I am in my fifties and have two good, dear long standing friends who I am finding it increasingly difficult to be around. I am embarrassed and discomfited by my feelings around this as I did not expect to encounter friendship difficulties at this time of life. They seem to me to be constantly reflecting on past negative events in their lives. These events are from childhood, from their previous marriages, in one case from a marriage that ended twenty five years ago, and really from any other points in their lives when they have encountered difficulties.
I appreciate that our age provides many past events to reflect on and that in recent years everyone has lived a little more in their heads than in previous times due to covid.
But I do still feel that with these two friends in particular the focus is always on these negative events. And the two of them feed off each other. For example this evening I was talking about a string quartet I'd been to see and one friend's response to this was about how she wished she could play an instrument but her parents didn't pay for lessons and now she has anxiety about music. The other then started talking about how she wanted to be a ballerina but she never had an eye test until she was eight and so she couldn't follow her ballet lessons properly and now has anxiety about ballet. I have heard exactly this information from them many times and I do make sympathetic noises but I feel increasingly frustrated about how all our conversations default to past harms even when ostensibly talking about something else.
Am I just some kind of cold hearted bitch for not wanting to always talk about past difficulties? Does anyone else find their fifty something friends are doing this? What do you do about it?