Does anyone else not really have any friends?

[Hernamewaslola22]

Wondering if it's just me. I have friends at work and 1 or 2 out of work...we very very rarely do anything together. I spend most weekends completely alone. I feel like most women have these big groups of girlfriends.

My neighbour was great watched kids when husb had kidney stones. I think most people dont get involved now. People are flaky now nobody replies to anything now. So you do things alone. Some hobbies are cliques and hard break through that. My husb said same work chase up everyone phone calls etc

because you're not like other girls? 👏🏼

You couldn't think of ANYTHING worse than having a drink with close friends? Really?

What's the problem?

I grew up with brothers, my neighbours were all boys, and my friendship group has always been mixed but about 80% male forever (when you're a petrol head, there are more males involved than females) and no, i dont mind a one on one coffee with a couple of female friends but i hate going for drinks with just girls, its just not as fun for me at all.

and my closest friends are male anyway....

You don't think a woman born c.1944 "lived through feminism?"?????
Do you think the spice girls invented it with girl power in 1997 or something?

💯 they really are the architects of their own situation in many (not all) cases. I see it on MN all the time - married women complaining about having no friends, then when you dig deeper it appears they were perfectly happy for all their many friendships to fade away after they married and had kids.

It’s only a decade or so later when their husband starts getting grumpy or their kids go to high school or uni do they start to miss their friends that are now long gone.

Majority of my oldest (and closest) friends are married with kids and I’m glad they didn’t adopt this mindset.

@easylikeasundaymorn

I take your point and I am not saying feminism started 40 years ago but a huge amount of progress has happened over the past 40 years which means there is less expectation on women to “focus on their families” than there was.

My mother called herself a feminist and as a young woman was ambitious, hard working and glamorous but over time stopped work altogether and ended her life lonely and frustrated. Mainly because she “focused on her family” and forgot herself.

Thats anecdotal and clearly there have been women for decades who have maintained strong networks. But it’s certainly much more widely accepted today that women need more autonomy, more time and friends and interests outside the marriage and family.

Which is why I am quite shocked at how many women are still basically dropping most of their interests outside marriage today.

But you don’t have to rely on “traditional female groups” if you don’t want to. Hang out with blokes if you prefer.

The point is not to get to the point where your husband is your only friend.

Other people have mentioned this, but I'm quite interested in the notion of worrying about whether somebody is open to making friends.
I'm also thinking how people fret about not having time because of their children. For me, having friends with children saved my sanity because we could do things together.

It's clear that a lot of people are anxious about issuing an invitation whether it be for a quick coffee or to do something with the kids, so I think those amongst us who are a bit more comfortable with rejection might need to do a bit more of it.

I think the trick is not to be too intense. Friendship builds over time. To begin with it's an opportunity for a bit of social interaction, as as you get to know people, the relationship might deepen or fall by the wayside.

I recommended the author Robin Dunbar, who's written extensively about friendship, earlier in the thread, but I'll drop it in once again. I think he's very interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RobinDunbar

I think it makes a huge difference where you live and if people are open to making friends.

I live in a place where people who have grown up here aren't really open to making friends. This may have been different if I'd had children and met people through kids.

I've had this conversation with several people who are not from the town I live in and I used to think it was me and not through lack of trying. I once suggested a coffee with a colleague O got on well with and was just ignored. Having said this people are friendly to speak to in shops or at bus stops and I have nice neighbours.

I've made friends with people not from my town and have joined social groups. I'm also in touch with friends who go way back. I like time on my own but can be sociable so I am happy enough

@Freefie

He does sound interesting.

I have thought a lot about this recently: people have extremely different needs in their friendships and radically different ideas about what constitutes a good friendship. I didn’t fully understand how much so until I started reading Mumsnet tbh.

I think in the same way that we are now starting to have a much better understanding of mental health and how things like neurodiversity affect our relationships we need to think much more carefully about this.

People come unstuck a lot because they don’t state what their needs are of a friendship: they take as read that if they want someone they can speak to 12 times a day the other person also wants it. When in fact it’s a lot more complicated than that.

We are always being told how important it is to communicate clearly in our romantic and family relationships but not in our platonic friendships.

@askingforfriendz

I live in a place where people who have grown up here aren't really open to making friends. This may have been different if I'd had children and met people through kids.

To be honest this is one of the main reasons I am reluctant to ever move out of London. I can’t deal with a place where you are treated as an outsider simply because you weren’t born somewhere.

Even the medium sized town I grew up in was pretty stifling like that: if you hadn’t known someone since primary school you weren’t “one of us”.

OK maybe standard isn’t right. My point is it’s much more understandable for a woman born 80 years ago than one who has lived through feminism. As most of these posters have.

As has already been pointed out, this is laughable.
I mean, aside from the actual historic facts, all this nonsense about 'my own little family' / my Mum being my best friend / not being able to do anything at the weekend because you need 'family time' for 48 hours every week has only appeared in the last few years. I personally only see it on here, although I concede it may ell be on other forums or platforms.

However, @Thepeopleversuswork 's posts at 7.28, 7.38, and 9.00 this morning are all really good points. Well said.

