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.

I don’t think women are all looking for the same things in friendship though

Yes exactly! This is what makes it difficult. Also if you go on a date with a man you know he's interested in some sort of relationship. If I randomly meet another woman I get on with I have no idea if she's interested in forming a friendship. I find lots of women are hugely stretched in terms of time with work, family commitments etc and don't have time for new friends.

You don’t at all come across as ‘untethered or flaky’. You do, however, sound like someone who has very specific ideas about what the ‘right’ friendship looks like — ‘deep’ and involving you taking it in turns to ‘take care of each other in the trenches”, but not too time-consuming at the foundation stage, and in any case you say you don’t have time to ‘grow and take care of’ a new friendship now.

Obviously you’re not wrong to want what you want, but think these beliefs are limiting you.

For a start, that’s a lot to put on one friendship, especially one you’re growing from scratch. In my experience, you get support from different friends and acquaintances at different times, which means there’s always someone, and you’re not putting undue pressure on one friend to be your sole ‘ride or die’ person. For another thing, in order to get one or two friends who will (eventually) be there for you through everything, it’s a numbers game to begin with, like dating. You need to expose yourself to a lot of acquaintances, some of whom may become friends, some of whom may become very close longterm friends. Putting all your eggs in one friendship basket isn’t a good idea, especially at the outset.

And bluntly, good friendships take time to develop. You say you’re exhausted from young children and haven’t the energy now to nurture a friendship, which I get, but I think you should try to think of something you will genuinely enjoy for its own sake, and that will expose you regularly to a bunch of different people. And you should do that now, once a week as a minimum, as a break from your kids. That way, by the time you have the energy to invest in ‘growing’ a friendship, you may have some potential candidates in mind.

I’m a sociable introvert, whose friendships are important to me, but I’ve never got, or tried to get, to the stage where I can ‘recharge’ with even my closest friends. Friends for me are for stimulation. I recharge alone, and o need a lot of alone time. That hasn’t stopped me having close, longtime friendships.

Though I should say that life hasn't helpfully put one of us in the trenches and one of us untrammelled and able to help, at appropriate times. One of my closest friends was hospitalised for a severe eating disorder during Covid, and I got a cancer diagnosis literally while I was on my way (three hour train journey) to sit under her window which was the closest could get to visiting. I needed to seek support from a different friend in that scenario. My hospitalised friend hadn’t got the bandwidth.

TL; DR. Don’t restrict yourself too much.

But literally the only thing you know about a man who has agreed to go on a date with you is that he’s agreed to go on a date with you.

If you go along to, say, a Meet Up group, you’ll know everyone there, of either sex, is open to new friendships.

I have a small group of friends I've known for most of my life and we meet up about every 6 weeks and travel around once a year together.

I'm going out tonight with friends from a hobby group. There are 10 of us in total. I only joined 18 months ago and genuinely ate good friends with them all. It's a good way to meet new people.

Yes but I'd have no idea what people are looking for in potential friends. I generally know what most men are looking for in women..not all obviously but it's an easier situation to read.

I hate it. I am so lonely. I used to have friends.

I absolutely hate my life.

I can’t decide if I like it or not. On the one hand it would feel like yet more demands on my time and bothersome people to have to now add to my life.

On the other hand you only get so much out of say biking or skiing with the kids, they’re not gonna beast themselves down some hideously gnarly trail, so having someone to do spicier shit with could be fun.

Based on my own (distant) dating days, men on a date could be looking for anything from someone to marry and have children with to an ONS, an ego boost date after someone else turned them down, a rebound shag, a post-divorce ‘transitional’ relationship to wean them off their ex, a beard to cover up the fact they’re gay from themselves, an emergency date for their friend’s wedding, someone undemanding to spend a few weeks with before they emigrate etc etc.

If it was inevitably an easier situation to read the Relationships board wouldn’t be crammed with women agonising over why messaging has slowed down, why he never got in touch against after they had sex etc.

Yes but in terms of confidence i would say, when I was single , I had much more confidence in myself as a potential mate rather than as a potential friend.

The thing that I find very striking about these threads (and I genuinely mean this without judgement or smugness), is that a lot of people are more comfortable with pair bonding than they are with friendship bonding.

It makes me wonder why, despite feminism and the huge evidence of the benefits friendships bring, a generation of women still feels more at ease with the idea of building a relationship with a (usually male) significant other than with platonic friends.

There are obviously other factors at play: anxiety, tiredness and lack of time etc. But there undeniably seems to be an emotional “template” which a lot of women have that says, consciously or otherwise, that a relationship with a significant other is safer or more rewarding than one with female friends.

I am obviously a bit of an anomaly here because I really don’t feel like this. Its odd to me because I am not wired this way and given the choice I would always take a small handful of close friends over a bIoke but I also think it’s a bit dangerous.

Because while a close and nurturing pair bonded relationship is obviously a great thing it should never, for anyone, be the be all and end all. Nearly half of all marriages break down, and even when they don’t, the capacity for loneliness and isolation within a marriage is huge.

I wonder why so many people feel like this and whether the epidemic of female loneliness we see is connected to this.

@SeaweedSundress

Based on my own (distant) dating days, men on a date could be looking for anything from someone to marry and have children with to an ONS, an ego boost date after someone else turned them down, a rebound shag, a post-divorce ‘transitional’ relationship to wean them off their ex, a beard to cover up the fact they’re gay from themselves, an emergency date for their friend’s wedding, someone undemanding to spend a few weeks with before they emigrate etc etc

I completely agree. I found the intentions of men I dated far more obtuse and hard to read than potential women friends.

