Its hard making friends as a single woman in your 30s

It’s probably not them being unkind. I’m in my 30s, married with two DCs. I don’t have time to make friends with single people, which may sound ridiculous to you but it’s true. My friends are couples that both DH and I can socialize with together, couples with DCs similar ages to mine so we can socialize as a family, or mum friends with DCs that I can see on my day off work during the week with my toddler or in school holidays. A single person with no Dc just wouldn’t fit into my life, there’s just no time to fit in anything else or think about it really. Not me being unkind just very very busy.

My relationship, I know it makes me socially lazier. All my friends have come from the times when I was single.

I agree with this, @Namechangersanonymous

I also agree that I mostly socialise in sex-segregated ways. It’s not about being conservative or regressive. It’s just the older I get, the lower my tolerance for male bullshit. I vastly prefer the company of women.

I agree with this. A small village is not a good place to build a new friendship network. Being a single woman in your 30s can be difficult because people are generally coupled up and starting families and that can reset friendships but there will always be people who aren't. I was single for half my 30s and had a riot, because I surrounded myself with other like minded women who weren't married or with small children. But I wasn't in a small village, I was in London.

If, as you say, people are determined to exclude you because you're single (and I suspect a fair bit of that is your own paranoia as opposed to objective reality), you can do one of two things: either you move somewhere people are more open minded or you deliberately seek out people who are at a similar life stage to you and with similar interests and broaden your social circle.

But you can't sit around feeling sorry for yourself and paranoid about people having prejudices you think they have. You have to take control of the situation a bit.

I think this is probably a good point, I’m single and childless and most of the new friends I have made in the last few years (mostly through work) and who are actually free to socialise regularly are either in their 40s/50s with children who are in their teens or older or are in their 20s and pre-kids.

Yes, this. Obviously the OP is ‘right’ to be annoyed if she’s routinely omitted from social events purely because she’s single, but it’s not a situation she can do anything to alter, other than, say, hosting events at her own house with a mix of people — asking people she likes round for dinner. All she can do is change her mindset and enjoy what friendships are on offer, look for friends outside the village, or move away.

Most of my friends are friends I've made since my divorce. Some are married, some have families and some are single. I don't live in a village though.

Unless is OP is just fishing for affirmation and quotes for an article on 'bitchy village wives' of course...

It's not about 'being right'. Will feeling 'right' while being friendless make OP happy?

@BeaAndBen of course, it’s not ‘all wives’. I wasn’t the jealous wife. I have friends who definitely aren’t the jealous wife type, but they do exist and I’d have never have believed until I saw it in action.

@Crichel and others really sum up village life. I grew up in a village. I’m still considered an outsider because my parents moved there from a big city when I was 4.

people see the pretty views, but forget it’s the people you are living with. The reality is that people who have lived in same place all their lives are already going to be Less keen on change. That means less open to new friends as well as experiences.

im not saying everyone in cities is amazing, but there’s just a lot more people to choose from. There are also more likely to be open to new things and more people are not from there so have a motivation to build new ties.

People won't admit that you're right, OP, because they probably do the same and don't want to acknowledge it.

I'm a single parent and I know other mums in my village like me because they make an effort to speak to me, invite me to "mums nights" etc. But when it's an event at someone's home or something more couple-y I'm the only person in the group to not be invited. I'm sure it's nothing I've done wrong because I'm never flirty or pick-me-ish around men and apparently likeable enough when it's just women. They just don't want me around in that scenario for whatever reason.

It seems weirdly old fashioned and sexist but it is what it is.

I see most of my friends alone, whether they are single or not. I only have them over for a wine etc if DH is out. We have some ‘couple’ friends that we have the odd dinner with, and some friends with kids the same age as our DC who we have days out with, and the odd takeaway in the evening; but by and large, I see my friends alone and he sees his.

I think the remote location is more of an issue.

Also edit to say - I know this is probably unfair but in 40’s and peri with DC and work to juggle - I’m not really looking to make new friends - I don’t really have time to see the ones I have as it is. Daytime coffees on my day off are different.

And btw you are not crazy about the jealous wives- it’s definitely a thing. Either that or they think being single is some kind of disease they can catch!

or it’s just because they think couples can only socialise with other couples.

i saw your update about the woman not inviting you to the gathering- it’s pretty poor form, but also lots of people don’t like to mix friend groups ( I find this weird). Or other insecure types like to ‘gate keep’ events and social events because they are wankers.

And yes to this. The only behaviours you can control are your own.

In our case, having given it a number of years doing all the right things (getting involved in local stuff, running the pre-schooler group and later helping with the PTA and village fete, , inviting people over, attempting to join the book group (which said it was full) etc), we decided to leave, and tbh, if it weren’t for the fact that the place had given DS a gentle, safe place to be a small child in, we should have left sooner. Even though I made friends at work in the nearby city, being a pariah longterm where you live isn’t good for you.

I’m not saying you need to find singles at all or that you need to live in some ghetto!

but is the issue that you want to find good friends? Or is it to be accepted in these groups of what sounds like narrow minded, ‘smug marrieds’ ?

