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 agree. Nobody would resent a quick conversation like that at the end of a performance. If they did, then they'd be unreasonably uptight. However, before a performance once, person next to me was getting more and more intrusive with questioning, wanting to know about my job and details that I didn't want to reveal. Was so relieved when the curtsin rose.

I do agree with this, despite being an introvert! I enjoy the little, fleeting moments with random strangers throughout the day - an older lady complimenting a jumper I've knitted in the supermarket queue and then chatting about knitting for a few minutes, making faces at a toddler in a pushchair at a cafe, saying hi to my children's teachers if I run into them and chatting for a moment if they strike up conversation, or helping someone with getting an item off a high shelf in a shop. It's lovely, and requires so little energy and effort compared to maintaining a friendship!

@Thepeopleversuswork
What you are describing is not Introversion, its severe social anxiety
Im an introvert, I speak to people, socialise but I like plenty of downtime alone

You are coming across as a bit of an insensitive arse to keep calling out introversion like its a massive fault when actually its social anxiety that you are referring to
Its a horrible condition and people really suffer so be mindful

For the same reason, one assumes that not everyone obeys NO LITTERING signs, or is quiet at the theatre or lets passengers getting off the tube get off first before getting on? Obviously, people should and most people do, but some people don’t. We live in that world. Sniping about what people should do, or what the world would be like if everyone behaved like you is pointless. All you can control is how you behave yourself.

@SixtySomething Read with interest your post on school gate. When DS1 started school many yrs ago most children in reception seemed to have older siblings whose mothers already knew each other. No doubt there were other eldest children but I didn't come across them. The playground was filled with women standing in groups, looking for all the world like best friends. It wasn't until my DCs were well through primary that I became friends, or acqaintances, for a time, with one of the mothers who had always given the impression of being 'right in there'. To my astonishment it wasn't like that. The politics, the backstabbing, the manipulation, the cliques ..... incredible, and more like what you find in books rather than IRL. Also a lot of the behaviour she described just reminded me of my own time in primary school. She seemed always to be worked up over something someone at the school gate had said or done. While I enjoyed this from a distance in a soap opera sort of way, I knew then I hadn't missed anything by not being in the midst of all that.

The word ‘quick’ being the operative word.

I don’t mind the quick interactions but strangers wanting to turn it into a full on conversation even more so when I’ve finally have a moment to myself, just sat down on a bench makes me internally sigh. I’m still polite but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find it irksome and I’m not introverted.

Sometimes I don’t mind longer conversations but I need the bandwidth for them. I have to wear the big over-ear headphones to be left alone.

If someone is asking for help I don’t mind or I’ll offer help to someone if they look like they are struggling but more often I rather be left alone barring emergency situations.

It's very hard to know if someone is a friend rather than an acquaintance. Just because you think someone is your friend, doesn't mean that they think that you are theirs. Unlike a partner, there isn't a way to know if you are at the same friendship level as each other or a way to signal this. You can hardly ask each other where do you see me on a level between acquaintance and bestie?

But you realise that this is one person's experience, told to you at second hand? DS attended three primaries in two countries. At the first, a village primary where almost everyone had known one another since childhood, it wasn't particularly friendly because people just weren't used to strangers and weren't open to making new friends, but it wasn't personal and I just got on with my life and made friends at work. No drama. They were just people who'd known one another since primary school.

At the other two schools, despite DS arriving mid-year aged 7 and 9, I made both nice acquaintances and some good friends among the other parents -- in both cases completely drama-free. No 'clques', manipulation, power-play, backstabbing. I'm still in regular touch with friends from the school he attended for two years, and I see the friend group from his final primary all the time, although the children are all mid-teens and scattered at different schools. They came here for dinner last weekend.

I'm sure friendship drama does take place in playground friendships, but I think it's a tiny minority of cases, probably involving not very happy or well-adjusted people.

I know! That’s why I put the word “introvert” into a quote. The word is grotesquely overused.

I know! That’s why I put the word “introvert” into a quote. The word is grotesquely overused.

Right, I'll bite...

I think the fact DH and I have autistic traits has meant we were drawn to each other and "get" each other. This isn't so easy to do with friendships.

I have always found it hard to maintain a friendship. I have one friend I see regularly. We have a lot in common but we both have stressful lives as parents. Good support to each other. Other than this, I don't keep in touch with friends I made in uni years ago. In my 40s now, and having chronic health issues means getting opportunities are few and far between.

DH is my best friend. He just understands me and I him.

And yes, I find people stressful. I am an introvert and can only handle people in small doses.

Oh yes this is something that has affected me in the past. I valued more of a friendship than the other party. Has happened to me several times and I have just had enough now.

I just mainly keep to myself. The one friend I do have I met through my youngest child. Her son attended the same primary but has since moved. The children are good friends so we have ended up being good friends too. Four years so far and I haven't effed up the friendship. Doing good so far🙌

I understand that… but I don’t really understand why people need to categorise people in these neat little boxes.

Why can’t you just be content to spend time with someone and enjoy their company without the need to define the status of the relationship?

In the final analysis they are someone whose company you enjoy. Does it really matter which side of the friend vs acquaintance line they sit on?

This is the bit I don’t get.

What utter nonsense🤣

Tbh I think we all have some autistic traits.

I’m like you. I think making friends is hard but much much much easier than finding a life partner.

Perhaps, because that is what you have done?

You keep saying making friends and having friends but now are asking why people have to have labels when unless I have missed it you haven’t said that you put acquaintances as the same as friends..

Sorry I don’t understand what you are trying to say.

I don't know, it sounds plausible to me.

I'm the opposite. No issue making friends, but no luck on the life partner.

Don't you think we would realise our partners only wanted our bodies? Don't you think we'd have left them?

Well, and that even if you want friends and the randomer to whom you’ve just introduced yourself also wants friends, it’s not a forgone conclusion you will automatically become friends with one another! Friendship involves way more than just filling a gap with the nearest person.

Exactly my thought when reading that. Biology??? You don't need relationship for conception.

There are a lot of posters on here in absolutely horrible relationships that they won't leave.