Pushy mum ‘friend’

[WilderHawthorn]

DS10 has been playing football for a lovely local team for a few years, and I’ve ended up making friends with some of the mums there. The kids are all at different schools but they’ve become my ‘village’, we all help each other out in a pinch and get together regularly for wine/coffee/play dates. I love these women as they’re real, we moan about being skint, we talk about challenges with kids/partners, and can go round to one another’s homes in leggings and a hoodie and feel perfectly welcome.

There’s a mum that I know from tennis club who’s very flashy, her DS and mine sometimes play as doubles partners and she’s the type to buy her DS £200 tennis shoes and make sure you know how much they cost. However, she’s also asked me to hang out with the kids before and we’ve hosted a play date as I try and give everyone a chance. When they came round, her DS complained loudly that our house was small and she was a bit… funny when I offered her coffee and it was either instant or a nespresso, apparently she only drinks barista coffee and has a bean to cup machine.

During one of our sideline chats a few months ago, I mentioned I was going out at the weekend with the football mums and ever since then she’s obsessed. Constantly asks about them, what plans we have, how we hang out together. I keep conversation light as I don’t understand why she’s so interested.

Lo and behold, turned up to football training tonight and her and her DS are there! Apparently she’d contacted the coach (without me knowing) and said we were friends and her DS was desperate to play for our team. The coach is a lovely chap and said bring him along and we’ll see how he gets on. When she saw me, she made a beeline and demanded to be introduced to all the other mums so we could start planning drinks she asked about being added to the WhatsApp group but fortunately one of the other parents said we have a match day group for organising lifts/warm up times for games which she would be added to in due course. However, her DS didn’t seem to enjoy training and asked several times when they could leave and when training would be finished.

I’m absolutely convinced she’s brought her son to join the team as she wants to be part of a friendship circle, but I don’t want her there! These women are my dear friends and we’re all on a level of honesty and realness that is the polar opposite to tennis mum. I don’t get why she’s keen to hang around with someone she’s put down and seems to think is beneath her. Part of me wonders if she’s lonely, but to be blunt, I can see why!

How do I navigate this?! Help!

no need to be rude. If you have all the answers why are you asking us?
it’s not your call to decide if your ‘real’ friends want to be or not be friends with her - let them decide. Sounds like you are trying to exclude her.. you can’t be that pleasant if that’s the case. We also weren’t there: re your coffee discussion. Could she just have a preference? I have a mum friend who I like very much. She was visiting me once and needed to change the baby. I said to her pop up to x room, there is a changing station - help yourself to nappies etc. She did, then went on to tell me how snobby she is about using pampers only! I had the Lidl ones. I wasn’t offended - it’s just her preference! I chose not to see her negatively. We still talk/see each other - kids are not in nappies any more!

Agree with this. The entire post drips of humblebrags on how you're the "real" one with amazing friends and this snobby woman is desperate to join your clique. There seems to be a lot of projecting going because many details are simply not believable. They seem to be cliches of how a less well-off person assumes a wealthy person behaves. Eg telling people how much designer shoes cost, sneering at a small house, bad coffee etc.

Mums who buy their children expensive shoes will never go out of their way to tell poorer mums how much they cost. It just doesn't make any sense on a behavioural level. Rich people enjoy subtly name-dropping brands or experiences to other rich people who know how much they cost and therefore exchanging social status signals without mentioning numbers. Rich people will never bother telling poor people how much their designer clothes cost because it's too "easy". They're well aware they have more than middle or lower middle class so it seems silly to state something so obvious. On a more complex level, they are essentially lowering their own value by comparing monetary wealth with someone who very obviously has less. Wealthy people tend to simply ignore those with less money. Making them feel invisible is the default state, not dramatic eye rolls and snide comments like a scene from Pretty Woman.

I can just picture Amanda from Motherland 🤣

It’s not YOUR friendship group, and you aren’t the gatekeeper. Let her do her worst.

She sounds lonely and in need of friends to me. Personally I don’t think it hurts to be inclusive. Isn’t that what you teach your kids?

Maybe she’s not very sensitive in the way she’s handled things but honestly, you’re the one sounding judgmental. I wouldn’t drink instant or nespresso either btw though I would just make an excuse or ask for something else rather than mention my coffee machine, but some people just aren’t as socially adept. It might be she’s ND so just says it as it is or maybe just nervous and saying the wrong thing.

And as her son clearly isn’t a football fan and is unlikely to go to training again, it’s all a bit of a non issue.

If you really can't stand instant coffee, just say no thanks when offered? Not "i have a bean to cup machine". May as well just tell them they have shit coffee. Wouldn't be any ruder.

I'd have a chat with
A) the coach, to check there have not been any 'misunderstandings' (bullshit she told him about you/your DS).
B) your football friends, who will presumably have your back and divert her attention away from you (starting with the friend who mentioned the matchday WhatsApp group). I'd give them a heads up of what happened for if/when she gets even pushier.

You don't owe people time/friendship just because they're lonely. You don't like her, and that's okay.

Wow. You seem to know a lot about the ‘right way’ to do snobbery. How revolting.

What has she done wrong other than not want the coffee that was on offer?

