I"m crying here.... a combination of sadness but also kind of feeling relieved too that it's not just me. I've tried so hard to be a good friend to people over the years but mostly just get 'dumped'.
SliAnChroi I know just what you mean about always being shouldered out of groups of 'friends' by one particular person in each group, it happens to me all the time no matter how much I try to join in with things and be nice to people. And I always feel so hurt that everyone in the group goes along with that person even thought they are the one being unkind.
I have 3 people I think I can call friends, but they all have their own best friends. My parents and husband's parents aren't there for us at all either, they're quite selfish people and always telling us we aren't good enough, when we try so hard to be good to them.
And this lockdown has made us feel the loneliness more, some of the people we thought were friends (who I spent most Fridays with having coffee) have been posting pictures of themselves meeting virtually as a group on zoom together and haven't contacted us to invite us (despite me sending a few of them texts to ask if they were ok during lockdown). I also tried to reach out to someone who once used to call me her 'good friend' up until a couple of years ago when she moved into a much posher house and started to tell me she was friends with 'well to do people' in her new street, but she has ignored my whatsapp message (even though I can see she's been on whatsapp quite a number of times since - I'm so upset as I spent a lot of time with her and supported this friend through the loss of her dad and her daughter's diagnosis of diabetes, even agreeing I'd help inject her child when she asked despite being needle-phobic, sending her flowers when she was sad etc. Last time I saw her properly 18 months ago she turned up to a school coffee morning 90 minutes late after she was the one who arranged to meet me and I stupidly sat there waiting with her on my own feeling v socially anxious).
I guess this has all made me realised that actually I can stop striving to have friends as it just does no good. I can hold down a professional people-based job, but can't maintain true friendships. It just feels so sad and lonely though and I worry mostly about the impact on my sons and not being able to model friendships for them or widen their social circle through them having parent's friends who are there for them (which so many other people seem to have for their children).