@NewName24

I mean, aside from the actual historic facts, all this nonsense about 'my own little family' / my Mum being my best friend / not being able to do anything at the weekend because you need 'family time' for 48 hours every week has only appeared in the last few years. I personally only see it on here, although I concede it may ell be on other forums or platforms.

Theres definitely been an uptick of this since the pandemic particularly with this new fetishisation of “being an introvert” (which actually is fuck all to do with being an actual introvert it’s people rebadging misanthropy and social anxiety to make themselves sound interesting.)

I think a lot of it is a toxic mix of psychological trauma from the period of enforced social isolation but there’s an unpleasant whiff of anti feminist sentiment in the idea of retreating into the family bubble.

I'm no historian but these women of the past, while being very tied to their families and not having the same opportunities as many modern women, surely most of them would have had the companionship at least of other women around them.

I agree it's fetishisation of introversion and I've definitely seen more of that since 2020. We also fetishize being busy.

Maybe they would yes. To be fair to men I think the “my little family” thing is mainly self inflicted. There are plenty of controlling and bullying men but few of them require their wives to be at home all weekend.

And as you say neither being an introvert or being busy means you can’t have friends outside the family.

What a load of patronising bollocks. Can your high horse hold you and your myriad of friends?

Laughing at women who have no/very few friends and "small" lives doesn't make you enlightened or a feminist.

Assuming most of it is self inflicted is akin to what was she wearing and how much did she have to drink. Shit happens. Just because it didn't happen to you doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Being smug about it is not a good look.

The not being open to new friends thing isn't just about person to person rejection, it affects the bigger picture. I think it makes the wider opportunities for social connection less.

For example when I was friendless the message was to join things. There was this attitude that the opportunities were endless and the world my oyster. In reality I was shocked to find there was only one meetup group in my not a city but not rural town. It covered a really wide area and as I didn't drive it wasn't much use to me. Even if I was driving at that time I didn't see how I could ask someone if they fancied a casual coffee when they didn't live anywhere near me.

I think it's a bit of a spiral, less people seek real life connection, the options get poorer, more people give up on seeking real life connections after finding the opportunities are actually really limited.

And NowImNotDoingIt I don't see anyone laughing at people without friends.

True, it's not laughing it's sneering.

I also cannot agree that hearing more from introverts post-pandemic is “fetishisation”.

For me, as a genuine friendless introvert, lockdown was a form of validation. Suddenly everyone had to live like me, and my god they didn’t half bitch about it. I on the other hand LOVED lockdown, because all demands to be present at things were dropped, to my great relief and delight. Felt like it was finally “my turn”, to have the world come to me and not being constantly forced to bring myself into the world.

And that experience made me less afraid to admit I’m introverted, it made me more able to say “no” to things without using excuses - I will now happily and openly say “I’m just not into social situations or very good at them, and so I won’t come to your bbq.”

And it’s a relief. No more faking it, no more pretence, just be who I really am.

But it’s not about ‘hearing more from introverts’, it’s people misunderstanding introversion and mis-labelling themselves via a kind of social ‘creep’. An introvert is not by definition shy, socially awkward, friendless, or someone who struggles with friendships — an introvert might be all those things, but they’re not because he or she is an introvert.

The analogy I use to describe being an introvert is that I like being social but also need time alone to recharge in the way someone who loves running can't run forever, they also need some rest time so they can run again later.

I think some people see introversion and misanthropy as the same thing and they aren't.

Maybe the meaning is creeping a bit. In my mind introvert means preferring your own company (introspective approach) and extrovert means preferring external company. Neither is exclusive of having downtime alone / being in situations with others.

With this in mind, my own experience is that time spent alone feels like pleasure and it’s a relief when I leave / the people leave. I am returning to my preferred state of introspection and I found it hard work / unpleasant when the people were there. In my case, friendlessness is a product of my introversion because I deliberately avoid situations where there are other people as much as possible in order to spend as much time as possible in the preferred state of solitude. And post-pandemic I am no longer afraid to say this aloud and be frank about it.

🤨

If someone has a lot of mental health stuff going on it's really difficult to reach out to people. Then over the years it kind of just builds, the negative self talk gets worse and you lose opportunities to practise social skills, which you can then become very self conscious about, which then perpetuates the cycle of not feeling like you can socialise effectively... vicious circle really, and the longer it continues the worse it gets.

Trauma can make you fearful of social situations too if it involved mistreatment by other people when you were a child and/or at the important stages of social development as a teen.

It's totally the responsibility of someone as an adult to work on themselves and improve their situation, however I think it's important to recognise that there can often be a lot of sad history to someone's circumstances. A little empathy and attempts at understanding can go a long way in helping people to help themselves.

OP states she doesn’t have many friends and is probably looking for some support then gets lots of replies from smug people implying they are better than her because they do have friends.

Lots of posters blaming putting all of her eggs in the marriage basket when OP didn’t even say she was married.

And this is why a lot of women are rubbish friends and best avoided.
I’ve had this time and time again from women in my life, where they like nothing better than tearing other women down and chucking a bit of salt in the wound.

Introversion being fetishised - I’ve heard it all now 😂, and of course covid HAS to be blamed for everything. People can’t just be different. 🙄.