Not to be arsed with fake Mummy friends anymore?

[Druzhok]

In the last 6 months, I've dropped my ante natal group (DS is nearly 5 and I still don't feel comfortable in their company) and a group of local-ish women I first met online.

I'm not boasting about this - in fact, I worry what kind of an anti social, unfriended outcast I've turned into and what effect it will have on my children's social standing - but I just can't DO it anymore. I can't be arsed with the inane chatter and fakery.

DS is starting school soon, so in a way I'm looking to that, but - pah - I just don't think I do it very well at all. I can't offer the commitment and plasticity required.

BTW, these are not terrible people: they have been very good to me at times (and vice versa). I just don't think we really like each other that much

Didn't know where to put this. Would appreciate other's POV, though, not least because no one else is talking to me anymore ...

Others'. Poor apostrophising.

"Can't be arsed with the inane chatter and fakery" - and you join mumsnet??

yes - lol at the irony there!

YANBU if you really believe that you have nothing in common with these women and don't like being in their company.

I presume you haven't started to cut them dead, just don't socialise with them any more? Because chances are you will still be seeing some of them at the school gates too, so you don't want any bad feeling there or it will quite likely affect your child's social scene as well.

I chat to lots of mums I probably wouldn't otherwise just because we go to the same playgroup - but I don't socialise with many of them, only the ones I like and get on with. Can you not pick any from these groups that you like at all??

I am mildly concerned that you seem to have also left yourself with no social contacts at all, no friends - is that the case?

nah, I see her pov MissusA.

MN may have it's share of playground twittering but you can (hopefully) still breeze past it and find a insightful/witty/downright silly thread or two.

If you didn't click with at least one of those group of friends then fair enough find others I suppose.

I would say though, I wouldn't drop them, it is good to have friends. Even those who don't seem to inspire you. Sometimes people can surprise you and under that cool veneer of organic angst and fretting about catchments might lay the heart of a similarly frustrated comrade just hoping someone will say "shit. bollocks to this who wants to go to the pub and talk terribly interesting things about the dangers of compromising coalitions in governments and just whether the new doctor who can ever measure up (ahem) to DT?"

Slur!! Hello, how the devil are you? Long time no see

I too have recently decided to cut the people out of my life who really don't add very much to my life and are no more than fair weather friends. And actually this includes family members who haven't been there for support and aren't reliable to help despite me never refusing to help them. The resentment has become to great and I was fed up of biting my tongue constantly and the fakeness of it all.

This is a pretty tough decision given how very few friends I had to start with.
But you know what, it's been like a weight has been lifted from me. I've felt more free to persue other avenues and have found a whole other group of people who may (or may not) turn out to be real friends instead.

Sometimes it's just time to move on and start afresh.

People are fake, especially in forced situations. Just because you happen to have had children at the same time doesn't mean you'll be bosom buddies with the rest of the mums and dads in the playground, far from it.

Hello is a good start. The weather is an easy opener. After that it gets trickier or easier depending on how the first two went. Friendships can't be forced so don't worry about it. Your ds will make plenty of friends and you'll soon have mummies asking you if your ds can come to birthday parties or tea and things can pick up from there, but if they don't, don't force it. That's where fakery kicks in.

Oh yes, and whilst I'm on it, ALL mothers worry about how they measure up to other mothers. Anyone who says they don't is lying. And I'd guess we all worry about how our houses, gardens and housekeeping measures up too, so don't worry if your house and garden is a mess!

I'm hoping this thread doesn't get hijacked by yet another clique and detract from the original post.

I listened to a very interesting piece on women's hour about friendship the other week (scorn ye not Wh is v good).

It is very difficult to give up friendship, even friendship that is no longer rewarding, even friendship that brings negativity into your life.

We don't really think of it this way very often but our long term relationships with friends are strangely ill defined in their breakdown. When you choose not to see a partner or boyfriend or break up with your husband - there are rituals and expected hardship and so on.

With friendships it is usually confusing and a bit unsatisfying. What tends to happen is you just let friendships fizzle out I guess, you answer their calls less, you meet up less, you're a bit colder.... but they are people you've spent a lot of your time with and you may find that the space they once filled feels emptier than you imagined it would.

