. I personally only see it on here, although I concede it may ell be on other forums or platforms.

However, @Thepeopleversuswork 's posts at 7.28, 7.38, and 9.00 this morning are all really good points. Well said.

@askingforfriendz

I live in a place where people who have grown up here aren't really open to making friends. This may have been different if I'd had children and met people through kids.

To be honest this is one of the main reasons I am reluctant to ever move out of London. I can’t deal with a place where you are treated as an outsider simply because you weren’t born somewhere.

Even the medium sized town I grew up in was pretty stifling like that: if you hadn’t known someone since primary school you weren’t “one of us”.

@Freefie

He does sound interesting.

I have thought a lot about this recently: people have extremely different needs in their friendships and radically different ideas about what constitutes a good friendship. I didn’t fully understand how much so until I started reading Mumsnet tbh.

I think in the same way that we are now starting to have a much better understanding of mental health and how things like neurodiversity affect our relationships we need to think much more carefully about this.

People come unstuck a lot because they don’t state what their needs are of a friendship: they take as read that if they want someone they can speak to 12 times a day the other person also wants it. When in fact it’s a lot more complicated than that.

We are always being told how important it is to communicate clearly in our romantic and family relationships but not in our platonic friendships.

I think it makes a huge difference where you live and if people are open to making friends.

I live in a place where people who have grown up here aren't really open to making friends. This may have been different if I'd had children and met people through kids.

I've had this conversation with several people who are not from the town I live in and I used to think it was me and not through lack of trying. I once suggested a coffee with a colleague O got on well with and was just ignored. Having said this people are friendly to speak to in shops or at bus stops and I have nice neighbours.

I've made friends with people not from my town and have joined social groups. I'm also in touch with friends who go way back. I like time on my own but can be sociable so I am happy enough

Other people have mentioned this, but I'm quite interested in the notion of worrying about whether somebody is open to making friends.
I'm also thinking how people fret about not having time because of their children. For me, having friends with children saved my sanity because we could do things together.

It's clear that a lot of people are anxious about issuing an invitation whether it be for a quick coffee or to do something with the kids, so I think those amongst us who are a bit more comfortable with rejection might need to do a bit more of it.

I think the trick is not to be too intense. Friendship builds over time. To begin with it's an opportunity for a bit of social interaction, as as you get to know people, the relationship might deepen or fall by the wayside.

I recommended the author Robin Dunbar, who's written extensively about friendship, earlier in the thread, but I'll drop it in once again. I think he's very interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RobinDunbar

But you don’t have to rely on “traditional female groups” if you don’t want to. Hang out with blokes if you prefer.

The point is not to get to the point where your husband is your only friend.

@easylikeasundaymorn

I take your point and I am not saying feminism started 40 years ago but a huge amount of progress has happened over the past 40 years which means there is less expectation on women to “focus on their families” than there was.

My mother called herself a feminist and as a young woman was ambitious, hard working and glamorous but over time stopped work altogether and ended her life lonely and frustrated. Mainly because she “focused on her family” and forgot herself.

Thats anecdotal and clearly there have been women for decades who have maintained strong networks. But it’s certainly much more widely accepted today that women need more autonomy, more time and friends and interests outside the marriage and family.

Which is why I am quite shocked at how many women are still basically dropping most of their interests outside marriage today.

💯 they really are the architects of their own situation in many (not all) cases. I see it on MN all the time - married women complaining about having no friends, then when you dig deeper it appears they were perfectly happy for all their many friendships to fade away after they married and had kids.

It’s only a decade or so later when their husband starts getting grumpy or their kids go to high school or uni do they start to miss their friends that are now long gone.

Majority of my oldest (and closest) friends are married with kids and I’m glad they didn’t adopt this mindset.

You don't think a woman born c.1944 "lived through feminism?"?????
Do you think the spice girls invented it with girl power in 1997 or something?

What's the problem?

I grew up with brothers, my neighbours were all boys, and my friendship group has always been mixed but about 80% male forever (when you're a petrol head, there are more males involved than females) and no, i dont mind a one on one coffee with a couple of female friends but i hate going for drinks with just girls, its just not as fun for me at all.

and my closest friends are male anyway....

because you're not like other girls? 👏🏼

You couldn't think of ANYTHING worse than having a drink with close friends? Really?

