To not be interested in making friends?

[TheClanoftheDook]

This is something I genuinely don’t like about myself but can’t seem to find it in me to change it.

I turned 40 a couple of months ago and it has highlighted to me that I have hardly any friends. I have a brilliant husband, two kids, parents and siblings who I am close to. But no friends really. Not good friends anyway.

I am quite a socially awkward person and I find maintaining friendships to be quite difficult, in truth. I find it all very stressful. I work a lot, or I’m with my kids/husband. I just can’t seem to muster the energy or enthusiasm to get out there and start making friends but I wish that I wasn’t like that.

I wish I was one of those people who was always busy and surrounded by great friends but I am not. My tolerance levels are pretty low, I feel like I don’t really have much to say for myself.

I get on well with people when I meet them. Work colleagues etc. I can develop basic relationships and have a laugh with people etc but I feel myself growing cold about it all as we start to grow closer. It’s like I just can’t be bothered any more.

I wasn’t like this before. I had loads of friends at Uni (who just drifted over time as we all got careers/married/kids etc).

I just feel a bit sad about it.

Well, if you’re sad about it, do something about it — have therapy, and try to figure out what makes you grow ‘cold’ as you start to grow close to anyone. Are you pre-emptively rejecting them before they can reject you, for instance? Why do you feel you don’t have much to say for yourself? If you had the social skills to meet, date, marry and maintain a relationship with your DH, then you have them to make and keep friends. If, that is, you want to.

The issue with your close group is parents die, children get their own lives, sometimes marriages end.

Yeah. I know. It’s not ideal.

I don’t have much to say for myself because…all I do is work and parent, I suppose…

I think it's worth figuring out whether you're genuinely lonely and wishing for friendships or if you feel this way because you think we're "meant to" have groups of friends who we spend a lot of time with.

If you're mostly satisfied with your life the way it is, I wouldn't bother making changes to it. But if a friendship group is something you long for, maybe joining a hobby group of some kind is the way to go.

Personally, I don't have many friends but I'm happy with that. I'm not massively outgoing or extroverted and find being around lots of people very draining. I get enough social interaction at work! Extrovert types might find my life lonely, however, and that's fine. We're all different and we all have to find what is right for ourselves. There's no one right way to live.

I feel like I’m happy enough, if a bit lonely sometimes.

I worry I’ll regret it later on I suppose.

Could have written this myself
I'm an introvert, on the spectrum, very happily married and work a lot in a very 'peopley ' job. Plus I have 2 teens, all this combined means that any free time I do get, I want to lie silently in a bubble bath!
A more extroverted person would be lonely and bored with my lack of proper social time, but I don't have the energy or motivation to seek friendships.

If you're worried you might need/want friends in the future, you can make them at that point. I wouldn't worry.