AIBU to wonder why many posters find it harder to make friends than find a life partner?

[Thepeopleversuswork]

I'm baffled at the number of people on Mumsnet who struggle with the most basic social interactions and find making friends to be traumatic, but have found a life partner to settle down and have kids with.

A significant number of posters on here struggle with friendship or social interaction to various degrees, manifested in the extreme in the declarations that they "hate people", "don't want new friends", find friends to be too much "drama" and only want to spend time with their families. There is a classic of the genre running at the moment in which an OP has taken umbrage at a coworker making fairly mild friendly overtures to her as a gross invasion of her privacy. (But admits that she met her partner at work?) Or just at the milder end of the spectrum the huge amount of anxiety which making new friends seems to generate.

I genuinely don't understand why people who have managed to find an intimate relationship in which to have children can find the prospect of exchanging words outside the school gate or sending a text to a coworker so traumatic.

I found attracting a partner and building a relationship to be a far more fraught and involved process than making friends: there's so much more to lose, so much more vulnerability needed and the prospect of loss of face and self-esteem in the process of dating is far greater than in making friends. But texting someone (platonically) to ask if they want to have a coffee seems to spiral posters into paroxysms of self-doubt. The "school mum" threads are a whole sub-genre in their own right, where the paranoia and suspicion is often seriously irrational.

Why do people find it relatively easy to find a partner but finding friends so difficult? From my perspective it should be the other way around.

I suppose I found it easier because (to me at least) there is a clear roadmap on what a romantic relationship is. I knew what red flags to avoid and what I wanted the future to be like.

In friendships I ended up giving up, I often would realise that my time/money/help only ever went one way, and when I was on the rare occasion in need of help, that the friendships would suddenly go quiet. It was easier to spot behaviour that I shouldn't pit up with in a romantic relationship.

Perhaps I might be more likely to attract users rather than friends because of my social abilities.

It does seem to be quite common! Much more than I realised. And thank you - it definitely has! ❤

Happier at home away from people. Can't stand them

What, everybody? You are also 'people', I assume.

I assume you can't stand yourself, then?

What makes you so different

This kind of reply is exactly why I hate people

Absolute classic response. Ignorant

But you ARE people.

So what makes you so superior?

Ffs not superior but I've been abused, bullied, beaten up, raped, you name it so of course I hate people!!

How is it ignorant? Genuinely?

You say you hate people and yet you are also a person who is choosing to interact with other people on this website.

I don’t think it’s “ignorant” to wonder about the kind of contradiction

I mean, this is a little silly. Obviously people don't get annoyed by themselves the way they do by others, they aren't wary of themselves, or vulnerable to themselves, or infuriating to themselves, etc.

But to give an analogy, I'd guess it's probably similar to the way you can't tickle yourself. Or the way hearing yourself chewing doesn't drive you crazy, but hearing other people do it can.

I am sorry you have been abused so badly, but strangers on the net can't be expected to know that. Obviously we are ignorant of your life.

I think you need therapy.

It's the same question my main abuser has asked me many times, "but you're a person".
Also, my mum, best friend and brother also say they hate people. They have also been through a heck of a lot of trauma in their lives. I have nightmares to this day about things people did to me as a child. I have been dis trusting of everyone since a child. I haven't been able to achieve anything much due to severe depression, social anxiety, severe low self esteem and zero confidence from abuse, so if you still can't understand why I don't like people, well, I don't know what else to say really

Doesn't work.

But the PP is a person the same as anyone else. If she's going to claim she hates everyone then I don't think it's silly to ask what makes her so different from all the people she claims to despise.

That's a shame it hasn't worked for you - it's not my experience of therapy.

I don't despise everyone. There are some very nice people and I have some good friends. But in general, no, I don't like people

Even if the OP has got a lot of people's backs up, it's been really interesting for me to hear people's experiences of friendship and romantic relationships and how easy/difficult they are.

I've realised I have quite a strong association from my late childhood and early teen years that romantic success comes with being popular, and so I associate romantic success with having social skills to a degree at least. So women who don't feel comfortable with friendships and navigating social relationships but are happy to initiate romantic/sexual conversations are fascinating to me - that seems very confident and I wish I had that. Fear of rejection is very strong for me in that domain.

I was always pretty as a teen but that didn't seem to help (although I was also small and flat chested and that was definitely a factor in not being popular with boys), but I was also shy, quiet and studious and although I had a small group of friends I definitely wasn't Miss Popularity, so I never had a boyfriend. But as I got into older teen years and went to 6th form I made a new circle of friends, and got my first boyfriend - so to me having friends and a social life were connected to having a romantic relationship. I was never bad at social skills exactly, just more introverted and quiet, but as I went through university and got older I got much better at social situations and friendships, but when a relationship ended the social connections often also drifted away because they were often connected to the now ex-boyfriend.

I think now, being a lot older and having had all kinds of life experiences, including moving countries and having to make new friends, career changing, a long-term relationship end, I am much more confident about making friends - I don't think it's easy and it does depend on being in circumstances where you can meet like-minded people, and then be able to turn at least some of those new acquaintances into friendships over time. I also don't have hugely high expectations of friendships, they're a lot about proximity and repeated connections for me as well as shared interests and compatibility.

Although I still definitely find the idea of openly initiating something romantic with a new person very daunting and I don't think I could make the first move, I do have more confidence in navigating romantic cues and that comes from being more socially confident in general now, so the two things are connected for me.

I wish it had worked for me. I have tried so many different types of therapy. I guess I'm just unfixable :(

Really? I'm not sure why you'd think something would make her different, aside from the fact that she's in control of herself, and so doesn't have to worry about hurting, irritating, frightening, boring, or abusing herself, or any other thing. She also doesn't have personality clashes with herself, or anything else like that.

Who you are is all you've ever known, and it's you, and it's very different to how you experience people external to yourself.

In fact, quite often people don't get on with people who are too similar to themselves, because when seen in another person, their own behaviour is intolerable for some reason. But in themselves, it's not even noticed by them.

I thought these things would be obvious?

I don't know if 'fixable' or being 'fixed' is the best thing to strive for, tbh. What about - there are always ways we can help to make our lives a bit better? I hope you find ways to feel more comfortable and thrive. Bon courage.

But also if you stay married then you move with that person, often your. Younger friend group gets left behind and it's difficult to recreate that .

Thank you ❤️

I think mainly OP, it's society that's changed and that's had an effect on people's outlook and inner world. But as others have said, breakdown of community etc is a big part of it. I guess depending on experiences, temperament and opportunity then we will respond differently to friendships etc within those new confines. The social structures affect the psychology. It's so much easier to opt out/be excluded now than it ever was before and people build their own narratives around that, good or bad etc.