My neighbour was great watched kids when husb had kidney stones. I think most people dont get involved now. People are flaky now nobody replies to anything now. So you do things alone. Some hobbies are cliques and hard break through that. My husb said same work chase up everyone phone calls etc

Well, I'm a 52 year old woman with lots of female friends who has never been to a girls' bottomless brunch, and while I've certainly been on lots of nights out that have been numerically all-female, or mostly-female, that's more a factor of who's around and wants to go out than some kind of exclusion on chromosomal grounds. I don't think most of my married friends had single-sex stag or hen dos. DH and I didn't.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't think that what you are describing is in fact 'traditional'. Not for 2024.

Most of my friends are male, and my two closest friends are male. i have a group of 3-4 women who i can rely on, but far more male friends.

I don't get on with traditional female groups. couldn't think of anything worse than a girls bottomless brunch, girls night out or anything. i like mixed gatherings. I've been to more stag do's than hen do's!

I was thinking about this thread in relation to another current thread whose OP had it taken down earlier today for fear of being outed in RL.

This other thread was about a woman in the OP's friendship group who was a sort of smallscale TikTok lifestyle guru, but who had posted a deeply insensitive weepy video clip about 'grieving for her son' when her son was just off at university, but the son of another friend in the group had actually died recently.

Despite this, the OP insisted in her OP that the Tiktok video friend was 'sweet' and 'well-meaning'.

Until she got a slew of replies saying that this woman was appalling, after which she suddenly did a 360* and said 'I KNEW I was right to think she was awful!' and started saying the friend who posted the video was 'without kindness' and that everyone was always asking her why she was friends with someone so awful.

With no indication whatsoever that she'd just changed her mind completely on her opinion of someone, because a bunch of strangers on the internet said this person's behaviour was awful.

What made me think of this thread was that this OP, who expressed herself in incredibly sugary language (everyone involved, until she changed her mind, was 'super kind' and 'totally selfless') had clearly never had any form of civil disagreement with any of her friends, face to face, ever. Her sole social mode appeared to be either breathless, over the top compliments, or, once she'd had her mind changed by the internet, complete condemnation. All of it online, none of it face to face or on the phone.

It's like making and keeping friends being a social muscle you need to keep exercising or you lose it -- negotiating potentially difficult territory with friends is also a muscle you need to train.

I think the 'making/keeping friends as muscle' analogy is useful, generally.

It's not that making and keeping friends is some terrible slog, like an ultramarathon in minus 40.

It's like recognising that some form of exercise is necessary in our lives to keep us healthy, that some people find exercise easier than others, and do train for marathons, while others are more 10,000 steps a day level. Some people have exercise built into their day because they have an active job, others have to seek it out, and work harder to find the opportunities, just like some people have 'built-in' socialising, whether because they have families who get along very well, or sociable jobs with colleagues they like etc, while others have to go out and make opportunities for friendships. Regardless, it's much better for our health to do it.

The problem is the more people who see ditching all their friends when busy with families as normal the harder it gets for those who don't have families or who want friends as well as their family. If making and keeping new friends becomes this hard slog requiring loads of effort then more people will give up on it (and I'm guilty of this) making it harder for those that don't.

Yes they are always apparently incapable of making the connection between dumping all female friends when they get married or pregnant because it’s “too much drama” and waking up 20 years later lonely, bored and isolated because they only have one other adult to talk to.

It sounds harsh and there’s sometimes more to it than this with friendships but a lot of the time women are their own worst enemies.

The “my little family” people are often the same ones to complain they don’t have a “village” if a partner falls ill or leaves or even if they just want a babysitter or some help 😬

God yes. The “my little family” trope is so toxic.

Agree with this. I really dislike the use of the word “drama” as a catch all shorthand for people disagreeing or sticking up for themselves.

Friendshops and relationships involve some friction sometimes. Walking away from the because there’s been a difference of opinion is childish and counterproductive.

@NewName24

OK maybe standard isn’t right. My point is it’s much more understandable for a woman born 80 years ago than one who has lived through feminism. As most of these posters have.

I mean you get the odd toxic friend but surely if you find that you can't have friends without it all descending into "drama" you need to look at your own behaviour.

Yes the "my little family" and "I don't like drama" has become an MN trope. Personally, none of my friends have brought drama to my life, and I am not content with my little family! Also, my family is not content to spend all their time with me.

Thinking about it I do think that "being open to making a new friend" is a thing for some people. I've known lots of people both here and in real life say that they just focus on "their little family", surely that's the very definition of not being open.

It's also complicated by the very different definitions of friendship. For example people that go to a group once a month as their night off from the kids. This can be very fulfilling for them and they may consider others in the group friends. To a person joining the group looking to make friends that would also see them outside of the group these people are "not open".