AIBU to wonder why many posters find it harder to make friends than find a life partner?

What utter nonsense🤣

Oh yes this is something that has affected me in the past. I valued more of a friendship than the other party. Has happened to me several times and I have just had enough now.

I just mainly keep to myself. The one friend I do have I met through my youngest child. Her son attended the same primary but has since moved. The children are good friends so we have ended up being good friends too. Four years so far and I haven't effed up the friendship. Doing good so far🙌

And yes, I find people stressful. I am an introvert and can only handle people in small doses.

Right, I'll bite...

I think the fact DH and I have autistic traits has meant we were drawn to each other and "get" each other. This isn't so easy to do with friendships.

I have always found it hard to maintain a friendship. I have one friend I see regularly. We have a lot in common but we both have stressful lives as parents. Good support to each other. Other than this, I don't keep in touch with friends I made in uni years ago. In my 40s now, and having chronic health issues means getting opportunities are few and far between.

DH is my best friend. He just understands me and I him.

But you realise that this is one person's experience, told to you at second hand? DS attended three primaries in two countries. At the first, a village primary where almost everyone had known one another since childhood, it wasn't particularly friendly because people just weren't used to strangers and weren't open to making new friends, but it wasn't personal and I just got on with my life and made friends at work. No drama. They were just people who'd known one another since primary school.

At the other two schools, despite DS arriving mid-year aged 7 and 9, I made both nice acquaintances and some good friends among the other parents -- in both cases completely drama-free. No 'clques', manipulation, power-play, backstabbing. I'm still in regular touch with friends from the school he attended for two years, and I see the friend group from his final primary all the time, although the children are all mid-teens and scattered at different schools. They came here for dinner last weekend.

I'm sure friendship drama does take place in playground friendships, but I think it's a tiny minority of cases, probably involving not very happy or well-adjusted people.

It's very hard to know if someone is a friend rather than an acquaintance. Just because you think someone is your friend, doesn't mean that they think that you are theirs. Unlike a partner, there isn't a way to know if you are at the same friendship level as each other or a way to signal this. You can hardly ask each other where do you see me on a level between acquaintance and bestie?

The word ‘quick’ being the operative word.

I don’t mind the quick interactions but strangers wanting to turn it into a full on conversation even more so when I’ve finally have a moment to myself, just sat down on a bench makes me internally sigh. I’m still polite but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find it irksome and I’m not introverted.

Sometimes I don’t mind longer conversations but I need the bandwidth for them. I have to wear the big over-ear headphones to be left alone.

If someone is asking for help I don’t mind or I’ll offer help to someone if they look like they are struggling but more often I rather be left alone barring emergency situations.

@SixtySomething Read with interest your post on school gate. When DS1 started school many yrs ago most children in reception seemed to have older siblings whose mothers already knew each other. No doubt there were other eldest children but I didn't come across them. The playground was filled with women standing in groups, looking for all the world like best friends. It wasn't until my DCs were well through primary that I became friends, or acqaintances, for a time, with one of the mothers who had always given the impression of being 'right in there'. To my astonishment it wasn't like that. The politics, the backstabbing, the manipulation, the cliques ..... incredible, and more like what you find in books rather than IRL. Also a lot of the behaviour she described just reminded me of my own time in primary school. She seemed always to be worked up over something someone at the school gate had said or done. While I enjoyed this from a distance in a soap opera sort of way, I knew then I hadn't missed anything by not being in the midst of all that.

For the same reason, one assumes that not everyone obeys NO LITTERING signs, or is quiet at the theatre or lets passengers getting off the tube get off first before getting on? Obviously, people should and most people do, but some people don’t. We live in that world. Sniping about what people should do, or what the world would be like if everyone behaved like you is pointless. All you can control is how you behave yourself.

@Thepeopleversuswork
What you are describing is not Introversion, its severe social anxiety
Im an introvert, I speak to people, socialise but I like plenty of downtime alone

You are coming across as a bit of an insensitive arse to keep calling out introversion like its a massive fault when actually its social anxiety that you are referring to
Its a horrible condition and people really suffer so be mindful

I do agree with this, despite being an introvert! I enjoy the little, fleeting moments with random strangers throughout the day - an older lady complimenting a jumper I've knitted in the supermarket queue and then chatting about knitting for a few minutes, making faces at a toddler in a pushchair at a cafe, saying hi to my children's teachers if I run into them and chatting for a moment if they strike up conversation, or helping someone with getting an item off a high shelf in a shop. It's lovely, and requires so little energy and effort compared to maintaining a friendship!

I agree. Nobody would resent a quick conversation like that at the end of a performance. If they did, then they'd be unreasonably uptight. However, before a performance once, person next to me was getting more and more intrusive with questioning, wanting to know about my job and details that I didn't want to reveal. Was so relieved when the curtsin rose.

The reason is simple.

Many mumsnetters are extremely neurotic and socially inept.

But many men don’t give a shit as long as they are getting their end away.

I've only seen them occasionally, usually in seaside towns, on the seafront. Never seen anyone sitting on one, however.

I often go to the theatre or ballet alone, if DH is not keen. After a incredible play or dance, it seems almost churlish to not at least say to the person next to me " That was beautiful, wasn't it?".

Maybe they are thinking, " Get out of my face".

So don’t engage at all. Ignore them. You don’t ‘have’ to do anything at all, but you still can’t control other people’s behaviour. Yes, in a black and white world a sign that says NO LITTERING means no one drops litter and a person at a bus stop wearing headphones and not making eye contact doesn’t get spoken to, but that’s just not how the world works.

I definitely think there is something in this. I am married and I do have friends but they are mostly old friends and I haven’t made any new ones in a long time - I briefly managed it a couple of years ago befriending the partner of a friend but then they split up and we couldn’t keep it going.

I met my husband at university. Neither of us have had much need to be particularly sociable in adulthood because we have each other and some old friends. I think if you are single for longer you put yourself out there more and then end up making new friends that way.

Yes, and that sex can be non-consensual and still result in pregnancy. This woman sounds incredibly vulnerable.

You do know you can get pregnant without having an emotional connection, right?

Getting pissed and fucking a stranger is still likely to get you pregnant.

If they understood the polite brush off then they wouldn’t be approaching someone who is clearly not engaging or wanting to engage and actively bothering them.

Plus why is it on me to have to act when I haven’t started this? I have just been sitting minding my own business.