My advice, FWIW, is find other new friends before.

That or try being not vacuous with your existing friends. perhaps they are just as mind-numbingly bored of the chatter as you.

(as an aside, as opposed to a hijack way to pre-empt MsA! Goodness wouldn't want friendships to be demonstrated on here now would we......)

Thumbwitch, I am, blah okay, and here so hey ho! I do hope that you are both well and okay and alright and that. Fancy camping?

I think until mine went to school - the relationship I had with some mummy friends was a bit supefficial. I can do chit chat with the best of them, but ultimately my best friends are people who I can admit to feeling crap /have a cry with, and have a really good laugh with too.

I think in the early years, lots of parents are feeling a bit insecure underneath, and unable to feel they can be themselves.

Perhaps you just haven't got under the veneer yet, or perhaps, like me you aren't as comfortable with groups of people (again, partly because people can be a bit less "real" in a group")?

So I agree with Slur really.

superficial

Try to do something for yourself, where you can meet people you really do have something in common with. But some people seem to need to move in a group of friends, and others can be more independent. (I realised this the other week at the beach, we bumped into a gaggle of Mums from school with all their kids, we were there as a family.)
BTW my kids range from 14 down and are not sociopaths, but do like being with their family too!

I've said this on here before, but when I started University I remember someone telling me that you spend the first year frantically making as many friends as possible and then spend the second year shaking off the numpties you befriended last year.

I think Mummy friends are similar, you (or at least I) cling to your antenatal/playgroup friends at first, then you realise you don't have much in common with many of them and the friendships begin to slide.

I agree with Mummytime, pursue your own interests and you're more likely to meet 'genuine' friends along the way.

never spent any time with them as an ability to procreate didn't seem enough in common to interest me

shit friends are worse than no friends imho

I found it really hard to make true, proper friends, until DD1 started school. Suddenly there I met a bigger spectrum of other parents who hadn't done the toddler group thing.

Nothing wrong with not going to social occasions where you don't really feel on a wavelength with others. (However, if you feel on a wavelength with no-one else on any social occasion then I think you should make a bit more of an effort!)

Yes, there's a lot on here I agree with. I have pretty much submerged myself in parenthood (annoyingly, I moved 200 miles just before I had children, so also lost easy access to pre-children chums). I suppose I have been reduced to making friends solely on the basis of having had children at the same time. So, yes maybe I should be redressing that balance and doing things in which I'm more likely to attract like minded people.

I think I am generally not an easy fit with most people, though, so it does feel daunting to have pruned with little chance of new growth, iykwim. Even though I also feel like a weight has been lifted.

Re mumsnet: this really suits me. I can dip in and out, speak openly without too many consequences and it goes on quite happily if I neglect it entirely. What I can't do very well is the day-t-day commitment of close friendships; not when I have a husband and two small children to consider first, anyway.

The other interesting consequence is that my homelife (with DH) has greatly improved. Perhaps I was talking to the wrong people about what was wrong with it ...

Appreciate your views, thanks I feel better about making the decision not to pretend anymore. It was pretty tiring at times: I was seeing the antenatal group twice a week, with all our children, and trying desperately to ignore the fact that it wasn't really doing any of us much good anymore.

YANBU. You once had something in common (pregnancy) and you no longer do.

On a slight tangent: does anyone else find it more and more difficult to make friends as they get older? Variations that I glossed over when I was 20 have now grown into serious breaches between me and other people. It's usually down to politics, parenting and the past (or perhaps my alliteration habit puts them off) - I just can't seem to find similar people, dammit. Or understand why I can't make friends with people who aren't exactly like me.

LOL you're not around the 40 mark are you? Seems to be a common reaction around this milestone.

I've shed lots of acquaintances recently (without conciously realising I was doing it) and read some threads on here and thought AHA!

I do have good friends who are constant and reliable but these others were insincere and plastic like you say.

Having said that I've met new people very recently whom I really like and who seek me out for my company rather than any other agenda.

