Family friends

[Aliceinnorthernland]

I'm turning 50 soon and having an episode of navel gazing.i guess it's normal at a big birthday. The DCs are almost grown up (18 and 16) so I'm reflecting on their childhood.

We don't have family friends. Never been on holiday or a weekend away with anyone else.
We were in a group with 3 other families when the DCs were young, but we stepped away over time as they were back stabbing, competitive and talked about money and extensions and not much else. Lots of boasting and just not great.

But now I worry that by doing that my DCs have missed out on something. That group has remained in touch , still see each other , go on holiday, all celebrating the older DCs 18the together etc. Probably still stabbing each other in the back etc.😀

Our paths have crossed as my eldest has become closer friends with one of the other DCs. It's just bought up some weird feelings a I had to go to one of their houses the other day to pick our DD up. I sat outside and thought how weird it was that we would once have been invited in.

We have other friends by the way, but they either don't have children or they are different age. We therefore don't do the family stuff together.

I know the DCs will have their own lives and friends soon. But I just feel they've missed out.

All not helped as I'm very hormonal. Or lack of hormones probably.

If that friendship group wasn’t working for you, you did the right thing by stepping away.

I don’t have any friends, only relatives and work mates. And I’ve never been friendly enough with the parents of my kid’s friends to go for a coffee or a holiday.
‘Your kids will make their own friends.

Thank you. I just need to remind myself of that. It's not helped by DD making pointed remarks about how 'fun' her friends mum is (my ex friend) as she's always having the rest of the group over and all the things they do.

We rarely have people over as we tend to go out and meet our friends. We've all known each other for 25 years , so it's long before DCs.

I get we made the choice to move on. But there is part of me that regrets it, despite all the back stabbing they are all seemingly now great friends.

I thinks it's affecting me as our groups of friends stems from DHs uni days. So I've always felt that really they are his friends.

Ugh. You'd think I'd be over this nonsense by this age.