When did you feel at your loneliest?

[Bananabspl]

I feel SO fucking lonely. 30s, single. This morning I went to the supermarket and was offered a gift voucher for ten percent off, only for the assistant to follow up asking if they were my children (at the trolly next to me). I said no and she said I wasn’t entitled to the voucher!

I got in the car and sobbed. Don’t care about money off but I feel like the world is made up for families and I am the odd one out.

Anyone else? I feel shit.

@ParkheadParadise My heart goes out to you.

@ParkheadParadise

I can’t imagine the pain.

When I had my son. After the initial cute phase people moved on. I spent three years on my own. Husband at work. No money. Day in and day out just the two of us. Never felt more lonely.

With my firstborn. 12 hour days on my own and no one to talk to 5 days a week.
I quite enjoy my own company but when with a baby it was so isolating.

OP trust me people with families can be just as lonely. It’s not that straightforward.

Some of these posts are sad. Loneliness is awful. You feel on the very edge of life when everyone else appears to be in the centre.

I felt lonely and abandoned when my stbxh disclosed several infidelities. I instantly felt I did not matter, I was easily replaceable, I had no place or sense of belonging. I was no longer safe in my home which was always my refuge. I would not wish that feeling on anyone - it almost turned me mad.

I did languages at university so had to go abroad for my third year. I turned up, age 20, in a European capital, where I knew no one. I had a job but had to organise accommodation. It was so weird staying in a cheap hotel knowing no one would knock on the door or phone me. Nothing to do, no one to see. After two amazing years of fun at university. I missed my friends so much.

@rainbowandglitter

I felt loneliest on maternity leave with a young baby.

Same

Right now. DH works all the hours and I am home with 2 small kids. Local family are not interested in us at all, and I have no friends. DH has a group that sometimes invite partners but I can never go as we don't have anyone to watch the kids and one of the DC won't go to any other adult, so can't hire a babysitter. I could leave them with DH isn't working but I find it silly to walk away from my only friend to be alone again

On mat leave, with DD. Utterly bloody alone. Very hard days.

And I can't get over the fact that my family didn't come and help. No-one fucking came.

I see women now with tiny newborns and remember the utter intensity of it all. You never sit down, you care for the baby 24/7. Why did no-one come to help? It was just me and DH and DS (3).

I was very lonely when I lived alone at the other end of the country to most friends and was in a stressful job.
I have a different loneliness now that DH and I are going through IVF. Everyone we know who has children (most friends) had them easily. No one understands what we're going through. I spend my life putting on a brave face and it's exhausting.

After my mum died very suddenly last year.

I have my dad and my siblings. I have friends and my DP and his (amazing) family.

Grief is so individual though. Even people who are going through the exact same thing (4 of us lost our beautiful mother) feel and behave differently.

When my DM was killed in a car accident aged 69. My DF had died years earlier aged 54.
I was 44 with no parents, VLC with one brother and so no family members on my side left that I ever see.
Mat leave too was a killer. Zero help. No one massively interested. I went back to work at three months.

After I had my baby. Definitely the loneliest time of my life. God I love him more than life, but I was so sad that nobody came to help ease the relentlessness and I felt guilty for feeling that way.

I am v lonely at the moment but I see that some of you have far more cause. It puts me in mind of a line from The Affair ( the tv show wt Ruth Wilson as a bereaved mother). " Living is a very lonely business and we none of us get as much support as we deserve."

When my son was diagnosed with autism. I knew noone else, besides him, (not even DH) would be as affected as me.

Evenings spent alone in the living room with my toddler sleeping upstairs after I’d separated from his dad.

I have no friends and I had anxiety and what I didn’t recognise as depression at the time. My mum is amazing but I had worn her out with my catastrophizing, ruminating and negative thought patterns.

Alone with a baby and not with the father. I was so lonely I ended up marrying the father which was not a good move.

I always think women should work, for their own sanity. We are not meant to be stuck at home in nuclear families, isolated from the outside world by that is the way society is set up these days and it’s not natural.

Last couple of years I've found the lonliness is grinding me down, only friend lives in USA now, never see her. No one else to talk to really and live in the middle of nowhere with various disabilities which is just making me more and more isolated.

Thank goodness we have Mumsnet. There is always someone here to talk to.

@Popopopo

At university. I could go several days without speaking to a single person.

Me too - university was my loneliest time also. On the days I didn't have lectures or seminars I wouldn't speak to another soul. I would go four or five days and it was horrid. I joined all these societies and hobbies but they did not lead to the close friendships that I wanted.

Similar experience to yours a few years ago.

Just had a dreadful miscarriage and it was Mother's Day. Through my crushing sadness I managed to pull myself together enough to take my mum out for lunch at a lovely pub.

Once there a staff member came round all the tables and handed out gift bags with chocolate, bath products and mini champagne to all the women.

I thought what a lovely gesture but she then said to me, 'you are a mother aren't you?'. And in my shock I must have looked pained and stuttered out with tears 'errr actually no... ' with which she snatched the gift bag from me and marched off.

A small thing, and of course it wasn't wrong of her to do so, but never have I felt so lonely, sad and absolutely left out of life as in that moment.

I am 50 next year, and for various reasons, I have reconciled myself to being lonely ( WFH for years, expat in the UK, moved around a lot , one sibling in another country etc etc). DH ,for instance, is perfectly happy never speaking to a living soul and is blissful in his own company. I would like to be like him and be totally self sufficient.

When I’d left university and started working. My boyfriend moved to America and I discovered I hadn’t been factored into his plans, my Uni pals all moved away to different parts of the UK and the office I worked in was very small and everyone there was older with families. I had a couple of friends but they weren’t very good ones and my family was 2.5 hours drive/an expensive train journey away The loneliness and sense of ‘what the fuck do I do now’ was overwhelming.

@Tomatobear

After I had my baby. Definitely the loneliest time of my life. God I love him more than life, but I was so sad that nobody came to help ease the relentlessness and I felt guilty for feeling that way.

It's really weird, but my parents and my MIL used to come once a week but I'd find it exhausting. They'd criticise everything and I felt pressure to clean and make tea. So I had visitors but it's quality I think that counts here. It annoyed me they would say things like your recycling is over flowing, you really need to empty it, whilst I'm breastfeeding a newborn. If it bothers you help out an empty it yourself.

Social media has its downsides but before it existed keeping in touch in the way we do now was very difficult