Will try not to drip feed so this may be lengthy!
5 years ago I left my husband, he moved out and I wanted to find 'the one'. I felt very lonely without someone to hold in bed every night, but luckily had my friends to visit on evenings and worked long hours. I had a few flings before meeting my child's father about 2 years ago.
The relationship was abusive and declined rapidly from spending every minute hanging off each other and movie style love to him basically wanting nothing to do with me unless it was detrimental. My self esteem, confidence, self worth and the assertive side of my personality took a major bashing. I felt like a broken person. It took the birth of our child and his violence to continue to snap me out of my pitiful state and LTB!
Now here I am. On benefits. Not working. Single mother. I'm in contact with my ex to keep contact going with our child and him.
I'm not sure what's gone wrong in terms of friendships. Is it because they now class me as 'lazy benefits scrounge' or do they think that DV is contagious, do they dislike that I don't work anymore (even though I've worked extremely hard, long hours all my life), has the abuse left me in a worse state than I can see (I feel much more my old self now and for past 6 months or so), do they dislike the 'drama' which I too hate and try to keep to a minimum? I just don't know what's gone wrong.
The few friends I'm thinking of have similar ages children and work part time, they like to partake in children's activities daily. I set up a group chat to share messages to arrange things to do together and after months of trying I feel like giving up. I try to organise everything from big days out to trips to the park and either get ignored or nobody can join in. After months we've managed about 3 outings. I tend to go to things alone, which is fine. People don't tend to talk to me at soft play etc as they seem to go in pairs etc. I'm not especially keen to make new friends because I feel so let down by the friends I had that I'm struggling to trust, but that's a moot point because nobody attempts a friendship anyway.
When I explained to one of my friends about how lonely I feel and being a single mother would love even if someone would visit me on an evening while LO sleeps for an hour even. She basically said that's not going to happen and I need to get out and make more friends, she was not going to feel guilty or try to help with my loneliness or include me in activities if she didn't want to. She put it in slightly nicer terms.
I do not feel ready to date and daren't have a man in the house in case ex shows up and all hell breaks lose. I feel that if my friends want nothing to do with me and ex is the same then why would a new man etc.
How can I get myself out of this lonely spiral? I love my life with my child but I'm worried my not having friends will have impact on friends available to my LO. If anything springs to mind reading this post - I'm dull as dishwater - for example, please let me know so I can work on things!