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 have struggled to maintain friendships. I've always been an outsider. I'm not different to others I just need to feel totally comfortable before I allow others in. It led to me having a relationship of convenience where I ended up marrying and having my children because I thought no one else would have me. It made me miserable. Still no friends and a relationship that I was only in because I thought it could be worse. I left. Then my current partner came along. He's absolutely fantastic. I can't believe how lucky I am to have finally found my person at 40! I have the best partner, my children are wonderful but you know what, I still only have acquaintances and not friends. I don't care though. My important people are around me within my home and extended family. I've finally found me! I'd rather be here right now than where I was 20yrs ago.

But if you can put yourself out there to find a partner either whom you’re genuinely happy, you can do it to find friends. It’s the same skill set.

I disagree. We met through work. An otherwise toxic environment where you didnt really want an acquaintance let alone a friend. I didn't put myself out there. I wasn't looking. It just happened.

That's why you get friendship benches and we're all invited to sit there if we'd be happy to talk to anyone sharing the bench.

I agree. Relationships can just happen. I never even heard the term put yourself out there until internet dating became so huge.

I think this is true.

But I’ve met some of my closest friends through work, sometimes also in otherwise ghastly environments. I wasn’t looking either. You just meet people you gel with, sometimes when you least expect them, but it still requires you to stop and talk to someone in the corridor, rather than looking away, walking off and shutting your office door. No romantic partner or potential friend is going to find you if you never lift your eyes away from your screen, and bolt off home with your eyes on the ground till you get to the bus stop.

Well, in that thread we could certainly judge the OP from her multiple posts, their tone/tenor and her fairly comprehensive and repeated description of the situation and interactions!

Ah.

I would assume it's because the person has become embittered after many negative experiences with people. It makes sense. If one's experiences with dogs have been mostly extremely negative and only occasionally neutral or positive, it seems natural that one wouldn't like dogs, for instance.

That's true, but it isn't quite the same thing. And it's definitely possible to dislike or be wary of people and not yourself, without considering yourself different somehow.

It's like saying 'I hate men' – it's a very generalised statement. Most people who say that don't hate ALL men, and they may not even HATE men, they just feel a dislike and wariness towards men as a demographic due to past experience.

Misogynist tripe. And incorrect tripe - every survey shows it’s men who are usually drop their friends and call their wife their only friend. That’s why men suffer much more loneliness (sans another woman) when a marriage breaks down. They put all their eggs in the one basket, as if were.

Feminism has precisely fuck all to do with female friendship dynamics. And if we’re generalising, men are much less likely to have meaningful friends who they can do more than banter with.

I think it’s quite obvious why a lot of women find it easier to find/ keep a partner than friends. At least when they’re young and opportunities to meet partners are greater. In a straight relationship a man often initiates interest, and it’s usually pretty unambiguous. Once a relationship becomes ‘official’ then the expectation is that you are each other’s ’main person’ in life. With friends it’s anything but. The rules are subtler, especially in group situations. You can’t often be sure if someone is looking for a friend or is just being polite/ seeing you as an acquaintance.

Although it definitely does happen, I really don’t think it’s all about women losing their social skills as they only want to be in a bubble with their man. Many women are just fucking shy!

This is just the introvert world, which technology has spiralled into a completely different direction.

Extroverts are just carrying on as normal…

YANBU for asking. I struggle to make friends. Between 2021 and 2026 I've lived in three totally different areas of the UK. I left all my friends when I moved away. We are still in contact, but I don't get to see them much.

DH and I first moved to a smalls semi rural town in the Southwest. It was genuinely cliquey. Everybody was related to each other by blood or by marriage, and as someone non-white, it was like traveling back in time in some ways. I did make a couple of "friends" while I was there, and we met up quite a lot. The quotation marks are because they stopped responding to messages as soon as I moved.

We now live in the midlands. I do attend women's social meet ups, and I'm in a local women's group chat and have chatted to a few people. But nothing has stuck (yet). I took a break for a while because my confidence dipped when i realised it's been two years and I don't have any local friends.

My DD is a teen now, and one big thing I've noticed is that lots of parents don't have any interest making friends with other mums/dads if their children aren't similar ages, which I'm sure contributes in some way. Whereas I'm happy to make friends for myself x

I agree, I found it easy to make friends at the school gate (of different schools) and didn’t encounter any of the issues you refer to - but also have prioritised and maintained long standing friendships.

I’m happy though when there are examples of relationships on here (just wish there were more!) which are really positive and evenly balanced, role modelling gender equality to their DC, as well as supporting each other’s hobbies and friendships.

The insular focus on just your partner I think has got worse. It really isolates and disadvantages women IMO, it depresses me. So many examples on here where the rug is pulled and there is no financial independence, no support network, sometimes not even a good friend to talk to IRL.

Is this a joke post? The highest number of violent attacks are committed by men against other men. Clean out your own house before you start advising other people on how to clean out theirs.

Do friendship benches exist outside of schools then? I didn’t know.

I wish the extroverts would understand that invading the spaces of others because they want to chat and being unable to read the signs that people don’t want to engage isn’t being ‘extroverted’, it’s being selfish.

Technology allows us to wear headphones, looking at our phones and yet still they come along, convinced that everyone on their own is just waiting to have an inane conversation with a random person 🤣

And actually tech has allowed people to have friendships even if they are too busy or shy to meet up

Some people aren’t ’embittered’. They just don’t want to know. Not everyone is needy. Some can function with and without friends quite happily. It’s more about personality than being bitter.

I am an only child so was used to playing and spending time on my own so that, coupled with my AuDHD has meant I am happy in my own company for the majority of the time.

Same with dogs. I don’t have a dog because I don’t really like most of them. I have never had a negative experience with one.

Oh, of course. As I've said, I'm not a person who's interested in friends, and I'm happiest with my own company too, so I can understand that.

But expressing hatred towards people, having suffered abuse, generally indicates a level of (justified) embitterment, imo.

Friendship benches for adults? Never seen that. I don't want that, thanks!
I don't approach strangers with headphones or reading, that would be weird. Does that usually happen?

But I did chat to people at the school gates- just hello goodbye chat- and welcome anyone new who joins office/book club/any group activity- again, just hello, my name is X, what's yours chat. Judging by the new crop of posts that have sprung up over night on MN, I think many people want that rather than be ignored.

People do that a lot. After reading another thread on here I realised that it often comes from an inherently selfish place. That has made it much easier not to be drawn in to a conversation for the sake of politeness.

Actually I think they should designate areas on trains for people who want to chat with strangers!