Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Flip

1 2 3 4 5

Original poster

To tactfully mention that my friend may appear desperate?

113 replies

IcouldstillbeJoseph · 24/09/2012 17:41

This is not a question from smug married woman here but I have a friend, a few years younger than me who I've just had to listen to sobbing about having been dumped by yet another bloke.

I have known her a good few years now and it is always the same. Meets man (either dating websites or fixed up through friends normally as we work in predominately female job), goes on few dates, has sex quickly (I'm not judging!), is ALWAYS very keen on man. Texts him lots.

The next bit is hard to articulate - but she has already picked out where she would ideally like to get married. Has firm ideas in her head about how many children she would like, including their names etc. She will happily mention this on dates. She told me she had been for a walk with latest man and said "thats where I want to get married".

Few weeks in, man goes cold, she texts even more and then he calls the whole thing off. She has just been dumped again and has already text him asking if he wants to go to her house and chat things through.

It is making me cringe. I feel like I should say something now. I have said before "don't text him, just let him do some leg work etc" but she always ignores it. It breaks my heart to see her upset so much but I can sort of see it from man's pov. I think I'd be perturbed by similar behaviour.....

My friend is 24 btw

OP posts:

anditwasallyellow · 24/09/2012 19:38

quoteunquote can you introduce me to your friend he sounds just lurvy I will leave my dp for him.

DolomitesDonkey · 24/09/2012 19:39

Actually I'm going to go against a popular grain. I think it's ok to say "I want a wedding band and kids, what about you?".

Thing is though, you've got to have the belief if yourself to say "ok, well thanks for the date, seeya" rather then clog that dead horse.

There are plenty of good men out there want marriage and kids - don't waste 2 years pussy-footing around a numpty!

nailak · 24/09/2012 19:42

cote I did all that stuff from the ages of 16-21, by 24 I was well over it, I think you were a bit of a late starter!!!

TheCraicDealer · 24/09/2012 19:47

It is perfectly ok to say that kids and marriage are on your agenda, but pointing out the venue of the ceremony is taking it a leetle too far.

I have a friend who sounds increasingly like yours- we've all told her (and she admits) that she needs a few months were men are just not in her radar. Long enough so that she can put herself first and feel better about being her and not just some unknown randomer's future girlfriend. But this resolve never lasts any longer than 3 days before she's trawling through her phone book looking for someone that she knows she can have textual relations with. What your friend and mine need is a few dancing on tables nights and karaoke with chums, on a repeat prescription until symptoms disappear.

hatesponge · 24/09/2012 19:48

I don't think it's that bad tbh. If these men weren't interested AT ALL she'd never see them again after the first date (I am the expert on this, as men never want to see me more than once)

Isn't the reality that most men in early-mid 20s arent interested in anything long term, so these relationships just run their course? and in a sense isn't she also doing herself a favour by weeding out the ones who aren't interested in looking beyond the next few weeks? I have several friends who wasted their 20s and 30s (and their fertility) on men like that...

quoteunquote · 24/09/2012 19:50

actually I think it is slowly destroying him, he is so anxious for a family, we have to be careful as he spend stupid money on our children,he keeps buying them random things, he admits it breaks his heart that he's not a father, he gets choked if comes up,

he has a job where he goes away for three weeks at a time, I don't think that helps,

i hope they find each other.

thebody · 24/09/2012 20:00

She might also come across as controlling as she has choosen th church and kids names.. Reminds me if Monica in friends.. Controlling and bossy. That's what they might feel. I bet she talks them to death as well.

Original poster

IcouldstillbeJoseph · 24/09/2012 20:06

horatia you won't believe this but the chap before this one was her dancing partner from her evening class! He strung her along for a bit and is now shagging seeing a mutual friend of ours. Sigh!

OP posts:

notanaxemurderer · 24/09/2012 20:09

quoteunquote he could be perfect for my friend! Where is he based?

Please say London, please say London...

Orenishii · 24/09/2012 20:10

There's nothing wrong with saying - as an abstract concept - yes, I'd like to get married, yes I'd like children. What would worry me about this woman is that any man seems to be the right material for that.

I could have married any of my boyfriends up to meeting my DH. I could have easily ended up marrying them, having children with them, and it would have been alright. Maybe we'd have stuck together and it would continue to be alright, maybe we'd have divorced. Regardless, I didn't stay with them, for a variety of reasons and I met my DH, fell CRAZY in love, still am 6 years later, and we're expecting our first child very soon. DH isn't just any man. He's the man I chose to marry, the man I chose to be the father of my children. I thank my lucky stars because although all those boyfriends before were perfectly nice people - they weren't my DH.

