Can anyone else just not be bothered with friendship anymore?

[Dothisdothat23]

I'm fortunate to have a good relationship with my family, a loving partner and my pets, but I've always believed it's important to have your own friendships.

I have casual friends/acquaintances but I'm done striving for anything more now. Life is busy for people, that I understand and I'm certainly not expecting daily conversations, weekly meetups or anything of the sort, but I'm getting absolute breadcrumbs.

I am a more reserved personality, that does not mean I don't talk, I don't have a sense of humour or anything. I'm interested in people, I try to have a laugh, I share things about myself, I'm reliable and on time, but I'm just never the one they're drawn to.

I feel like you've got to have some sort of show-stopping personality to have close friends, and I honestly can't be bothered anymore. I have my own interests and hobbies, if I'm boring then so be it. I feel like I'm down to earth, I don't brag, but I'm not constantly negative either. It constantly feels like friendship is very transactional and conditional, people can only be bothered with what's directly in front of them and what's the easiest for them.

I've given up with the people who frequently don't reply, who never initiate first and who are always busy, I'm fed up of not being valued and getting nothing back. Anyone else? Eventually il try a new club or something, but i just feel burned out from it all atm.

Oh my gosh- I really, really relate to this.

My best friend has become so flaky and boring. She used to be such a dynamic, funny, interesting person and since menopause I feel like she's become this grey cardboard shell of herself.

Dont get me wrong, I get it can be hard and I have been very empathetic/supportive towards her and I am dealing with it too, but it's like suddenly all she wants to talk about is the menopause and getting old. We are only in our early 50s for FFS! she acts like we are 80 years old and are about to check in to a bloody nursing home.

It's so depressing. Frankly, I dont think I can take much more of it and I will be distancing myself from her if this carries on.

I dont mind a bit of moaning, we all do that but its got to the point where spending time with her leaves me feeling like I have one foot in the grave and I dont want to live my life like that.

Life is short, and I dont want to spend it moping about in self induced misery. whats the point of that?

I think you’ve misunderstood OP’s post. She’s not saying she doesn’t want friends or doesn’t think they’re important. The opposite really, she’s looking for close friendship but hasn’t been getting much back, so she wants to take a break from initiating for a while to protect her hurt feelings. Seems reasonable enough to me.

Same here. I don't think any of my friends have show stopping personalies either. But we don't seem to have the dramas I see on so many Mumsnet threads

I’d love some friends but yes like you I have given up. I’m in my 50s live in a different part of the country to my home town. I did have a very close friend for 40 years but she’s moved on and no time for me and also won’t ever visit me. I don’t have anyone anymore outside of my household.

I have quite a lot of friends but I'm struggling to get to see them all or have the type of friendships I'd really value, it just feels very rushed, not just on their side, mine too. I am not the best friend due to having a very high workload, seeing adult children on weekends and a partner. I do call, I do see them but it's not ideal.

I don't think that my friendships are transactional at all, but they aren't easy to fit into modern life, especially if you live a way away from each other. My mum's friendships are better now she's retired.

I think that genuinely most of us don't have that many friends. Family, kids, work, it all gets in the way and takes priority. I only know one person like you're describing and she didn't get married until she was in her 40s so while we were all bringing up kids and going to bed at 9pm, she was fostering friendships.
I have a couple of lovely friends, we are ladies who lunch every 6 weeks and DH and I have a couple we are close to, but apart from that I just spend time with family. You are not unusual.

It's annoying isn't it? I am the same - meet ups, when they rarely happen, just seem to be about how awful everything is and how if they could only just sleep better/sort their digestion out/have more "capacity (god I hate that word)/do some other mythical self improvement project THEN they will be ready to hang out and enjoy themselves.

Like, life is happening TODAY and you are just missing it.

We're all tired and whatever else but sometimes it is a lot about your mindset and choosing to have some fun alongside all the shit or as you say, what's the point?? The shit will always be there regardless!

I wonder if it's due to doom scrolling addiction. So many people I know seem constantly busy and exhausted but they aren't doing anything like training for a marathon or doing anything exceptional. Just living fairly average sounding lives so why does it take so much out of them?

My closest friends right now are mum friends, but they are all very similar to me, I can not see them for ages and then have an amazing time next time I do. They require zero maintenance which I really appreciate but are all funny and good company. I think it’s a matter of who you click with, everyone has their tribe it’s just a matter of meeting them. A lot of people just have really busy lives I think and don’t have much left to invest. I definitely get towards the end of the day and just don’t want to speak to anyone because I am that tired.

