Is it normal to have no friends?

[Mumstheword93]

I used to have friends but since I left the party sene they dwindled off and we keep in touch via Facebook but not in person anymore.
I'm now in a position that I've settled down, I thought pre school and school would be a chance to make mum friends, it never really happened we where social, had a couple of coffees and a couple of play dates but never made the connection to have a friendship with anyone, not through lack of trying I suggested often to meet for coffee ect.

And now I'm thinking am I to go the rest of my adult life without friends....how do you make friends in your 30s? Not an aquitaince but a real friend.

I thought I'd be apart of a mum group but it never happened.

Any other mums feel like this?

I'm earlier on than you and it's mostly superficial friends that I have made. I expect over time I might be friends with them but relationships take time to build.

I've noticed NCT seems to bond people quickly. I didn't do this

Other than that, there are a couple of women who clearly want to make friends. They watch what people are doing when they join a baby group and think who to sit next to. I can tell I'm being assessed for whether I am someone to befriend. Incidentally, I'm not selected but it's quite uncomfortable and unnatural approach as it feels calculated.

The thing is the rest of us in the room also probably want to make friends too, that's probably why we are there.

I guess I expect it will just take time.

Are there other places you can go to meet different people?

I've made one friend through being a mum in 13 years.
I think parenthood is a time when you're capacity for maintaining relationships reduces for most, so actually people are interested in facilitating their child's social life as that's important but not so much in the market for themselves.
All my friends have come from sports I'm involved with as people in sports clubs are more likely to be open to igniting a direct personal connection as they aren't necessarily by definition time poor

This is a good point. As I say, I imagine it will take time, part of that is driven by being time poor..... Or more accurately not having much capacity for more new things

I don't think it's that unusual tbh. I have a school aged daughter and I never made mum friends despite going to daily baby classes and DC going to nursery from age 2.5. I actually just preferred going to classes and places to play with my DD than doing the usual coffee meet up with other mums - it's not exactly fun for the dc to be stuck in a buggy watching people drink coffee. I liked to chat with my dc and play with her instead of chatting to other adults.

And we had no time for play dates at nursery because most dc were picked up late (up until 6pm) and at weekends we wanted to hang out with just DH as a family. Even now she's at school, she has after school extracurriculars every day, and at weekends too. Evenings are too busy in the week and at weekends I want to spend time with DH and DCs. I don't really have time to hang out with friends. But it doesn't bother me.

I tended to find it easy to make friends through parent groups, though it was often partly driven by who the children were friends with. People with similar parenting interests and styles. It's much harder now they are pretty much grown as I'm not thrown in with other parents that much. Over the course of parenthood I have found my friendship groups evolve or change according to lifestyle or life phase changes.

I think it's not unusual to have few friends though, especially real friends. I probably only have one friend I would call a close friend now.

I see posts like this all the time on my local Facebook parent group and everytime someone offers to meet up with them for a coffee if you tried that?
My close friends who I meet with regularly are actually from high school, a group of 8 of us maintained close friendships throughout uni and all have children the same age so I'm lucky in that way however I would still like to make friends especially with people who live locally and attend DCs school but it's very difficult as I find people are guarded and quite superficial. I'm sure there are people who also want to make friends but it's finding them as well as people who are similar. I'd actually suggest attending something outside of parenting, once mine are a bit older I'm going to join a local choir as I enjoy singing and also a badminton club, I hope I will meet more people there. I don't think it's unusual not to have close friends but it's hard. Where are you based?

Id say I have mum acquaintances rather than friends. Perfectly happy to chat to them, and several are really really lovely people, but building proper friendships takes time and time is seriously short! I juggle children, working, trying to have a not-too-unhygienic house. I just sort of accept that while my children are small I don't have the time for proper friendships. I'm ok about that. I remember as a child wondering why my parents saw their friends so infrequently - they'd have an old Uni friend come to visit and it was that didn't see that person more than once every few years. Now they are retired they have a much more active social life. They're at the pub with friends right now, whereas I'm just taking a break from cleaning slime off the table 😂