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.

Interesting comment! I guess there's also an element of being invested in a romantic relationship - possessions, children, finances - making it more challenging to disentangle than a friendship without these complicating factors. Meaning standards drop with existing partners and you tolegate behaviour in a way you wouldn't with friends

I don't think there's an answer. People have different things go on in their life's. Things change People can be complicated. Life isn't always logic.

I have had relationships but I find them extremely hard i pressured myself into relationships because that's whats expected especially if you want children. I have never had a long term stable relationship.

I don't have any friends the thought of it scares me.

But it's true. Boob did fix everything 🤣 I miss those days! It was so much easier 🙈

Yes. There's so many who have nothing outside the marriage in terms of social support etc and are blindsided when it turns out not to be what they thought.

Boobs still fix everything.

I have friends. I force myself to, but I do find it hard work.

DP is the one person who gets the real version of me. Everyone else gets an edited version. And I find being that edited version hard work.

I'm not an interesting man. A lot of my interests bore other people to tears. My sense of humour can be quite odd. I'm crap at small talk and general chit chat, so I'm quite quiet and need drawing out of my shell.

Most people, if they get the full unvarnished me, end up drifting away. They get a bored look in their eyes, start to glaze over. Even my best friends get a slight edit, and they're nearly as weird as me. DD gets one as well.

DP, and one previous girlfriend are the only ones who don't. The more of me I revealed, the more DP got drawn in, and the easier it became to be in her company.

Being in a room with people is effort. That effort varies based on the person, how much I have to edit myself in their company.

Being in a room with DP is always effortless.

As I said, I have friends, I get on with my colleagues. People like me. That's because I'm willing to put in the effort, I think the end result is worth it.

I'd imagine there are people out there who either aren't capable of maintaining that edited version of them, or just don't see the point of it. So they have no friends. They've still managed to find that person who's effortless though.

That seems like a rather cold reason to have friends - as insurance in case your entire family dies or leaves you. But I imagine I'd be quite happy alone. Or perhaps I'd join a knitting group and try to make some friends.

@OtterlyAstounding

This really strikes a chord with me. I think that's a big factor. Friendships are so much more ambiguous and complicated.

I don't agree with this at all.

I have found historically romantic relationships far more ambiguous than friendships. In the past I've had loads of quasi-romantic relationships (looking back I was often being used, to be blunt) with blokes who didn't really want to commit or didn't know what they wanted, but enjoyed the attention/sex or just wanted friendship that went slightly beyond.

Because the whole point of a romantic relationship is it should be defined. Whereas I don't think a friendship has to be.

I don't understand why friendship should be subject to rules about status in the same way? People seem very dogmatic about how they categorise friends: ie they're not a proper friend unless you can call them at 3am and they have to return calls within an hour etc etc.

Like most people I have concentric circles of friendship: I have three or four proper ride-or-die friends: people I could call in the middle of the night if I was having a meltdown. Then another layer people who I cherish a lot and message but maybe don't see very often but I know they have my back. Then a wider circle of colleagues and friends-of-friends who I like a lot and socialise with sometimes but I wouldn't expect them to come to my funeral. And finally an outer layer of acquaintances with whom I have a friendly relationship but wouldn't expect to see again if they moved house.

I'm very relaxed about the idea that the borders between these circles are porous and some people move in and out, and that sometimes this is ambiguous. People move away, they get married, they change jobs and have kids and sometimes this changes the frequency of contact and that's OK with me. I don't take it personally and think they like me less. And I don't understand why people feel the need to name and pigeonhole people and have to be so inflexible about the definitions.

As always @Thepeopleversuswork speaks for me!

I think this is a factor too. My parents were also very sociable and for all their other faults I am grateful that they instilled in me the importance of having a network external to the family.

I suppose it is similar to the boob memes.

There have been times where we’ve not been able to be physically intimate, it’s not been a problem as it’s sex isn’t always about the physical.

I really do think that many of the vile cliquey school mums posters are either ND or living out their view of life under an immature emotional filter where they are always the victim of others

They simply cannot understand that people choose their own friends and have this raging entitlement and have to make a perfectly normal mum going for a walk or seeing her mates all about them

There was a bonkers thread on here where a mum ran across the playground/ school field to join her friends and the poster who had met this person once 2 years previously raged that she was vile, ignoring her etc
Batshit

Agree. The " cliques' are just friends who have bothered to put in effort.
Misogynist term.
A lot of closeted misogyny on this thread.

Fair enough, you don't find it resonates with you. But I do. And plenty of posters on this thread have said they find romantic relationships easier to navigate than platonic. So perhaps that's just differences in personality?