What you describe aren’t friendships. They are acquaintances that you have a coffee with 1-2x a year. At your instigation.

What is it about modern life that people think makes friendship more difficult than it would have been in the past? I’ve seen this claim before and I’m not sure what exactly people have in mind. Is it because middle-class women think that in the past they wouldn’t have had to combine work and child-raising, and therefore would have had more time for friends? Maybe, but presumably there would have been fewer mod cons like dishwashers so housekeeping would take longer, and depending how far back you go, there would have been much less technology to facilitate staying in touch, maybe not even a phone or a car, and you would have probably needed your husband’s permission to spend money. I’m not totally sure why we think life now is worse for friendship, other than that as the PP said everyone’s internet addicted and making less time for real people and actual life? But ultimately that’s a choice, that we could make differently if we wanted to.

I hear you OP!

I'm not great with the whole "meet up for a coffee" type of friendship - I'm rubbish at small talk for a start. Outside of three frinds from school I'd say my most positive "friend" experience has been helping out at our local church - there's such a lot going on to get involved with that means you spend time in a nice place with friendly people being busy and useful without that pressure of having to "perform" on the personality front. I know church wouldn't be for everyone but there's other groups that would operate in the same way - we have a community garden locally where people help out. Just an option to consider.

Interesting post. Especially the bit about ppl being friends with ppl they slag off but nevertheless have some kind of benefit from the friendship. I'd not considered that before but i think you are right. Just out of curiosity, how did you meet the friend in your 40s who became a close friend ? I'm curious because I"ve had some terrific friends from school and uni, but never quite felt the same way about friendships later in life. There was one woman 10 years older than me that I met through work that I got on really well with. Turned out we'd both lived in London at different times in the past and had done sll the same kinds of things and gone to all the same places. I knew we would have been best buddies if we'd been similar ages and friends at uni for example. Sadly by the time we worked together we were both getting on a bit and there just werent the same opportunities to socialise. Plus the age gap meant she was already a bit less energetic and had gone into a different phase in life. Such a shame.

I was thinking about friendship the other day. I've been lucky to have some good friendships , especially when young, but something quite startling dawned on me. I realised that sometimes I became friends with people who were easy to go out with socially. They were up for fun, liked dancing and you didnt have to 'look after' them at parties etc. because they could enjoy themselves under their own steam so to speak. The startling bit was that I realised that there were other ppl I'd met along the way that I really really liked, and got on with like a house on fire, and know would have been great and longlasting friends, but I knew it would have taken a bit more effort and I just sort of pulled back from it.

My mum worked part-time her whole life and had a large Victorian house to show for it!

If two people have to work full-time, and I'm a lone parent, and people have to work longer hours than in the recent past, which they do, it's pretty obvious that clubs and societies and being sociable are going to be cut out.

My parents got in around 3.30-4pm as teachers and did not work most evenings. Now teachers, and most professionals, do. They have less energy (capacity, no sure why anyone would hate that word) and time.

Well so that’s the recent past and one particular sector, but in the nineteenth century for example weekends weren’t even a thing, people who worked might get a half-Saturday off at most. I’m sure bankers etc were working long hours even in in the recent past. I guess it depends which times you’re comparing ‘modern times’ to, but I’m not convinced we’re living in a period that is uniquely difficult for friendship.

I’m sorry it sounds like you’ve got your plate pretty full though

Agreed, I'm talking about friends in the last couple of generations, not when things took considerably longer in the house and women didn't have the Pill, I'm sure most of their time would have been primarily spent on childrearing, working, housecare and not on friends, unless they were rich enough to live a lady's life, visiting friends for long time periods like they do in Jane Austen and the Brontes, even then most of their friendships are very constrained, and based on family connections.

I could have written this post. Every time I try to meet with my lovely group of mum friends - that we used to do quite frequently - nobody replies, or they do but are unavailable and don’t suggest anything else. The thing that’s changed is that the kids are no longer at school together, but why that should affect our friendships I’ve no idea. It makes me really sad because I miss them.

I think this is a really big factor.

There are a lot of factors, and of course I blame knockdown for a lot of it (I have talked about this at length on here ) but I do think this is a really big one.

Also culturally people don’t seem to value friendship anymore.

One thing I will say… I know my friends with kids who disappeared talked a lot about how difficult basic things have become. So my parents would’ve paid for a kid social activity by cash or cheque, and actually that takes a couple of minutes to sort. One former friend had two kids at two different schools and she said just sorting out the smallest thing would require about seven different logins.

@Dothisdothat23 there is a huge amount written on this subject. I did initially blame myself when loss of friends happened. I don’t blame myself anymore.