If it’s the latter, then you are on to a losing battle. You can’t change people. Even if they are nice friendly people, people seem to disappear from social things with young kids. So your pool of people who want to go out on a Saturday night is already small.

but if you want to find new friends, then you need to look for people who have the mindset for it. That is usually single people.

I’ve been single/married/divorced/single/ltr/single/ltr

so i know where you’re coming from. While I’m happy I. My relationship, I know it makes me socially lazier. All my friends have come from the times when I was single.

or you could make yourself look as unattractive as possible in the hope they see you as no threat!

She doesn’t really know you yet! How long have you lived there?

In our case, we left the village eight years after we’d arrived, and all sorts of people starting coming out of the woodwork and expressing apparently sincere shock and sorrow — I think they vaguely assumed we’d always be there (it was somewhere people seldom left, very static population) and that we could be very gradually befriended in the years ahead. Whereas I’ve moved around a fair bit, and am entirely used to arriving, unpacking, and looking around for people I like.

Re your singleness, yes, maybe that is the issue here, OP. It’s your ‘difference’, hilarious though that might sound. In my case my ‘difference’ was that I was a foreigner and a mother who had a career in a place where both of those were almost unheard of (something I only worked out later).

But would you really want to befriend people who think you not being married with 2.4 children is some kind of stigma? Or who think socialising is either sex-segregated or couples only, like some kind of depressing two-by-two Noah’s ark?

That’s what I realised a few years in in my village — I wasn’t their cup of tea, but people who think foreigners are strange/suspicious and that working mothers are doing something odd and wrong weren’t going to be people I wanted to spend time with either.

I’m not in the least suggesting villages are hotbeds of small-mindedness. I grew up in one that had loads of foreign residents leading fairly alternative lifestyles. But my experience in this village demonstrates that choosing to live somewhere with a limited number of people also limits the variety of people, and the variety of prejudices.

Yep. If you're even vaguely attractive or slim then women won't want you around their husbands. Not because they dont like you but because they know what men are like when there's a single woman around.

Look, what you're doing isn't working. So you need to do something different,

You can't change other people. You can only change what you do.

If spending the rest of your life bitter, plaintive and isolated is what you really want, great. You're set to achieve satisfaction.

If it isn't, do something different. Something more likely to achieve the outcome you actually want.

It doesn't matter 'whose fault' your current situation is. It doesn't matter that other people behaving differently could change it for you. The only control you have is over your own actions - and to change those you first need to change your own thinking.

Of course both can be true.

If they tend to socialise in couples, you won’t be invited because you aren’t in a couple. They doesn’t mean they are jealous or wary of you around their husbands in the slightest! It means the dynamic is pairs not a group of individuals.

Do the things people do on their own and take it from there. Book groups, the gym, choirs, classes, volunteering, etc. and eventually friendships form. But you need to do the thing for its own sake, not to mine it as a resource for friends.

Sorry never finished that thought!

was going to say I think your 20’s and 30’s are the most difficult times to make new friends.

people are often busy with young families or busy jobs and there’s a lot less time for friends generally.

people are also set in their ways generally. And lazy. So if they’ve lived somewhere their whole life, they stick to those friends.

I’d also agree that the couple thing is tricky. My DP and I have discussed this. His friendship group still all meet as couples and he is fully welcome. I said it was nice they still include him as the single man as I’ve found with some ( though not all!) groups, I’ve never been invited to couple things when single.

His theory was it’s because the women organise the social events so they always include him as he’s not a threat! That’s his take - not mine, so it’s interesting that men notice this dynamic too.

The answer? You need to find other single women. Join groups and look outwith your small area.

As in my second post, OP, it's both. You need.both people with a less narrow and conventional mindset ( ie not villagers who think you only should socialise in couples) and you need people with time and a wider range of interests (ie not young mums in their 30s, which by definition rules out a high proportion of married people your age).

I don't think it's that they think you personally will steal their specific husband (though maybe dog walking man had a crush on you, who knows). So it's not "threat" so much as crushingly dull folks.

Think yourself lucky you have a better perspective and go and find some more dynamic people. They are more likely found in cities, and possibly more likely found among people treading less conventional paths through life than marriage-job-babies-dog-house.

Because people like to build relationships based on common ground..? I don't think it's about being single or going to single events, but about people who are single or childfree being in the same stage of life. I don't have kids and really enjoy spending time with my single or childfree friends (more so than my married with kids friends) because we have more in common.

But it turns out one of my new friends actually hosted a christmas gathering for our road in the run up. She still knocks on my door for a coffee and chat and invites me round to hers- so I cant think its because she doesn't like me?

But she was hosting a gathering for people who already knew each other, something that had probably been arranged for a while. You can't expect to just be invited to everything. By continuing to see her for coffee I'd expect you'll be invited next year, but this is probably another symptom of village life. It's harder to be accepted as a newcomer.

Having said all that OP I do remember recently going to visit a friend in her village for a special event and her friends were all couples, and I'd come from the next town, without my husband (!!!) and they literally all seemed surprised why I'd come, in a baffled but polite way. And I walked up to a group of husbands talking at one point and introduced myself, like you would do if networking for work, and they looked actually shocked. Actual nervous laughs.

So you do have a point that in some places social customa are weird, mired in conservatism. I'd get outta there and come back to somewhere nice that likes fun 30 year olds of every background and marital status!