I struggle with social subtleties, and was badly ostracised and bullied growing up, so I don't have a lot of confidence around knowing whether a friend wants to see me, or whether I'm being a bore, or too intense, or too distant. I also find that when I get stressed I turn into a hermit - not great for maintaining a friendship, but not something that affects my romantic relationship.

Anyway, perhaps you just need to accept that while some people don't mind a lack of definition and clarity, other people require that to thrive in relationships.

Also, as Vimes said up-thread - he doesn't need to edit himself with his DP, but does with everyone else, and that's something I feel too. I'm just me with DH, but with everyone else in the world I'm being a curated, limited, self-conscious version of me. Trying to navigate friendships holds little appeal, compared to that freedom and total acceptance.

In my mind if you have got to the stage of going for a meal, they are friends.

An acquaintance is someone whose name you know and to whom you would nod in the street, and maybe say 'hi', or even chat for two minutes, but whom definitely don't know well enough to suggest meeting up with.

But if I went for a meal with someone and thought they were my friend, but found out (somehow) they only thought of me as an acquaintance, I would just die of embarrassment.

It's probably harder to make genuine friends because alot of friendships are situational rather than organic.

I see so many mumsnet posts about people questioning their 'friendships' and think at best some of these are only what I would consider acquaintances by proximity.

True friendships have shared values and interests, and I think it can be harder to prioritise yourself if you are a parent and/or working, to do activities where you are likely to meet people you have things in common with, and have spare time to nurture those friendships.

And having few friends may just be that those people have firm boundaries, unfortunately there are plenty of toxic people in the world,

So you're saying that there are never any misfits who are bullied or excluded, in childhood or adulthood, for being a bit weird, different, or awkward? They must all just be misogynists?

Well fair enough whatever works for you both. It did just make me chuckle 😂

Mumsnet is the most bizarre place at times, not owning a toilet brush, not opening the door at night (or sometimes at all), the pearl clutching at people being interested in them and asking slightly personal questions. And then the victim blaming of anyone subjected to domestic abuse 'i would never put up with that' or when partners/husbands cheat, 'mine DH would never do that' - I wonder how many name change when they do.

I do take threads on here with a pinch of salt but there is nowt as queer as folk as they say. I have no desire to make friends on the school run, purely because I'm a busy single mum who has a wonderful group of friends and my village has been built over many years. I'm not adverse to making new friends but wouldn't actively find them on the school run, if someone found me aloof for that reason then I'd be okay with it.

@RosaNovella

They simply cannot understand that people choose their own friends and have this raging entitlement and have to make a perfectly normal mum going for a walk or seeing her mates all about them

Yes! But how is someone as thin-skinned and suspicious as this able to attract a life partner? This is at the core of what I'm getting at.

People who burst into tears or go into a years-long sulk because someone hasn't talked to them at the school gates one morning seem unlikely to have the emotional resilience to manage the cut and thrust of a committed relationship involving sex, intimacy and all the rest of it.

To be really cynical, most men run a mile at the sight of that sort of petulant, febrile behaviour in someone they are dating. How is it that women like this (and apologies again but it is always women) have not scared off their own life partners? And how have they managed to sustain and build a long term relationship?

I do find it genuinely baffling that people who are so socially dysfunctional have sustained intimate relationships and families...

There are misfits and people do get bullied (although the school gate mums threads vastly amplify this).

The point a lot of people are missing is: these misfits and people who get excluded seem to be able to manage committed intimate relationships. So they can't be as isolated and emotionally vulnerable as they seem to portray themselves.

I'd join the knitting group. And the ramblers group. And the garden club. And the wine tasting class. And the yoga class. And the book club. And everything else I could manage to fit in.

But I wouldn't be able to make friends at any of them.

There is a world of difference between knowing how to interact in a group in a class or club or semi-formal setting, and knowing how to make friends. How on earth do you cross that invisible line between 'people who attend the same group' and 'friends'?

No. But I do think the word ' clique' is overused. In many cases, the OP will say that women ignored her by chatting to another women. That's friendship. Not cliques.

As for being different, I am a brown woman who went to school in an all white area in the 80s. There was bullying. I don't extrapolate that to ' all women are bitches" though.

I’ve been thinking about this. I think a lot of women only want friendships where there’s no difficult or issues.
DH was very unwell 10 years ago and nearly died. We both lost female friends (he has always had a few female friends). I know people who have been divorced where friends have disappeared, not the men though.

It’s the internet. A lot of people on these boards will be the ones who struggle with real life interactions and prefer interacting online. (obviously not all and not even the majority). So it’s a bit of self-selection on these threads.