People on here with no family and friends

[BoobsAhoy]

This seems really common on mumsnet. More than I’d see from my real life experience of colleagues and friends (which I suppose is the point)

how do you get to the point when you have no one around? But obv have a partner.

How did you meet? Did you lose friends because of the relationship / control? Do you not like any of your family ?

Hardly surprising you encounter more on MN than in RL. A bit obtuse not to be able to work out why.

I don’t really have any family - it’s through previous generations not having kids to continue the family lines, early bereavements, and me not having children because I had caring responsibilities for terminally ill parents and then didn’t meet anyone in time.

At the age of 48 I had no grandparents, parents, siblings, aunts or uncles, or kids. I have a boyfriend who I don’t live with. To try and find my next of kin I’d need to go back to a parent’s cousin (I think my second cousin?) but I don’t know where they are or if they are still alive. It’s pretty sobering and unsettling and I don’t like it. I have friends whose kids consider me an auntie, but I don’t have any blood relatives.

I am an only child who lost both my parents just as I became an adult. I was never close to my mother's side of our extended family so made no effort to stay in touch with them and I am on Christmas card exchanging terms with my paternal cousins. My DH is also an only child and only his mum is alive and lives far away.

However, as well as the kind of friends you might meet for a drink or a coffee, I do also some have incredibly good friends. A couple from university and one from my very first job who are like family and upon whom I could and do absolutely rely on in times of crisis.

But I think that is down to luck and timing and I can definitely imagine a parallel universe where I only had acquaintances (thanks to my parents I am quite friendly and outgoing so do find making friends easy) but not the sort I would feel comfortable calling on in a crisis.

Lots of moves for work or study. I have managed to have close friends in past but distance and time tends to mean few years after moves all contact ceases - and that's not just on me.

Some places are just harder to make new friends in - we lived for a long time in area you really needed to be born into and joining everything made no difference - did make friends with other newcomers but most moved on as did we in the end.

Family is odd - mine tend to exclude me on flimsies excuses so I've taken their hints and stepped right back - feuds and excluding siblings from funerals/weddings are rife in both side anyway - and I'm ND and it's likely inherited from both sides - DH family they aren't close and IL have several times had solicitors cease letters from former friends - they tend to be great till they aren't - and when kids were young and we were stretched we unfortunately got to see the not so great side. It has I think left us very wary - and any help would experience tell us come with huge strings.

MN does tend to blame posters. We also found that when things did go wrong out the blue we were on our own even when we had friends.

This comes up quite often related to childcare logistics, I have family and friends but they're 4-5 hours from where I live so in that way, I'd fall into 'no family or friends I can ask for help'

How? Moved house and don't have time/opportunity/energy to meet people.

Abusive childhood, my mother kept me from my dad and allowed her husband to rape me in exchange for a place to live for my brothers.

Brothers are junkies so I have no contact.

My dad died.

Got straight out of an abusive childhood into an abusive marriage.

Moved hundreds of miles away to escape that.

Now have no social media due to that.

Haven't made friends here because I can't trust anyone.

Now I barely go out at all as I had to give up work due to having cancer and a disability because of that.

Its pretty easy to be in this situation really.

I think it's quite important to explain to posters who may have had "easy lives" why others may be in the situations they're in.

Yes I guess disability is an alternative to abuse as a prime cause, sadly.

Interesting point about how being an abuser may eventually isolate someone as well.

What every single pp has missed out is growing up! In your late teens and early 20s your brain is wired to need friendship groups. From early teens you start to separate from family and that us normal. By mid to late 20s the brain is fully developed, lower appetite for risk and couples are forming, kids are had and priorities change. It is quite normal, though people do still have friends it's not like that specific life period I think.

I first moved away when I went to uni

Then I moved to a different area

The last move was due to a work relocation

I'm in the process of relocating again, to where I started to be near an elderly relative
Relative will not move to where I live currently

This will be the 13th move as an adult & I don't expect that it will be the last !

I have good friends, but they are dotted in many different locations. We do make an effort to keep in touch & see one another when our plans align together.

Parents sadly both dead. Sibling so hostile and dysfunctional that I have to steel myself to contact them. Also I’m divorced.

I do however have my young adult kids who are good company and a delight to have around - even if I nag them. Both living at home for the time being.

Plus friends - a few close by and some much further afield who I keep in touch with regularly online one way or another.

But up to now nobody in the past few years who would help me in a genuine emergency or if I needed support with something medical. Hopefully now the kids are more mature they would help but at the moment the relationship is still that I am the parent and I support them and not the other way around.

of course it’s more common on MN because it’s anonymous forum, people keep quiet about it in real life
Why do you are ask by the way? .

