To be surprised by the amount of people on here who have no family and no friends to rely on

I'm glad you are doing something about it if that's what you want. It's so easy to get stuck in a funk and not see the little changes that could get us moving again.

Take care

Until this year I believed I had people who cared about me and who I could call on in an emergency but now I've realised I don't. I have nobody except my partner and he has no-one apart from me.

I’m not surprised in the least. I have a few friends but we’re not overly into each others lives, twice a year at best. I’ve my husband, a DC who lives miles away and another DC with additional needs.

I-work from home full time so get to know zilch through that. I’m friendly, kind, reliable, gsoh but I’ve hardly any connections apart from online.If I didn’t talk with my mum, I’d not see hardly anyone else.

Some people have circumstances that make having friends difficult. I emigrated to the UK for work, and then married my husband, so the friends I had in the USA I don't see very often at all. DH is an only child, I have one younger brother who lives in the States, a couple cousins I am sporadically in touch with, my husband has an aunt about our age as she was younger than his uncle. All of our parents have passed away. I have a couple friends locally, a few work colleagues down south I keep in touch with, but that's it. I am retired as well. I think sometimes if you don't have kids and get older and retire, your friendship circles shrink

I definitely do, and am actively trying to make friends. I am a bit too old to be trying for children though.

My son is on a reduced time table so starts late and finishes early meaning I haven't met a single parent in his class.
If parents work full time so use breakfast and after school club then I imagine they wouldn't know other parents either..
We have family but either they live too far away or have health or childcare issues so no practical help but certainly people who would notice if we weren't around.

I don’t know why it’s so hard for people to understand we don’t all experience life in the same way. Both sets of parents have died. No other relatives within a 100 miles. Moved from where I grew up a few years ago, have work friends but none who live near me. Yes if the house burned down I could call for help and friends would make the three hour round trip to help me, but no I don’t feel I can ask them to come water my plants while I’m away or pick up kids when I’m stuck in traffic. We aren’t all that lucky and I find this thread a bit snide. We aren’t all weirdos who have failed at life just because we aren’t as lucky as those with living family and close friends based locally.

Do you want more people and connection in your life? Is there a reason you can't pursue that?

This isn't meant to be critical or make you feel bad. You sound like you wish things were different so I'm curious what's holding you back.

Yabu. There are loads of people who have moved for work/partners work/have family abroad or accross the country only. Even in London. If you make a life in one part and move house to another, you might as well live in another country when it comes to emergencies! I couldn't imagine my friends in Kilburn be immediately available for my emergency in Lewisham! It takes some time to build up that support network, and emergencies don't wait until you've sorted yourself out.

My life is heading down a potentially very lonely track. Only child, no children of my own. Thankfully I do have a loving partner and one very good friend, but I dread anything happening to them and being totally alone. I imagine I will die alone too. Very sad. Sometimes wish I had never been born.

I have two friends and rarely see them because life gets in the way

we do text and talk on the phone

I do like my own company though

I could have written this almost word for word.

And never answer the front door !

Some of us have moved. Takes a while to make friends

I have friends and family - none of which live close enough to me if I needed babysitting or that kind of help. So I would be saying I didn't have anyone either if I was making those kind of posts.

Well, I've been nc with my mother for 10 years, which meant I lost contact with everyone else who I knew when I was growing up.

I went NC with my father 2 years ago because he let heroin addicts into my house when I was away, and still couldn't understand why I didn't want to pretty much be his 24/7 carer.

My inlaws..or soon to be ex inlaws I should describe them as, one has cancer and one has alzheimers, they need help themselves.

I have a few friends, none of which I could ask for a favour. Not really.
One is in as much of a stressed out situation as me, another is pretty much the same, but would do childcare for me if I paid her. And another I think I would probably never hear from again if I asked for anything.

That means I have no one to turn to in a time of need.. if I was someone else, I'd struggle to see how that happens too.

People aren’t neighbours like they were 20+ years ago.
I have no idea who any of my neighbours are, I’ve only met next door once when I took in a parcel. We’re a new estate and everyone keeps themselves very quiet and private.

Yes this is me. Now where I live is such an insular place as 95 per cent come from here. This is why I enjoy my online friendships.

That's pretty much why I'm on here.

NC with family, moved to a refuge in a new area some years ago, struggle with making friends due to ADHD/trust issues/being a single parent and unable to go out. Dd now has a disability that pretty much ties me to the house as well.

I come on here for advice because I have no-one irl really.

It's not that much of an unusual situation.

It's sad OP

I think it depends on circumstances - we live a few hours away from our respective families. I do have friends here that I meet up with but with regards ‘helping out’, they have their own commitments - working, their own kids, maybe elderly parents to keep an eye on, etc. When my children were in primary, I did have ‘mum’ friends I could call on for emergencies, or we’d help one another out with school collections the odd time, etc. Family obviously would race to us if there was a real emergency but I would never have asked for day to day ‘emergencies’. I have other friends who live distances away that I’ve met during various stages of life that I keep in contact with.

Sometimes it can be hard to build up connections if you move to a more rural area where people tend to have been born and stayed in the area - often they have no interest in making friends with non-locals as they have their own network.

I’m surprised in the opposite way, that anyone has family/old friends nearby. We now have friends made over the years nearby but when kids were young moved around a lot with my work with different postings, none anywhere near family/childhood friends. I haven’t lived anywhere near home (usually several hours drive minimum or flight) since I was at uni. No one I know through work lives near family/childhood friends for support. To me it’s really weird to think people go to uni, then move back home and take any job near family/friends, it’s like an alternate universe to the one I have lived in for several decades.

The posts here whining people’s families don’t help out amaze me given I didn’t have experience of, or know of anyone who lived near family or have an established friendship group where they live while kids were young. Everyone I know made new friends from school parents or workplace colleagues over a few years and just pulled up the big person pants and coped by themselves when kids were young.

It makes me laugh when people assume we all have helpful neighbours. Mine have always been very bogged down with their own lives and all have family to count on so I can honestly say the only 'help' is the occasional parcel delivery...

I think it depends on what you mean by ‘rely on’. Dh and I don’t really have much family support. Both our dads died when we were teenagers. I am NC with my mum, only child, no extended family still living, but I don’t live in my birth country anyway.

Dh has BIL and partner but they live 6 hours away and if we ever needed help with anything it would involve hosting them too as they can’t afford to visit us otherwise.

MIL can be a help in limited ways, like she could come to ours and do a school run or possibly have dc overnight at ours, but she isn’t allowed to take dc to her house for safeguarding reasons (involving her partner). It’s only been the past maybe 2 years that they’ve been old enough to have any unsupervised contact with her, so she really can only be so much ‘help’.

We absolutely do have local friends who could collect dc from school, help with lift shares to activities, maybe have them in the evening or overnight in an emergency, but they all work and I wouldn’t expect anyone to take off work to look after my dc unless it was a true emergency. It’s definitely not the same as Dh and I growing up. We had properly engaged grandparents who took on a lot of the caregiving for us, did all sick days, all school holidays, had us for sleepovers, etc. My dc have never had a sleepover with a grandparent or spent a sick day with them.

I thought I had people to rely on when I was a young mother but I found out the hard way that I didn't. So when I read on here that someone has nobody to help them I take that as genuine and assume they had the sense to realise whereas I was naive