Did anyone else have nobody to “bubble” with?

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In Australia here. They’ve recently announced picnics for up to five people if vaxxed. And friendship bubbles for kids. Seen a lot of pictures on social media, people couldn’t wait! My friend told me her kids were straight out the door and she hasn’t seen them since.
We don’t have anyone to bubble with. The friends we have, while I’m sure they do like us, have filled their bubbles with closer people. Nobody has organised a picnic and invited us. Nobody has indicated they want our kids in their bubble either. Not even my family (they want to have the neighbours, it makes logical sense as it can only be the same 3 kids so would come up more often).

Our lockdown life is not too different to my normal life. I am so isolated! We have our family of five and we’re a great little unit. I have good friends who live a bit far away so our chats (regular) are on the phone. I just did a zoom wine night so I don’t have NOBODY.

Has anyone else realised they don’t really have friends around? Like see in person regularly friends they are dying to see who reciprocate?
I feel like a bit of a loser… but also how do people do this? Like have a big circle and a support network. I always think about the expression: it takes a village to raise a child. We have zero village. If there was an emergency I could probably maybe call someone (I hope). And no visitors coming to see new babies and offer help etc, we never had that. I had two visitors when I was in hospital with my last baby. And no help at all, from anyone after having any of them. Seeing how upset people are not to have this… do lots of people have this? A big loving circle around them?

But everyone has their own thing and their work and all of that stuff. We don’t have any grandparents for the kids and this whole thing friendship bubble thing has made me reflect that my kids are missing out. How do we make family friends with kids for mine to play with? Like have people to invite to a bbq? Growing up with my single Mum - we had heaps of family friends. The kids would play while the adults had bbqs and dinner parties. We do t have any of that, how does it happen?
I do host and people come.
I’m not sure what I’m asking… more like can anyone relate or are we weirdos?

Has anyone felt more alone in lockdown BECAUSE of bubble announcements? It just makes me feel worse!
It’s now not: it’s lockdown, we can’t see anyone. It’s now you can see people, it’s just nobody wants to see us?

Like we don’t make the cut?

You are not weirdos. We hadn’t realised how reliant we are on going to stay with friends who have moved far way (or having them to stay with us). Also, one of our oldest friends died last year. We haven’t had a rush of invitations and we’ve been to no picnics or barbecues. Up to a few years ago, our diary was full for weeks ahead, but now our social life seems to have vanished. If you and your husband are happy then you shouldn’t worry about it. My parents rarely socialised and were happy with each other.

Lockdown is a shit time, nothing to do with not being someone’s bubble, it’s just shit.

Your life is no different in or out of lockdown you say,…..I feel that. I was the same and it really opened my eyes and I made changes.

Don’t be hard on yourself and your kids are not missing out, you do have friends at least.

More likely your feeling in the dumps because of lockdown.

We may have it coming in winter here in the U.K. and I’m already dreading it beyond measure.

I am very happy and in love with my husband. We do both have lifelong besties, but both of them live too far away to catch up with. Maybe knowing we had that stopped us trying on a local level.
I’m sorry to hear about your friend. 💐

Yep definitely!! I'm in the UK and we ran into the bubble thing last year. We have a new 3 year old, 2 then, and it was just us.

The rules here were different, but we got no offers at Christmas, my parents seem to revel in getting us to offer invitations and then refusing them, it makes me feel so unloved!

Oh I’m sorry about your parents, how unnecessary and mean! 💐

Yes, last year. I live alone, have no family and was sent to work at home, my friends were a long way away or had partners/family. Didn't touch another human being for 4 months! You get through it.

Don't feel like you have failed, you are winning.

You like the people you live with, lockdown has certainly shown many people that this is not true.

Lockdown really made me realise how small my world has become. I have acquaintances i at times meet. Just bubble time made me realise i am not first on Nyones list of the people close by. Thank heavens for Internet so I can talk with my friends who are now hours away.

One close friend down here but she has in laws and parents close by and their bubble obviously came first.

I have noticed as we eased up 2 friends have pushed meeting more one of us had not met up for a year prior to lockdownn and we have met 3 times since us easing on restrictions. So I also got some good from it.

But it is a lonely feeling. I am a people person and it was strange realising I didn't have many people near.

In the UK so we had bubbles last year. We had no one to bubble with. We're not sociable people so knew there'd be no friends to bubble with, but after almost dying in childbirth at the start of lockdown one and being ill for 6mths, we expected that SOMEONE in the family would at least visit us.
We had no help whatsoever - not even a phone call.

My DP's mum still hasn't even text us to see how things are. My DD is 18mths old now. Really made us realise that no one cares. Hardly anyone in the family has bothered to meet our DD.