I am single and I don’t really have family, barring elderly mother, and much as I know things are going to be difficult, I also know that the friendship landscape is such that going out and trying again is pretty soul destroying.

re perimenopause comments made by a few, I have made that point before, but I just get told off for not understanding how dreadful it is. I am accustomed to having health problems. For me, it’s never been a reason to not have friendships.

In the last couple of years, I have also learned that a lot of people are wary of a single child free woman and I think the fact that I might need help with something like being collected from a hospital appointment for example, actively puts people off.

I realised the other day that I will have no one to be power of attorney when the time comes. Well, I’ll have to find a solicitor, I suppose.

I haven’t commented on this subject for a while because it is just very sad. ( also I’m on here less than I used to be).

I am certainly learning to be happy on my own. I have made a couple of local acquaintances and that has to be good enough for now.

every so often I go into “ should I find a partner I don’t actually want” mode but I get the impression that there’s pretty horrendous picking out there at my age anyway. My last boyfriend was a lot younger and he still kind of hangs around but I have to be careful of that because I don’t want to give him false hope.

he has no belief in friendship at all, but he hasn’t had a chance to see a normal era of adult friendships. I think technology is probably linked to that.

I sound like a broken record because I always say this on here

But my parents both had to work

And they thought friendship was incredibly important and they always made time for their friends. It’s a struggle to see them slowly dying off. But selfishly one of the reasons why it’s hard for me, is those people care about me as well? Because that’s the model I grew up with… you made friends, you treated them as important and you had intergenerational friendships too.

to see it all fall apart is just really sad.

this is where I really think people maybe don’t realise how much mental energy is being used by the Internet. Because maybe they (my parents)came home at six or seven and if the doorbell rang during dinner or while they were watching TV, whoever was at the door was welcomed in.

I’m a great believer in community and I try and keep it going where I live but there’s not a lot of takers to be honest. We have a common garden in my block of flats and it’s surprising how few people I see out there. I was chatting to someone about it and he said you know they’re all home staring at the Internet?

I do because I’ve commented on the WhatsApp group. Like literally someone will make a joke and we’ll all be chatting with each other but ask them to go out for a drink, or even ask them to come in the garden and have a drink…. Nope.. that has happened about three times I think. But I’ve been living here more than three years now. It’s the same group of us who meet.

I don’t know. I still hope that friendship will have a revival, but I’m 50 so maybe it’ll be too late for me. I’ll just have to go into retirement flats and hope to form some kind of community there. But maybe it’ll just be full of people staring at the Internet….

I had a friend who was a single mum and I helped her out a lot. Her daughter is 17 now. The only reward I got was when I had a nervous breakdown, I called her, told her that happened, and I basically got a massive telling off for expecting friends to step in and help with anything. I wasn’t asking her to do anything major. I just thought it would be nice if she popped round for tea. Daughter was 14 at the time. She wasn’t working and I wasn’t working. So….yeah.

I think in real friendships, you need to be aware, even subliminally, of what you give and what you take. I've got a small group of friends but all of them are of decades standing and I know they're there for me and I am for them, well, I've tried to be. Some are local, some hundreds of miles away, but if the connection, humour and love is there it doesn't matter about distance, but that connection has to be there in the first place.

Appreciate them and try to show it, as they do me.

I have hung onto my best friend from childhood and my best uni friend but one is 200 miles away and one is 300 miles away so I manage to see them once a year for a weekend away. The friends ever since, well, I am with you OP. I am 40 now but in my 20s I had a brilliant work friend and we used to do a fortnightly takeaway and watch episodes of the Vampire Diaries! She moved away in 2016 and everyone since has been at best an acquaintance.
My friend from my last job will meet me for a coffee if I organise it but I could feel it in my bones that the last one was in fact the last. And my last NCT friend messaged to say Merry Christmas, see you in January. I replied to organise a Jan meetup and she didn't read it.

Fortunately I have a job, DH, DS and hobbies so I'm not bored but I don't think I will ever make another lifelong friend.

everyone has their tribe it’s just a matter of meeting them

No they don't. I've never hankered after a "tribe" or girls' nights out or a girls' weekend.

A couple of good friends to meet for a dog walk, coffee or occasional lunch is enough for me.

But most people, in most societies, have always worked, and friendships have still existed.

For years I was the life and soul of the party. Now I’m a grown -up I’ve come to realise that people weren’t my “friends” they were just someone to have a laugh with. I could never trust any of them. I’m dropping a legacy friend of over 50 years because I’m too old to laugh off her digs and jibes now. Block me, delete me. I’d rather be left alone.