But what are the signs of another woman wanting to be your friend? I know the signs when a man is interested in a romantic relationship....but I don't get it with women. Most women are pleasant and polite...how do you know it's not just ordinary social niceties or someone who wants to be friends with you?

I don’t think there’s a clear distinction between “ordinary social niceness” and “wanting to be a friend”.

I think this is part of the problem: a lot of people go into these interactions expecting a binary outcome: that someone will immediately become a friend or that they won’t. Most of the time the person you are meeting won’t know in the moment whether they want “social niceness” or friendship.

Its not as black and white as this. Proper friendships can take years to build. You are unlikely to know overnight. The trick is to just go with it and enjoy it in the moment.

Worst case scenario you get to spend time meeting someone new. If they don’t become a lifetime friend you have not lost anything. But you won’t make friends at all if you don’t meet people.

I just moved to a new city and found the easiest ways were📧

1)Joining an outdoor swim group
2)Joining a running club through swim group
3)Joining a co-working space

But you have to turn up regularly otherwise it doesn't work

It really bothers me that i dont have a "group" but im a natural introvert and dont have much energy for friends. I'd say I have 3 friends - one I see once or twice a month and the other 2 I see maybe 3 or 4 times a year. Will speak maybe every few weeks but can go quit a while without checking in. Also hang out with my partner's friends maybe once a month and have people I'm friendly with at work but don't meet outside of work.

It’s a really good thread. I have often heard that loneliness is a plague of modern
society and yet I suppose in real life people tend not to want to “ complain” about it in person. I suppose more movement away from towns and cities of birth, growing cities, smaller nuclear families, higher divorce rates etc all contribute.

This thread has been eye-opening to me and I hope a comfort of sorts to people who are feeling this way that, in one sense st least, they are “ not alone.”
It’s also a reminder to those of us who do have people round them to properly cherish that. I’d actually been having a moan about a friend shortly before seeing this thread! Now it doesn’t seem such a big deal. It’s great to see online forums being able to be used in this positive supportive way ( and I can see how for those with social anxiety it might be an easier place to interact). I just hope too much of the bullying from posters ( not this thread too much!) doesn’t become even more off-putting in terms of social anxiety. I do think there are threads where people come to vent/ bully because they feel out of control in their real life and who know they couldn’t get away with that level of nastiness in face to face interactions.

It's not unusual to have no one you could call a friend.

Joining a group doesn't usually lead to friendship, as people meet for the session, then go home to their families.

Most friendships stem from school or work in the past, where there is something in common.

It also depends on your definition of a friend. It can range from someone to have coffee with, someone to have a meal with, or someone with whom you can discuss your, and their, life in detail.

That’s true. I have quite a few people I go to coffee or lunch with or whom I see at dinners etc but what I would discuss with each of them varies quite a bit in terms of really sharing my feelings on all topics. Some I would talk about, say, our holiday, what there is to do in the area, recommend places to stay, say what the Dc were up to, ask how their house move was going, moan about builders etc etc but wouldn’t necessarily discuss worries about my health for instance. That’s two different levels of friendship.

I'd love to find 'my tribe' but they seem to be hiding behind a very big tree or something!

If you have experienced difficulties socialising then you can easily withdraw or just stop trying. I've always had friends but a lot less than I used to. I think people just drift away sometimes, it's not a big fall out just less interest over time. If you don't work and don't like groups how do you meet others to befriend (as if that was easy)?

It requires A LOT more effort and time to choose the person you want to live and have children with.

Maybe that’s why the relationships board are in the state they’re in then 😂

In terms of social anxiety, I'd rather go on a blind date than strike up a conversation at the school gate with a random mum.

I'm not single but if I was I know I'd find it much easier to find a boyfriend than make a new friend.

I also feel that society thinks looking for a romantic relationship is a normal thing to do but when people look for friends, they are viewed with suspicion or pity or seen as sad cases.

That’s an interesting perspective. I think it’s harder not to find, but to maintain a relationship with a partner than with a friend. As a lot of the reason I think friendships fail is because it becomes one-sided or people don’t make the effort.

You have to put a lot of effort to maintain a relationship, especially if you want to progress to marriage etc.

I've seen a few comments saying a partner is easier because ‘I know if they like me’. But a relationship is SO much more than simply liking someone at the outset.

But that’s at the heart of a lot of our problems in my opinion.

Society funnels people into marriages and monogamous relationships with this desperate urgency. Not only are they not suitable for everyone but even if it is right for you a marriage, even a good marriage, is never going to satisfy all of someone’s needs.

We all need people we can talk to outside of our relationships and family and we all need perspective and variety. And nearly half of all marriages fail.

Its really risky and harmful to teach people that once they are in a marriage they can rely on that one person for all their needs. I think this is major factor in the loneliness expressed by so many people on these threads.

They find “the one” (or what they believe to be the one), and they stop using their social muscles. They then invest everything in this relationship.

For our sanity and wellbeing we all need friends outside the family.

Its really risky and harmful to teach people that once they are in a marriage they can rely on that one person for all their needs. I think this is major factor in the loneliness expressed by so many people on these threads.

So true. All my friends from my early 20s who are happily married and in many cases have kids, still kept a decent number of their friendships going. I find it surprising when people on MN saying they don’t have friends anymore because they were too “busy with their family” or partner. I can only imagine they weren’t solid friendships to begin with.

It’s one thing not seeing friends a lot due to physical distance, clashing schedules or difficulties with childcare or whatever and yeah you will lose friendships along the way as you age, but to have all your friendships completely disappear isn’t healthy.