To be so worried I’m losing all my friends

[openbluewater]

Hi, I don’t know if anyone can relate or understand.

I didn’t have many friends at school. I came from a troubled background and I got a bit of bullying: nothing that really affects me now but it meant I didn’t really have any solid sort of base of school friends.

Up until about eighteen months ago, I had some good friendships - two women I worked with in my first job which was in the early 2000s who I was close to and we’d seen each other through various life changes, remarriages and so on. A couple of friends from college. One friend I was still in touch with from school and one from university.

This is awful but while I haven’t fallen out with any of them I’m not close to any of them any more. The women I used to work with -one has retired and is in a different phase of life and is also a grandma. The other has remarried and her second husband is horrible. My friends from college -one has emigrated and although we keep in touch on social media it’s difficult to properly discuss anything somehow. The other I feel differently about since I went out for her birthday and some of her friends were really rude to me and she didn’t stick up for me.

My school friend has a baby and the baby goes wherever she goes and she only ever talks to the baby, interrupts me speaking to speak to the baby, if she does deign to talk to me at all talks to me about the baby. Even if it’s something quite sensitive. My university friend is lovely but lives at the other end of the country.

I feel a bit like Oscar Wilde where losing one might be a coincidence and yet all of them is crazy.

I don’t know. Has anyone else experienced this?

The baby is a toddler

I’ve tried but she’s just not interested in anything that isn’t anything to do with her child.

To start over then, I agree that yes it's normal to have lots of friendships wane as you get older. I don't know anyone who still has a large group of school or even college friends into their late 30's, 40's.
Many of my college friends had children at the same time as me but we still drifted as we were too far apart, met different more immediate 'baby' friends. Some came back after the toddler stages were over, many didn't. Live does move on.

So, I don't think there is anything at all wrong with you or your friendships. It's all normal. Most people just 'pick up' newer friends along the way that become close.

That's a pity, but maybe she has no one to leave her child with. That might change once the child's in nursery, assuming she hasn't had another baby.

You have my sympathy where losing friends after moving away is concerned. I love my DH, but I moved away from some good friends when I moved away, I had a lovely circle of friends and I've never quite recreated that since. I think you do work harder at friendships when single and become lazy once you have a family.

She has loads of people, so many that the child doesn’t need to go to nursery. I’m not trying to criticise her. It’s obviously what she wants right now and it’s where her life is,but then I ask myself, do I want to be sitting watching someone chat to a two year old in a high chair? No, probably not.

And yes, I think when you’ve got people at home as built in companions that’s easier than if you haven’t.

I think this is very normal. Friendships change, evolve and yes, you do grow apart from people.

I guess you have to constantly put in a bit of effort to be on the look out to cultivate new friends.

Iv'e met lots of friends in my new area- skittles, boules, table tennis, riding, dog walking, nature watching events camera club, online and more!

I think what you are describing is pretty normal. I see my friends from school once a year at the most. Most of us moved abroad so we don't tend to coincide while visiting our home country.

My friends here I see once every few weeks at the most. I have met them through different hobbies or work and try to meet every 6 months or so. So I'll meet the hobby 1 friends in January, old job ones in February, hobby 2 in march and so on. Obviously it's not exactly planned like that! But it is more or less how it works out.

I would love to see some of them more often, but everyone is busy and it's just not possible.

So when I feel lonely, I do things on my own: gym, theatre, travel, courses....Not with the intention of making friends, but just to have fun on my own

Most of my friends who had kids have dropped me like a stone and only meet up with kids involved. I've sort of come to the conclusion to write off the majority of friends who tell me they are pregnant as I know how it goes now. Have a few friends through hobbies and the old older/childless friend I see but that's it. I think people just move on in different directions. I try not to take it personally although it is hard when you always have made the effort in the past (weddings, birthday parties etc) then when it is your turn you don't even hear from anyone.

Yes, and that’s one reason I’m wary of making new friends.

Just try and befriend people who have similar lifestyles and interests to you as it is much easier to keep up a friendship when it flows better. For me I'm not interested in garden meet ups with kids screaming and you can't have a conversation with helicopter parents. And they are not interested in pub meet ups or anything in the evening any more which makes it difficult when you work.