It is refreshing.

I wouldn't be put off by your alliteration Druzhok - I find it fairly fascinating

NHS group Mummy friends?! Distant memory now. Don't worry, it's the natural order of things. There is now one person who I am stay in touch with and like from my NHS group.

There are a couple of others I'm in touch with! but the overlap between the two groups 'in touch with' and 'like' now makes up one person.

DRuzhok - up to a point it's as difficult as you make it. I moved to Australia last year, started at toddler groups in November and have managed to make friends with a few people - but not without a few attitude adjustments. Not major ones, but I have been less forthcoming about some of my hobby horses/beliefs with these new friends as there are some different attitudes around.

Perhaps I am lucky that there are several people who do kind of "fit" with me - but one lady I didn't really click with at all to start with, she was a bit stand-offish. ANyway one week we somehow stumbled across the topic of singing and discovered that we had a shared interest in band singing and music - now I see her every week at her house for a jammin' session and next time her band come to rehearse at her house, she's going to get me round as well.

So - sometimes there is more below the surface and it helps to have a wide range of conversational topics, to "flush out" the like-minded!

I never talk politics, avoid religion whenever possible and even the subjects of health and nutrition (until I have some kind of idea of their leanings). One of my best friends in the UK is a DM reader and has very different politics to me - we don't discuss it.

I agree with the Op to a certain extent - but I get a little concerned thatthere is always a certain arrogance around this type of thread.
The playground clique threads, the mummies at the school gate threads - they always seem to me to have a sniff of
'these women are all so dull and uninteresting whereas I am just so exotic and filled with radical thought and intuitive musings'

I think the truth is some are dull of course, but actually we are increasingly ham strung but the desperate need to be sociable within certain boundaries for fear of offending or being shunned. We are all so very very judgemental these days.
If the majority of a group are trying desperately not to fuck up it does tend to limit the conversation.

If all the engaging exciting witty types on here just engaged on that level with others at the school gate perhaps it would be a bit more fun.

But then we have one mum who likes to see herself as open and exotic and she is as dull as fuck - just rude with it.

So I would say YANBU to drop dull friends by all means but never dismiss the possibility that others in that group feel exactly the same...

I never made any 'mum friends'. I never did antenatal classes, made a weak attempt at the toddler group thing and made the odd 'play date' with mums at DS's nursery. I am just not good at polite socialising and find the whole thing cringey.

I have thrown a few parties since my oldest started school, so have gotten to know most of the parents of kids in is class, but to be honest, they are not friends. Not really. Nice enough people, but I have no real desire to spend time with them.

Am I a miserable bitch? Probably.

My friends are the people I met before I had kids + colleagues old and new. People who know me for me, not because I am 'X's mum'.

I think early on a lot of these 'friendships' spring from need rather than like. Many women are shocked by the changes that a new baby brings, good and bad. When you are up all night due to the baby teething the 'group' understands. You bond over the shared suffering and uncertainty of the early months.

I know those who have to keep in with various groups so they can cash in their credit at the 'babysitting circle' etc.

Many friendships also seem strategic. Others like to feel like the Queen Bee of the group, feeling superior over the 'fat one' that's struggled lose the baby weight. Staying in with the popular, glossy one that might invite you to her holiday home etc. That sort of thing to a greater or lesser extent.

You can also be made to feel like a real outsider if you are vastly different from the other women. But that goes without saying I guess.

I am not a 'group' person and struggled at first with the concept of always having to invite 10 women (our NCT) to every single event or social function. If I fancied a walk with one lady I liked, I'd call her and she'd say we needed to invite the others or it wouldn't be polite. This led to bizarre situations going forward, and I felt crowded.

Each of us is different and I think finds their way in time, OP you are not being unreasonable.

I like to arrange nights out. The bunch who come along are all happy not to talk about children. And over a glass of wine, with no children present, you'll see who you click with. And if you suggest doing the night out again, the ones who like you will come out again, some wont' bother, so the numbers will be whittled down until you realise it's just four of you but they are all people you would have been friends with/liked pre-kids.