To wish he had friends

[NotMYChild]

Anyone got a DH with no friends? It’s suffocating. He never goes out. Expects to come everywhere with me and kids. I have to plan our diary, come up with ideas etc. Anyone else got this? How do you cope?

See I wouldn't say your way is odd but not the typical thing I see and have experienced with myself and my social circle.
We all have our own individual friendships, not shared friends. It means we retain our individuality, not always being one half of a couple.

N/C for this. I hear ya @NotMYChild and I am stunned - but also somewhat comforted that so many women feel the same. I am guessing that the majority of women with husbands who have no friends, and who never go out, are a bit older too - like me. (45-50+.)

My H used to be out all the time when the children were young/school age, and now they don't live with us anymore, I can't get him to leave the house! He won't go anywhere without me, and I find it quite suffocating sometimes, and look forward to his 3 days at work.

Sometimes, I feel quite low and depressed about it, sometimes I am OK about it and can handle it, sometimes I actually do enjoy his company. It's a 15/50/35 split. ie; I enjoy his company 35% of the time, I feel low 15% of the time, and I am OK with it/indifferent - for the other 50%.

I am 60 in the summer, and DH turns 60 in Feb 2025, and I am hoping to get him on a big joint 60th holiday, and it's our 35th wedding anniversary too. (Sept 2024.) If I do it will be the first time he has been anywhere for 5 years - apart from a handful of daytrips to the beach. We went away - to New Zealand - for our 30th wedding anniversary in 2019. (Just before covid!) He never wants to socialise, and I can only get him on a pub lunch once or twice a month. I HATE going to the pub at night, because he always wants to leave at 8pm - 8.30pm, because he gets 'bored.'

But yeah, he has no friends either, and hasn't had for about 15 years. He used to work in factories and had loads of mates and was at the pub every week with them, and used to go to darts matches and play pool and all sorts ... Then the factory closed, (after 20 years) and they all drifted apart. No-one kept in touch. It was about the same time that his parents died, and he went into a weird 'CBA with anyone' type of slump, and he has never come out of it!

So he has no relatives now except me and our adult DC. (He is an only child - so no siblings or nephews and nieces.) All aunts and uncles and grandparents deceased in the last 2 decades of the last century. No contact with cousins since the mid 1990s, and was never close to them anyway.

He works part time - 24 hours a week - and rarely leaves the house apart from this. He does 3 days a week... Does nights one week/afternoons the next. If I had not had a garden and didn't live in a nice area I think I would have gone loco during covid/the lockdowns. He follows me around like a lamb, tells me I am so cute and so beautiful 3 or 4 times a day, and keeps wanting to hug and kiss!

I CBA - and can't see the point in all the smooching. I swear he has read some 'how to keep your wife happy' manual, and some idiot who wrote it said 'tell her you love her every day, and that she is beautiful, and keep hugging her and kissing her.' NO. DON'T! It's fucking annoying. I keep catching him looking at me too. When we are watching the TV - he is 7-8 feet away from me in his armchair - sort of at the side - and if I glance round he is often just staring at me. The other week I said 'what are you looking at?' He said 'the curtains.' When I say 'why do you keep looking at me?' he says 'because I want to, you're my wife, can I not look at my own WIFE now?' So irritating.

He always wants me with him if he goes to the GP or dentist or a hospital, and is like a child. I have stopped this recently, and won't go with him unless he can't drive back. I said 'you're not a fucking child!' He sulks but IDGAF now.

Like other posters, I have forged a life that excludes him a lot now. I go on daytrips and walks and swimming on my own, I meet the DC or one of my 2 BFF for lunch once every few weeks, and see my 2 cousins and aunts every month or so... (My parents deceased late 1990s.) I spend a lot of time in our garden between Easter and October, and I go into the woodlands and by the river and up the local hills, taking photos. Sometimes I am out from 10am to 4pm just alone, walking, resting, having a picnic, wild swimming, taking photos, looking around the shops. I am starting to live a life without him in it much of the time. I am also starting to feel that I won't be sorry when he's dead.

Do I love him? Not really. I do care about him, and we do have some good times together, but I don't love him, not really. If I won a million pounds tomorrow I would be gone. Feels like we are just mates. We have separate bedrooms - I moved into one of the kids rooms when they left home because of his horrific snoring - and have not had sex for a decade. I do not miss it.

Why don't I leave? Because it suits me to stay. I have a comfortable life, no mortgage, big pot of savings, easy life, decent job part time 3 days a week, (WFH,) I live in a lovely area, my neighbours are great, and I have no intention of giving it up to live in poverty, with fuck-all luxuries, in a shitty little bedsit.

Of course, I’m always encouraging him to do more. I’d love it if he did!
he’s nearly 50 though, so unlikely to change.

Up to a point this is also part of how it is. However, after a long time married, most friends have some relationship to both of us even if they are more hers than his or more his than hers.

Be careful what you wish for.

Please don't tell me you stay??

My husband is the same, no friends, no hobbies. Nothing outside of me and the kids and his job which is mostly WFH. I'm out all the time, have loads of friends, a sociable job (teacher), a dog i walk, play sports two nights a week, run three mornings a week, cinema at least once a month with friends. TBH I'm fed up with him and just live my own life. He has very little to talk about given he goes nowhere and does nothing.

Yep, I understand. It's very draining to have to be the one who plans and is responsible for all social activites. It's also makes a person extremely boring, mine was also WFH and it almost destroyed our relationship, luckily he has now gone back to work 4 times a week.

@mumsytoon not odd at all.
He saw his family at Xmas while I was with the dog.
I think it’s more odd that people have such rigid ideas of how holidays should be spent.
We enjoy time to peruse our independent interests, so our time together is valued and valuable rather than routine/expected.

