For crying age 50 as I feel left out! Help me toughen up?

[BeethovenNinth]

go gently….am I being pathetic and just need to get a grip?!

group of local mums - known for being cliquey - started asking me to stuff a few years ago. Our kids are friendly. It was nice to be asked; I don’t drink and am probably not quite cool enough. I live in a small community and have some lovely friends but not a huge number and can feel lonely. I was left out of stuff for a time at high school and don’t do well with rejection from friends

I have had a very tough few years, one of my kids is chronically unwell, lots on, my husband has had some issues. Life is v busy and I’m peri menopausal. I therefore work hard to keep myself well. I don’t generally overshare; I am a coper. So it’s not that I am negative - I am generally positive and happy despite my life shit! I’m generally a nice soul, and have nice friends but tend to meet one or two friends for a walk/event.

Gradually I am being excluded from stuff - there is yet another party I haven’t been invited to tonight and I’m sat feeling 15 years old again and horribly sad and left out. I suspect it’s because our kids have slightly drifted meaning this group, as I thought, only asked me as the kids were friends.

they are nice people, I suspect it’s either an oversight or because the friendship isn’t strong enough. But why are some women so mean?! I just don’t behave this way myself and am always careful to make sure no one feels left out.

i want to toughen up and move on. We are on a WhatsApp and I need to protect my mental health and leave with grace I think rather than spend nights feeling sad. They don’t hugely discuss these social nights on this chat now - there is another chat I think and I find out from the kids when stuff is on that I haven’t been invited to.

has anyone been through similar? I don’t want to flounce from the group - maybe just say the kids are growing up and I am trying to trim my WhatsApp groups?

thank you to anyone reading this far!

I’ve been there before and it really hurt. But I had pride and self worth and walked away from them. Instead of thinking I didn’t have them as friends anymore, I thought ‘they don’t get to have me’. I’ve never regretted it. Not once.

Sometimes this can turn out to be a blessing.

OP, it's great you have reflected. Yes from your side it's not nice to feel excluded, but from the other side, it's also not nice to feel you're not someone worth an effort. I lost a friend like this, I noticed it's only me inviting, only me reaching out - if I didn't, I never heard from her. It was very hurtful to feel like I was good enough when I did stuff for her, but not good enough to do the same from her side. Your friends don't know if you're not inviting anybody and organising anything, or you are, but for 'better' friends.

At the very least they are thoughtless. I won’t be invested in a friendship with adult women like that.

I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Someone who only ever socialised on the fringes of their group after they started inviting her to things when their children started hanging out, has never really befriended them or reciprocated invitations (understandably, because she has a shit ton of bad stuff going on, but they don’t know that because she hasn’t told them), and now that their children are no longer close, is no longer so much on anyone’s radar when it comes to party invitations.

That’s not ‘mean’. If you’re having a house party with limited space, are you going to invite your actual friends, or someone who never seemed particularly at ease around you, kept on the fringes of things, and never reciprocated invitations, and whose children no longer hang out with yours?

No one, including the OP, has done anything wrong.