AIBU to find myself very wary of making new friends following experience with someone?

[japonicabumsplatt]

We have moved to a new city (new country too). DD2 (6) is starting her new school next week and I am hoping quite hard that I don't have to meet with too many if any of the mums. Usually I would be keen to chat and make some friends but the last 4 years with a certain someone have left me wary and distrustful of people.
She has in honesty sucked the capacity for this out of me. I am now looking at folk with a very wary eye wondering "are you going to be an emotional leech too? Will you drag me into your endless dramas? You know what? Easier if I don't find out".
Anyone else had this? Am I unreasonable

I understand completely. Dd's ex-friend and her Mum poisoned several years of our lives and now we are both very wary. It has affected dd more than me tbh but I have no close local friends now.

This is a sad thread but it is also oddly comforting to me, I hope it is to you too Op. I felt so embarrased by my falling out with our friends, was desperate to resolve things but the flatly refused, it made me feel so alone. Now I can see that other people have experienced this too and it's normal to feel devastated by it.

Yep. You wise people seem to have covered all the bases there. It isn't nice to keep yourself so apart because of a disaster not of your own making. I also need to be "diligent" (I love that idea) and not rush in when there is a carnival of mad going on around someone but ignoring it.

She did stalk me from the get go and i ignored my instinct. Her overall "personality" in time melted away and there was this competitive, neurotic and immature person at the back with no other interest than measuring herself up against this that and the other. The toxicity of her marriage, in laws and sister finally spilled into my life causing embarrasment and very hurt feelings. Which makes me want to be concrete in boundaries for the future. At the first sign of "sigh", "my dh does (insert weird/abusive/unsettling behaviour). I shall put on my fastest shoes and make a break for the highway.

I look back and cannot believe the wreckage she lives in and dragged me into. It has taken as huge a step as moving countries to make a difference!

It's sad that people have had bad experiences with friends and I wish you much better luck in the future.

Given the kind of comments often written on Mumsnet I do sometimes wonder if I have different kinds if friendships than many of you. I enjoy having and spending time with my friends and they are important to me but they certainly aren't as necessary to my life as they seem to be to many members here.

I cannot imagine a circumstance in which I'd get tied up in someone elses family/work/relationship dramas. As my friends don't often seem to have those kind of dramas maybe I'm just unaware of them.

Posters also quite often seem to have conversations with friends that I'd only ever have with my DH.

My DH and I were childhood sweethearts and are best friends so maybe that's the difference, the relationship I have with him procludes something similar with a female friend...

Hmm, I have brilliant friendships and have also met a few 'emotional hoovers' along the way. The main difference is that good friendships develop naturally at a slow pace and aren't forced in any way. The ones I am wary of now are people who suddenly want to do stuff together all the time or clutch at things we have in common.

Best bet is to be friendly to everyone and see if anything occurs. If a friendship grows, great, and if not, that's great too.

Aw, Blue, that's lovely about your DH!

More or less what BlueJess said. I've moved around so much internationally that my friends are scattered everywhere from Paris to Sao Paolo, and I'm currently a non-driver living in an isolated village with a toddler and writing full time, so I see no one, and no one I have met here in nine months is a potential friend. I have to be extremely psychologically independent, and I can't 'need' my friends on a day today basis. I certainly don't have anyone in my life in whose domestic arrangements I am intimately involved.

OP, the only thing I would beware of is the distorted thinking evident in your post that seems to acknowledge no middle ground between 'total stranger' and 'toxic, life-sapping pseudo friend'. There are so many posts I
on Mn about how people get stuck at the 'nodding acquaintance' stage at the schoolmate. There's no reason to think you will immediately get sucked in to any kind of friendship, far less one you don't want.

Seaweedy I think what happened was that I got turned into an emotional crutch against my will. I didn't need her as much as she seemed to need an all consuming "relationship". She lacked the boundaries and I didn't put them in place early enough. If anything I ignored my better instinct to keep her in somewhere in the middle, which was a mistake on my part. I hope it is clear in my posts that I feel responsible for the intrusion I allowed to occur. This sort of dependency is not typical of my much older well established friends, who similarly to you, are not on my doorstep, yet when we talk or see each other, it is like picking up from 10 minutes ago. Somehow along the way a breach of the usual standards happened and I lost the power to withstand her demands. As it stands now, I don't trust myself to not allow a similar event to occur and I am doubting whether or not I could meet new people who would mow me down in the same fashion. That is at the heart of the issue rather than wanting to feed off friends or feel needed to such a degree.

What a peculiar thread. Do you think this "certain someone" is on Mumsnet?

Holla explain the peculiarity of this? How does this thread rate as more peculiar than many of the other topics on MN, some of which take peculiar to new levels of peculiar where isn't even peculiar anymore but something entirely different?
I for one know that this person is not on here.

Just the mysterious tone and phrasing... sounds like it's aimed at a particular person! Guess I misread it - sorry :)

Holla I don't think it is a mysterious tone. If it is mysterious because i haven't put my address and her name then that is just because I don't think that is good etiquette on MN! But I do think the circumstances are clear enough to understand the meaning of the post.

Perplexed thank you! I do appreciate how lucky I am. We've grown up together really which probably adds a particular dimension to our relationship.

japonica I think that very needy type of person if probably pretty rare. By all means take a bit if time out to recover but most people you'll meet will be lovely and normal.

Holla, I think this thread is bloody weird too. It reminds me of one of those amazon book reviews where they've all been written by the same person.

I know a lot of people through work, school and interests. A good 95% of them are pleasant people and are acquaintances or friends. The remainder I steer clear of. No drama. Job done.

Carly, all humans are different and hence, all their interactions are different. If you don't recognise yourself in any of the other accounts of difficult and hurtful encounters with others, please don't feel they are somehow weird, peculiar or fraudulent. It is simply that they didn't happen to you. A fact which would appear in your mind to render them meaningless.