Also made us realise that life with or without Covid is pretty much the same. My dad retired earlier this year and we've only seen him once. Thought he'd make an effort to see his DGD. Told him I'm pregnant again and he never said a word.

When England was doing bubbles I had no one either. But frankly it didn't bother me. My son and daughter were at home. My son (17 at the time) did bubble with his girlfriend, which by extension I guess meant her family, though he didn't see them only her.
Any other family bubbled with their parents or sibling families - my parents are dead and my sisters live abroad. But many families with many siblings couldn't all bubble together or with parents - I would have felt a bit more put out if we were all living relatively close and my parents or sisters had chosen someone else!

My sibling did choose someone else. 😕 but it makes sense as the kids are only allowed to have three friends in the bubble, and it has to be the same three. So they wouldn’t be allowed to play with the kids on their street, they’d have to wait until we were available and drive 30 mins.
My son has 4 neighbour boys he plays with…and yup…they’ve bubbles with each other. I know they like him, it just has to be someone.
It’s like being picked last for sports teams it really sucks.

We had that, family are at a distance as are our oldest friends and locally everyone has someone else more important (mainly family to be fair).

Coming out of lockdown shone a light on the reality of our local friendships and actually spurred me on to make more of an effort, to make sure I have a better local network and not rely on those further away so much.

We had no one to bubble with and it's not that we don't have friends or family, it's that they all had someone more local or closer to prioritise.

It was a fucking lonely existance.

Fortunately I have my immediate family but it was still very unbalanced. My two DSs have each other (although that's not enough for more sociable DS2 and he ended up depressed by June 2020) and DH got some degree of varied interractions through working online. I got pokemon with DS2 and endless monologuing about military strategy from DS1.

It is a cruel and inhumane policy.

For those who made changes, what did you do? Given so many local group style things obviously aren’t running at the moment.
Hugs to everyone who was left out of a bubble, they’re rubbish! Well no, I’m sure they are fabulous for people who can use them. I’ll just have a picnic with my husband and make the most of it. I like him anyway!

My social life pretty much revolved round meet ups with neighbours, people I met doing exercise classes and occasional visits to older friends further away.

In lockdown, none of that happened of course. My family are two hours away. The classes were on Zoom, but now are back in a hall and I’m not comfortable with that, so haven’t gone back. No siblings, family away, so quite lonely now. It does feel like a pretty endless round of cleaning and tidying for something to do.

Nothing to be done, but get on with it though.

We were the same OP!

We did have friends locally but not close ones. Just people I'd have a quick chat with on the school run. They were all in bubbles with family/close friends. Our own families live a long way away so not possible to bubble with them. And the same with our closest friends.

It was actually one of the things which spurred us on to move from our old location. We'd wondered about moving for a while but kept putting it off. The experience made us realise we didn't have much of a local network to miss.

I'm pretty sure people wouldn't look at me and think ah, she's a real loner. I have a job, kids, hobbies, reasonably busy life. But I don't/didn't have a network of close local friends. Time will tell if it's the same in our new location!

Yes, it doesn’t help that we’ve just moved, but to be honest, it would be the same at our old house too. I’ve relied on emotionally close but physically long distance friendships and that’s felt like enough! But being a part of a community would also be nice.

Ok we were just out walking and ran into my sons classmates, the 4 who have bubbled, all playing together. 😢
His little face. Finding this hard to put a brave face on for him.

Are people sticking to the rules in Australia? Are people jabbed?
If I had my time over I wouldn’t stick to the rules in lockdown. I wouldn’t have had massive wild parties but I would’ve prioritised DS mental health.

Have you asked anyone to bubble with you? The whole lockdown thing messes with your mind. It's just a crap time. No useful advice other than getting in as many treats as you can to make it as bearable as possible.

It sucks to feel alone for sure. I noticed though that you said "no one has organised a picnic and invited [you]", I'm in NSW too and I'm sure you are aware that the picnic doesn't have to be with a chosen bubble. It's for anyone in your council area and can be a different five people plus dependants each day or each picnic. So you can organise a picnic yourself and invite people, and any amount of kids can also attend. Why don't you try that?

There isn’t anyone else to bubble with unfortunately. That’s the local kids we know. I had made a comment on the group chat that I was relieved they would be able to do bubbles… nobody answered and it became apparent they’d all bubbled (which isn’t unexpected, the Mums are all friends too and we’re the newest family here). I’m sure if they were allowed one more he’d make the cut.
The Mum supervising them was so awkward with us too, it wasn’t fun. Maybe she felt bad.

Yes the problem is we don’t have anyone to ask to a picnic who’d be allowed to attend. It has to still be people that live in your local government area, which knocks out my friends. Kids are old enough to have independent friends if you know what I mean, it would involve inviting someone I barely knew.