to use my upcoming move to "prune" my friends list, in real life?

[ontariomama]

Back story: The Mr. has a new job, so our family will be relocating a signifacant distance away. We are very excited, as this is the result of years of struggle and hard work. The new job will mean the Mr. will be away often, and he is worried about how I will cope with the kids, the house, the move, and his absecnce without the continual support of our group of friends. I have had problems with depression in the past, our dd is 13 going on 40, and our ds (11) has A.S.D.
On the other hand, I feel like this is the perfect time to seriously prune our social cirle.
People change over time, and many of the people that make up our social circle now are very different from how they were when we met and became friends. I get it, I know I am not the same girl they made friends with either. It is difficult because many of these couples have kids that have been raised along side ours, for years. Some of these people turned into unrecognizable freaky- deaky nut jobs, armed with the ever-present camera and BB. In many of the couples, we were friends with one half, and became friends by proxy with their partners. Can I just say, some of thse people married crazy people!? We have a long history with many of these people, at some point or another, many were almost as close as family, but not any more. The Mr. wants to keep in contact with everyone, so we keep up our support. I want to ditch facebook, and only give our contacts to those we really, really like. AIBU?

I think you need to consider whether your DH feels as you do. If he wants to stay friends, and you don't, effectively you are losing him some of his social circle. And he is starting a new job, as well as moving miles away. He is very possibly in need of his friends, not just thinking you are. I don't think it's fair to make that decision for him - just be too busy for the ones you don't want to see, yourself.

Besides, if you move a fair way away, the natural course of events will mean you drift apart from most of these people anyway. There's no need to have an official severance, IMO. Just be busy when they ring so you can hang up quickly, make excuses for why visits aren't convenient and let things slide. Apart from anything else, officially dropping some but not others may put the ones you want to keep in a pretty tricky situation. What are they meant to say if the others ask if they know why you deleted FB, and do they have your new address for, say Xmas/child's b'day cards?

Finally, if your kids are friends with their kids, given their ages I don't know how you think you can achieve this. If they want to stay in contact, they will, so their parents will know your doings anyway via them, and may well get in touch that way. And if you make the severence official enough that the parents know they've been dumped, how will that affect your own children's friendships? That's a pretty awful thing to do to kids facing a massive shift - new school, new home, new area. I don't see why they should lose lifelong friends as well, just because you find their parents have become dull/annoying. Especially as you are about to have much less to do with them than you ever have before, so geography will accomplish a lot of your aim, anyway.

TBH I think you're being overly dramatic, and not really thinking about the impact on the rest of your family, here. Sorry if that's a misinterpretation, but on the info you've given it looks rather like that.

I'm a bit confused about the "support" thing, because if you're moving a long way away they can be of limited practical support anyway, and if you dont really like them, you're not going to be calling them for emotional support, right? So, not sure your DH has a case.

That said, you are likely to find that once you move, many of these friends disappear into the background anyway, and you hear from them less and less frequently, so not sure you really need to go to the effort of deliberately "defriending" them by not telling them your contact details. They'll probably just be victims of natural friend attrition.

Sorry, to clarify, DH has no interest in these contacts, and has said so. We had our kids a decade ahead of any of these people, so our kids were not in the same schools, didn't pal around. Most of these people are ones we still see around town, talk to once in a while, but they are not super close. In the past, 5 or 6 years ago, we did the xmas / bday thing/ bbq , but we no longer do this.
As to support, DH was thinking in terms of people I'd skype with, call, or fb, if I was feeling down. I appreciate that he wants me to feel conected, and I still want to stay in contact with our close friends. For the most part, my idea is to fade out, but some of these people are still expecting we will visit when we are back to see family, that we should be trying to do what ever it takes to keep up the friendship.

I think it's fine as long as you do it in such a way that it doesn't make it weird if you bump into them again. I think the letting them drift away method is much better than quitting the friendship cold turkey - maybe when you visit in the future you could just be less accomodating, or only see them on your terms ie invite them to where you are staying rather than visiting them at home. That way you will soon learn who really values your friendship anyway.

It will probably happen naturally if you're further away, given a bit of time. But refusing to give out your address to people you were once close to is just going to cause un-necessary hurt.

This evolves over time. We have our own very close friends from uni whom neither of us would contact independently although due to life circumstances some have joined the friends (as they have become couples) we have made on the way through, we have the group we ran with as a young couple - what's left of it - and we have the friends we have made on the way through. We have never consciously dropped anyone or would think of dropping someone who had been a friend. Sometimes friendships fade.

If you are moving a distance away, its going to happen whether you like it or not.

Rather than picking who you are going to prune, pick who you really want to keep because you will have to work to keep them. When you make new friends the old ones will become less important to you anyhow.

Ditch Facebook. Its just a weird stalking ground for the socially inept. You dont need it.

There's no harm in giving out of your number and address, but if the friendhips are not that strong they will naturally fizzle out anyway. it takesalot of effort to keep friendhips going long distance, on both sides, and if you're not going to do that they will drop out of your life without you even thinking about it.

I agree with Ladyintheradiator that you are overthinking it.

Let the friends have your address and number, and email, but cut off other types of contact like facebook.

I think the friendships will fade naturally. You don't need to respond to any calls or invitations if you don't want to.

i dont think you should. it might happen inevitably but i think you will move and realise you now have no friends or support group.
keep your friends, as best you can. they will fade if necessary.

I have moved a lot of times and my friends list always gets pruned naturally.

I think you will find that you don't really need to do much. I would keep facebook tbh, but just take full advantage of its privacy setting etc (and/or simply don't use it).

Thank you guys : ) I think we will use a combination of the suggestions given.

Agree you are overthinking it. One of my friends pruned me gradually over the last few years, they became v v wealthy and we didn't which I think was the root of it. Now he DH will occasionally drop by or meet my hubby for a pint but we never see them as a family anymore. It's sad but it happens ...