I really understand, OP. I'd feel the same way. The flashy tennis mum is very entitled. She believes that she's entitled to your friend group. She's very brazen, asking to be added to the WhatsApp group of people she just met. Clearly she's not doing this to get closer to you. Tennis mum went behind your back to get her son on the football team, because she wanted to meet your football mum friends. And she'd probably like to usurp established friendships you have with these women.

But what can you do now but let things run their course? Hopefully, her DS won't want to stick around, probably prefers tennis to football. Also, you need to believe in yourself. You've known the football mums for a long time. Do you think that tennis mum could be such a disrupting influence that she could ruin friendships you've built over years? Have a bit more confidence in yourself.

Nothing wrong with you not gelling with her and wanting her in your inner circle for whatever reason but you sound very sneery towards her. She can't look down on you that much if she's desperate to be in your friendship group. Just because you dress more scruffily than her doesn't make her any less " real". Maybe you're protecting your insecurities onto her and you're subconsciously jealous of her?

Agreed. Sounds like a case of inverted snobbery here! A couple of children told me my house was small years ago… children are less filtered and sometimes think without speaking. They observe what they see and don’t always intend to be insulting in what they say! It sounds like she didn’t say anything about the coffee. Nothing wrong with having a preference.

I know exactly what you mean although people on here now bend over backwards to be against whatever anyone is saying!

I fear you are going to be ‘Wendied’

I have been there. Person pushed their way into my friendship group and then excluded me to have them all
for herself. I appreciate this may sound far fetched but it is amazing how someone can drip dip drip in a divide. In my situation other people in the group did eventually see through her but it took a long while!

I would continue to be not forthcoming about anything going on with the group and be very forgetful about adding her to any WhatsApp group.

Are you afraid that the new woman may take your friends away.
Or your mum friends my warm to her and you will feel outed and need to get even.
Its all so very childish.

I thought Amanda from “Motherland” was an exaggerated caricature until I joined Mumsnet! YANBU not to want somebody like that in your life. I feel sorry for her DS though, it sounds like she’s making him do activities he doesn’t want to for her own selfish reasons which says a lot about the kind of person she is. The people here saying she’s just lonely and you’re being mean are the same people who comment “don’t be ungrateful, they’re only trying to help” when someone posts about a controlling narcissistic relative messing with their garden or changing their child’s clothes etc etc without asking!

I think if someone offered me coffee and then it turned out to be instant, I'd probably hesitate and say actually no thanks. I'm snobby about coffee, not about people, but that distinction might well get lost in the delivery.

Not saying she isn't a dick, just that this isn't definitive proof of it.

Very odd that you're so triggered that you have to call a stranger "revolting" for stating facts? There's no personal attack in that text at all, simply pointing out discrepancies in the way OP tried to describe this woman. She's basically painted a caricature of Desperate Housewives style rich mum from a TV show, but the anecdotes don't correlate with things that wealthy people would say or do in real life.

This sounds like Amanda from Motherhood in the spin off Amandaland!!!!

YANBU and it isn’t inverted snobbery as some PPs are claiming. She brags about how much money she’s got and sneers at being offered coffee that isn’t from an expensive machine like hers and her son apparently had no manners if he comments on his friends’ houses being smaller than his. It’s very clear that you don’t resent this woman because she’s well-off; you resent her because she’s rude and boastful, which is a perfectly good reason to dislike someone. She and her child have got terrible manners.

I suspect she is lonely and wants to make more ‘mum’ friends but I suspect the reason she doesn’t have any/many is that she alienates other people for the same reason she alienates you, so my sympathy for her is minimal. It’s also pushy and odd for her to have tried to push her son into football just so she can insert herself into your existing friend group.

I think you’re being incredibly naive to think that all wealthy people behave in the same way. The fact is that a lot of wealthy people actually are braggy about it.

It’s also possible she actually isn’t as wealthy as she makes out and it’s all bravado. It doesn’t actually matter; it’s the boasting and the rudeness that’s the issue.

Me too! Cant stand instant coffee. And pod is ant much better.

This post is depressing. I live in a tiny flat and have instant coffee, yet I still feel sorry for snobby tennis woman. Primarily for the fact that there is a whole MN thread about the best way to ostracise her.

Really? That would be super rude, an instant coffee won’t kill you and behaving this way would mean you wouldn’t get offered anything else again. And I have a super nice coffee machine so know coffee. I also know how to behave.

Not true at all. I have a friend who’s a lot richer than me and she’s often going on about how much things cost, knowing I would never spend the sort of money that she does.

OP I also have a friend who’s trying to encroach on a friendship group I’m in so I get where you’re coming from. So far I’ve resisted letting my friend join but they’re pretty insistent. It’s really difficult because I love this friend dearly but they would completely upset the dynamic of the group and would take over.

I think your problem may go away though if her DS doesn’t like football. If he does, you could say to her that it’s not really up to you to invite her into the group, maybe wait till she gets to know the others. Hopefully she’ll realise they’re not really her people and won’t want to join.

Also not true. My kids did tennis and it wasn’t very expensive at all. It’s not all David Lloyd clubs you know.