If you don't really have many friends, do you feel OK about it?

[Prendetew]

I'm 39 and don't really have any close friends that live near to me.

I have a couple of old friends from uni I see once a year or so, a few mum acquaintances that live nearby and people I'll casually chat to at gym etc

Most of the time I'm OK with this setup. I don't really have time for a social life anyway. I have a busy job and do condensed hours, 5 days in 4,plus a young DC and DH so weekends are often about family time, visiting family, with the odd gym class here and there.

Now and again, I do wonder why I don't have close friends and beat myself up about it. I had various 10 years ago but they all feel away due to moving/ me getting more boundaries and being pickier/ lives diverging

I've made an effort to join gym, be chatty with other mums but I just don't want to force anything

Im the same, I have some couple friends with my dh and we see those. I have a few friends that maybe once or twice a year I see for a coffee but in reality I spend all my time with my dh. I’m quite content though and happy in little world as it is at the moment

This is so relatable, sometimes it bothers me and other times im not phased at all too... two of the friends I met whilst my children were young moved away. Tho we stil msg. Since that I've met a few people ..I find the single friend doesn't understand my need to want to spend time with my family on weekends (not saying this is the case for other singletons) but she gets quite funny with me if i cant make a date and sulks also spends hours round my house and is quite needy so im trying to drift away a bit. And the other ones I've got that were close used and abused me and just wanted free childcare. I wonder why its so hard to find simular like minded people? ! My mum always says its hard to have a good friend and solid relationship.... most people have one or the other and definitely relate to this.

I wonder if some people set the bar too high for friends. This dark talk of others not making plans or having to be entirely loyal to you at all times. Like those threads when an op isn’t invited to something and others leap to say cut the friend off for good that’s it.

Adult friendships aren’t like that. Friends are to enhance your life and have fun with. Likely they are busy with other stuff going on too and sometimes will fall short. Think if your standards are too high no one can actually meet them. It’s different to the intense friendships of first 25 odd years of life.

I moved about four years ago leaving behind my network. I am happy I moved but I do miss my friends, especially my closest one who I would see at least twice a week. She has made no effort to visit me and when I go back there she doesn’t go out of her way to meet up either (we normally meet for breakfast as a group after we dropped our kids at school but they are now grown and she says breakfast is too early, but that’s when the rest want to do it). Kinda hurtful.
I do now live closer to a couple older friends, I see them a couple times a month.
I’m a widow since I was in my 40s and I do find that so many of my friends do a lot of couple socialising so I’m not included. I don’t think they even consciously realise this, it just doesn’t cross their minds to ask me. So it’s usually me who organises anything which was ok when I lived close by but can’t do it now I’ve moved. I did initially do workshops and met a couple people walking our dogs but it hasn’t led to anything.
So day to day I’m fine - I enjoy my own company. But once in a while I realise the only other adult I’ve spoken to for a few days is the Tesco delivery guy.

I don’t have a huge number of individual friends but I’m active in a number of friend groups. I absolutely love it this way. I used to have additional very intense one on one friendships but I completely grew out of them as they started to become problematic for me so I let some go.

I still have some very close friends but we very much live our own lives and add to each others lives when we are in touch which gets organised in advance as we are all busy.

I've struggled with maintaining friendships all my life. Then I met someone through work - lovely person, I thought we really clicked. But after a while she began to ghost me and I've no idea why. Her penultimate message to me was a request for a favour, followed by a half hearted 'how are you sorry for being such a crap friend'. I did the favour, didn't reply to the 'crap friend' comment and we haven't been in touch since - that was 2 years ago. I was quite devastated at the time. I've given up with friendships now. It's too hard. I strongly suspect I'm ND.