Growing up doesn't mean you can't have and don't need close family abs friends though?

The relationships are just a bit different.

All my family are deceased, last sibling died last year. I am 49 and now feel very much alone, I don't have friends due to a difficult childhood and find meeting people difficult. It is hard but I have dh and dc for company.

First generation immigrant with no family in this country. Adore my mum and sis but they are thousands of kms away. Only one sibling.
Didn't go to uni or school in this country, so see friends from that time rarely.
Moved around a lot for jobs.
Work from home.
It's often lonely but I don't talk about it, because I don't expect many people to understand. There are many immigrants like me in London though.

I do have friends but I have no family.

I made a choice to cut all contact with my relatives because of abusive behaviour in childhood. I do not miss them at all as most of them never really had any close, positive involvement in my life.

This will be the 13th move as an adult & I don't expect that it will be the last

I've lived in 10 completely different parts of the UK since I turned 18 all driven by education and work reasons. DH and I met at University then spent years apart due to education and work - so he's about the same but at least 3 different locations to me during those times.

We expect to move again at least once if not twice before DH retires and after kids finish exam years.

We aren't unusual - well most of DH colleges did some year abroad we haven't done that yet. I think that's partly why he often finds it easier and quicker to make friends as moving is very much expected in his sector so they know what it's like.

I have family but don't see them very often. I have no friends because I'm autistic and always struggle to keep them. I met my partner on a night out. I'd gone out with a mutual friend but had to cut ties with him because he was a bit obsessed with me and couldn't except I was now taken.

I didn't expect to ever move back to where I started

However, living several hours away makes it impractical now. Too much time & money spent travelling

The covid lockdown, really highlighted the problems of living too far from family & someone my friends

** some of my friends in that location

I don't really have any friends. I don't see my colleagues as friends. They're people I work with, some of them are nice, but I don't want to see them outside of work.

Most of my schoolfriends either live somewhere else now or we lost touch. I don't feel like I have much in common with most of the ones I was close to in school.

I didn't make very strong friendships at university because I'm so shy and partly due to the stupid boyfriend I had them who made socialising difficult.

Now I just find it hard to meet people in the first place and to actually maintain the relationship. Like when does someone become a "friend"? How do you get to that point with new people? I did get on well and even went out once or twice with a lady whose daughter went to nursery with mine but she's super flaky so we don't really socialise now beyond sometimes taking our kids to a play gym so they can play together. But that's more about them than us.

My family is ok, I have cousins, they just live really far away.

Family fine just kids at different stages. Find friends flaky. Oh I ring you back. Nothing. Or cancel. Cant blame covid just people arent reliable now. Moved around jobs wise so just polite chat with colleagues

My father died when I was a kid and my mother and her family were Irish immigrants who relied on each other. There was so much prejudice against the Irish in the 1970s and 80s in London, my mother taught herself to avoid sounding Irish because she was frightened by some of the anti Irish abuse that got handed out in the streets.
A school on the other side of London, a series of family tragedies mean that I've spent my whole life with PTSD and have only just been helped by EMDR and therapy. I have a few friends but I can see now how fcked up my life has been and how I've misunderstood relationships, allowed myself to be used and got repeatedly hurt.
I do have a DH but he was fcked up by his family too! We are a pretty isolate pair. That poem by Larkin says it all, as does William Blake - some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night.
On the other hand, I have a 'friend' now mostly on Facebook who puts up a kind of daily diary of her glorious life full of meeting people for hot chocolate and cake and dozens of friends coming to stay at her huge house in the country but she suffers chronic pain (The Body Holds the Score?) and never in a million years would she allow her subterfuge to be doubted. I don't think she's very happy and I don't think her friends are real, what is a real friend anyway?

Moved to a different area when married, not particularly close to my mum, she chooses not to be, dad died, grandparents have died, half siblings not close to. I have a couple of friends but I don't need or want many friends.
Thankfully I do have children so I'm not completely alone, without them I would be.

I think it's very easy to end up with no connections. It will be me when my elderly mum dies . I come from a very small family that was fragmented before I was born , there has been a lot of divorce in the family so connections lost . My only living relatives live abroad and we aren't in touch . I have friends , 2 close school friends but everyone else has passed through my life . I moved around a lot when younger so have never put down roots so to speak . I think it's a lot easier than you think to become isolated.

What is a real friend ?

Someone where you can be yourself, who accepts you as you are

Someone who supports you through the good & the bad times

Someone who you could contact at any time for help, advice, chat, laugh, coffee, listens, shares, cares

Someone that you enjoy spending time with

Someone that even if you haven't seen them for a year, when you meet, you are still the same good friends

I am fortunate that I have a handful of close friends ( we don't live close geographically) but we are connected by spider web threads