to have a friendship cull?

[chocolatenut]

I am married with 2 DC's under 5. I work fulltime, have elderly parents as well as siblings (sister is recently divorced and needs me a lot), PIL, and various friends. I did have some time over lockdown to reassess and I just feel like I have way too much on my plate and need to streamline what I can in order to have some headspace. Obviously I can't and don't want to cut out family as my elderly parents and sister all really need me at the moment.

As for friends some are far away and its easy just to keep up on facebook but for friends whoa re closer to home I really need to let some go. I feel that at the moment I am enjoying friendships with other mothers, people with kids the same age as ours more. We live in nice area with lots of young families and its easy to arrange to meet for lunch or a coffee with someone local or to meet up with the kids in the park. Also on the odd night I might get to go out friends who don't live locally aren't available to pop out for a drink somewhere local.

I do obviously have old uni and school friends who I will stay in touch with even if I don't see them so often but then there are the other friends who I feel like want more out of the friendship than I want or have to give them and as a result I end up just feeling guilty about it. One in particular is a lovely woman, quite shy really but we met and became friendly in our 20's in a flatshare and for a time she was my closest friend but now our lives are just so different. She lives a good distance from me with no direct transport links (although in the same city) so when we meet it always has to be organised a days in advance and as its such a trek for her I feel I need to devote at least a few hours to her which just puts me off arranging to meet. She's nice to my kids but has none of her own and so my oldest gets bored and wants my attention and I just don't really get to relax and enjoy it.

I think we just don't have too much in common anymore, she did go to university but doesn't have a career or a job, she is married but her husband doesn't often socialise with us. Most of my friends know each other as well whereas she doesn't really and prefers to see me one on one, as I said she is shy and can be a bit socially awkward.

Its been awkward, she will buy me a gift for my birthday, send cards, and call to see how we all are but I don't often reciprocate and then I feel awful everytime I think of her. I'd like to think we could stay in touch and then maybe pick up in the future but I suspect she will be hurt by that as she doesn't have many friends, she doesn't use social media so I can't really keep in passive contact with her.

There are others some mum friends who I don't feel I really gel with or some old work friends who I rarely see anyway but others are more difficult to trim even though things aren't really working for me at the moment.

I think she's dodged a bullet personally...

You sound like a right stuck up bitch. I bet if she knew how you really thought of her then she would drop you like a hot potato. She sounds like a nice person and you don't deserve her friendship. Culling friendships aye? I bet if everyone knew your friendship expertations then most of your mates would drop you, you don't sound like a good friend at all.

Good luck with your friendship group in a few years when the kids have grown up.

I would try not to over think it OP. It sounds like you're stressing over this quite a lot. Honestly I would try to put it out of your mind you're probably thinking about this a lot more than they are. I would imagine most people have other things on their minds with this awful pandemic and probably won't even notice.

@chocolatenut

I think some people here are being disingenuous and that lots of people let friends drift away because they don't fit in with your life anymore but rather than own that you say "Oh we just lost touch" but it was basically intentional.

Nope. I'd be amazed if anyone thought so unkindly about someone who was once their closest friend, as you describe her.

You were calculatedly horrible about her.

(Tho I'm now wondering if this is all made up actually. I seem to fall for a lot of those threads lately 🙄)

Friends made with small children are often formed to enable the children to have a friendship group, once the children no longer need this, or fall out the adult friendship fade as well. Mine have grown up and there is only two friends from this stage I am still in real life contact with.

You have too much time on your hands to consider such a cold and heartless way of treating people who probably consider you a friend.

If you do make sure you do it on Face ache too. Post telling everyone they have 30 mins to leave a comment saying where you met or they will be culled.

I hope if you ever fall off your throne, your 'friends' won't decide to cull you due to your lack of wealth and social standing. Jeez....

@mummyof2lou
Haa haaa. Reckon the op hasn't got any real friends, if they are all like her.

I wonder how many of your new "aspirational" friends are working out how to try and get shot of you?

Your friend sounds quite lovely and quite frankly deserves a better friend than you.

Some or many friendships just gradually fade away. However this one friend sounds quite lonely, lacks confidence and may be suffering from depression. A good friend would try and help and support her rather than looking at her as a hindrance. Perhaps the last thing she needs is to be dumped by her 'best friend. She is not your responsibility I guess so cull her if you want

What a strange way of viewing friendships.

You sound so disconnected from relationships - like those awful people who ‘curate’ their bookshelves to reflect a certain identity rather than keeping books they like. You want to Curate your 5 friendships to reflect who you think you are.

What an unpleasant prospect.

Surely friendships are things that grow and fade naturally in time anyway

Putting this much thought into it is frankly weird

We all have circumstantial friends who we've met through work or through our kids who we don't have much in common with and tend to lose contact with when we swith jobs or kids move to different schools. When you've been friends with someone for longer though you're usually quite fond of them so even if you no longer share the same lifestyle you want to see them (even if it's less often than before). If anything I think it's important not to just stay friends with people who live in the same small bubble as you. (Within reason obviously I'm not going to remain friends with someone who has become a white supremist).

How sad and mean.

Let's hope when your circumstances in the future change (sister remarries, parents pass on, children grow up) and you need support, that your friends haven't 'culled' you because you are not endlessly satisfying them at every stage of their life.

You dont want a cull, you want to drop one specific friend. You are really mean about her. She has no drive, she puts in more effort, she doesn't have it is and it's hard to entertain mine.

There are solutions to all of that which don't involve dropping her. It sounds like of your world crumbled she would really be there for her and you can't be added to inconvenience yourself for her. You're being mean. You don't have to be friends with her but don't be the sort of hypocrite to post "be kind" statuses or moan when someone isn't kind to you or "doesn't know what's really going on or how hard your life is" in 6 months.

They say that you are an average of the five people you spend the most time with, that your friends and networks reflect who you are and where you are going in life. I think that is true and therefore want my friendships reflect where i am going in life.

I think they mean that you should surround yourself with people who make yourself feel happy and good about yourself, and who don’t bring you down, criticise you etc. Whether people have children or not/ can afford nice dinners/theatre trips or not shouldn’t really make a difference if they’re otherwise people you get on well with. Obviously if you don’t find yourself wanting to see her, then that’s fine, let it drift, it doesn’t have to be a huge drama.

To be honest I would want to keep the friendship out of kindness. But that’s me and the moral compass I choose to live my life by. I could not decide to “cull” someone who had done nothing wrong to me, who had one meant a lot to me and who quite possibly rather needed my friendship.

That doesn’t mean you can’t see her less often as your lives evolve in different ways but do you need to cut her out entirely?

But we’re all different.

Gosh, I hope you don’t find yourself single again at some point and wish you still had some friends who weren’t loved up and busy with married life to spend time with you!

This is the potential pitfall to your plan.