Yeah, I've got to admit, my husband is actually boring some of the time. As I say, he works three days a week. and we obviously can't do anything or go anywhere on these three days. (My WFH job is very flexible and I can do the work/my hours when I want, so I can plan around him easily...) So I suggest stuff for when he is off. Meal, go see DC, go to the beach, go to a show. Not EVERY time he off but sometimes.

Yet if I try and plan anything for the days he's off, he says, 'urgh, I'm nearly 60. I'm weary. I'm tired all the time. I need my sleep. I need to relax. I need to chill. I don't WANT to plan anything... I don't really want to do anything when I am off on my 4 days off, if possible!' I say to him, 'we can't go anywhere on the three days at work. We can't go anywhere on the days you're off. So when are we supposed to go anywhere or do anything?'

For God's sake! So we only tend to do stuff now when he has BOOKED time off. This is why I started planning stuff on my own 80% of the time. I even go and see my adult DC on my own most of the time, because four out of five times he can't be bothered to go. I try to arrange a visit to them and he says 'I don't like planning stuff. I want to just go if I feel like it on the day.' But we can't do that because they're both extremely busy young people and I can't just turn up willy-nilly ... We do have to give them at least 3 or 4 days notice. Sometimes more...

And if I do go without him, (to the DC,) he sulks and pouts and says, 'thanks for leaving me out!' But on the other hand, he doesn't wanna fucking go! So what I've started doing is going to theirs on a lunchtime/meeting for a pub lunch, and not telling him that I've gone. When I come back, I just say I have driven to a certain place - like 10 miles away - for a walk. I have to tell them not to mention it. They think it's ludicrous, but they do get why.

My DH has no friends but neither do I so we just spend time together or with my family.

@SheFliesLikeABirdInTheSky This is so depressing but I totally see how it comes about. I want to see a film that I know he’d like to see. But he won’t organise it. And we’d need a sitter so that’s not possible just now as kids getting too old to be left, but not quite. But if I go with a friend, he’ll sulk also. So I’m considering saying someone else has invited me.

Fuck him off and find someone with some social skills.

Exactly. Hard work aren't they?!

Dh has a few friends but 1 isn't local 1 barely goes out and the other he sees for a meal a few times a week.

We don't socialise as a couple with friends.

Hear hear.

jesus christ

I saw someone for a few years who was like this, no friends, no hobbies other than watching TV and going to the gym. It was tiring and oh so fucking boring. I came home from wherever and, invariably, he was there too which was often infuriating. We never talked about it - I didn’t know how to without hurting his feelings.

It is really unhealthy to have no friends, regardless of if you’re in a relationship.

My partner doesn’t seem to have pals he can hang out with.

He had pals when we met but they were all related to the music industry and they move around a lot or have died. He gave up being in a band when we had kids and got a more stable job.

I feel really bad for him as his social life is still going out to see bands but the scene moves so quickly that he goes alone and it’s not really the kind of place to form friendships.

I don’t even know how someone pushing 50 even begins to make friends. He’s not sporty, uninterested in watching sports too. He is only into music and it’s very niche stuff too so not exactly bonding over the love of Taylor swift. I really feel for him.

Could have written this about my own husband. I've spent ages worrying about it, and encouraging him to have friends but after a big heart to heart I've realised he just doesn't feel the need for friends in the way that I do.

He's a fantastic husband and dad to our kids and quite happy to go along with plans that I make for us.

Interesting that others have similar.

He told me a while ago that it isn't a problem for me to fix, but that lack of bigger social life is something I find quite tough.

Mine only goes out to walk the dog.

If I want time to myself I usually have to leave the house to get it or take a day off while he's gone into the office.

He just isn't a sociable sort. I knew this before I married him but didn't fully appreciate how the not going out would sometimes make me feel.

BIL is the same. Sister and I go out together without them!

I’m interested in how these men who never go out and have no need of friends managed to find themselves wives. I also wonder what they imagine will happen if those wives leave them or die? Replace them?

That is absolutely true. Young children are exhausting and life is so busy there is no time for a big social life or hobbies anyway. As they grow older,
more time becomes available, and it becomes apparent then. Once the dc head to university and thoughts turn to retirement it is in sharp focus.

Had my mother held on to her own life, friends and hobbies she would have been in a much better position to enjoy her life, it seemed she succumbed to my father’s idea of a good life which was in fact an empty life. Devoid of fun, joy or friends..isolation is a killer, and for most people it can bring about deep unhappiness.

Have your own life, if your dh doesn’t like it tough, he can leave if he wants. Don’t waste precious years missing out.

The lack of a support network bothers me. All of the people we have around us who would support us if something terrible happened are my family and my friends.

Even on a basic, logistical level, all of the people who we share lifts with for the kids sporting commitments etc - all of those relationships exist because of me. If something happened to me I worry about the impact on our family because he has literally no network. If I died, the kids would miss more than just their mum. They would miss an entire community and network of people who help them, and who they help.

I think being solitary is a really shitty example to set to them.

As PPs have said, I worry about retirement. It's fine now as we both work full time and have busy lives. He doesn't care if I want to socialise and I have my own friends who I do see, but the thought of retirement with someone who never voluntarily leaves the house is not appealing.

People change. There was a short window in my mid twenties where I was more socially active because I worked in an environment where socialising after work was easy and normal.

I did not socialise at school or university, very little when I worked in a resort, then quite a lot for a while (which is when I met my wife) then after kids hardly ever and after the pandemic now actively avoiding it.

I would not “replace” my wife, not interested in meeting anyone else or ever having a relationship again.