If I was any of the men on these dates, I'd be put off for feeling like I was inconsequential - my actual me-ness, our chemistry, our future children. That she was making it abundantly clear she wants a wedding, a sperm donor, and not making it really look like she wants the relationship. I'm not saying everyone should hold out for the idea of the "one" - I don't even agree with that concept. But she has so much time to at least find a guy she really falls in love with! Someone she wants to marry because she loves, someone she chooses to father her children because she loves him, not because he is a means to an end.

An old proverb: don't marry the one you're with, marry the one you can't live without. I know it's a bit schmaltzy and I don't subscribe to this idea you actually can't live with someone. But I married DH because I so badly wanted to, not because I happened to be with him, at that time in my life, when I wanted the abstract concept of marriage and children.

Schrodingershamster · 24/09/2012 20:32

Im 24 (not for much longer) and happy to be "a baby" as im still bloody single and was starting to wonder if i needed to crack on and start behaving like Miss Havisham.

CoteDAzur · 24/09/2012 20:36

Just enjoy your single life, Schrodinger. You will never get back your 20s.

LizLemon007 · 24/09/2012 20:57

Tell your friend to date men of 39!! The year I turned 39, all the last men standing from school all announced their engagements on fb. (such catches they all were too )

CoteDAzur · 24/09/2012 21:15

nailak - Some of us spent our late teens preparing for university and practicing competition sports because our clever parents thought it best to occupy our every living hour lest we party like you did and then were rather busy with getting a university degree. So yes, my real partying started mid-20s

OutragedAtThePriceOfFreddos · 24/09/2012 21:18

She really does need a copy of The Rules

If you can't bring yourself to just give it to her, then engineer it so that you are her secret Santa or something. She needs it.

LRDtheFeministDragon · 24/09/2012 21:28

Would you not assume someone who got married off The Rules would end up divorced in pretty short order, though? Or, well, go a bit bizarre?

It is still possible to party after you're married, you know. I myself have not one but two chocolate biscuits on a plate next to my cuppa, so I know whereof I speak.

BeaLola · 24/09/2012 21:28

I'm with Quint on this one & think the suggestions spot on.

Unless you no longer want her friendship don't tell her she's giving off the desperate vibe etc.

Does she have lots of friends who she can go out with & party with etc or is part of the problem thjat she wants a family & all her friends have families so she has no single femnale friends to go & enjoy life with ?

LeFreak · 24/09/2012 21:38

I have a friend like this, but she's 37.

There's one thing I've learnt, and that's there's absolutely no point telling her where she's going wrong.

It's the same with anyone who is fucking their life up in any way (drugs, alcohol, inappropriate relationships whatever) - people don't want to hear. They won't listen and will just think you're being judgey and smug or you don't understand (and maybe you don't).

You have to wait until she realises somethings not right and then she ASKS for advice. Then you can speak to them about it. Tactfully. And be her shoulder to cry on until then.

OutragedAtThePriceOfFreddos · 24/09/2012 21:44

LRD, not really. Maybe if you are the sort of person that has to work really hard to take that sort of advice, then it would be too difficult, but I would have found it quite easy to do stuff like not phone etc and loosely follow the basic advice and my marriage seems to be working.

LRDtheFeministDragon · 24/09/2012 21:46

But why would you want to put on a persona?

Wouldn't it be odd, to realize you've been sort of played, in a game?

Or am I misunderstanding what 'the rules' are.

I would feel bizarre to decide 'how I shall follow a set of rules and Catch Me A Man', you know?

MadameDefarge · 24/09/2012 22:08

look, there are some 16 year olds who are mature enough to be mums. all credit to them. but the vast majority are not. - am 48 and to be pergectly honest 24 does seem very young to me. in a hopeful, glorious life im living kind of way. if that includes lovely babies and a doting partner...more power to your elbow! but for many women it is a time of exploration and self learning outside of the baby/partner scenario. fwiw i had my ds at 36 and so wish i had started earlier. but then, i had an amazing time in my 220s and early thirties and was ready for him. horses for courses. to be so wedded to a fantasy, at whatever age, is a recipe for disaster. barbie and disneyy have a lot to answer for....

CoteDAzur · 24/09/2012 22:22

If there are 16 years mature enough to be mums, that must mean there are 15 or 14 year olds mature enough to have consensual sex.

CoteDAzur · 24/09/2012 22:22

Just wondering if the law should be changed.

LRDtheFeministDragon · 24/09/2012 22:25

cote, there are 12 months in a year and only 9 in a pregnancy, so your logic is off.

HoratiaWinwood · 25/09/2012 09:14

Cote, IMHO one should be mature enough to be a parent before conceiving.

And in any case your logic could be applied ad absurdam - if there is one sufficiently mature 12yo then the age of consent could be 11, etc. The age of consent in any case isn't about conception but safeguarding. And if anything that's an argument for raising it to 18, not lowering it.

Flip

1 2 3 4 5