Friends

[WhatcomesafteraRainbow]

I've never had many friends. At school I found girls bitchy, jealous and not very loyal. I got on better with boys as I found them more honest & down to earth. This led to gossip that I fancied them or sometimes they would think I fancied them.
I still feel the same way about boys & girls but I’m married so don’t have male friends. Female friends just don’t seem interested. I’ve been to hen parties and enjoyed them, plenty of people there, travelled to different locations, spent heaps of money and took lots of photos.
At my hen do it wasn’t far away as people didn’t want to travel too far or spend too much. It was calmer, not too much excitement and I didn’t think much chat about me considering usually there might be a game that revolves around memories with the bride. How you know her etc.. none of that. I was the only one who took photos. Did people not want to be there?
I’ve since had miscarriages & I have only 1 friend left- she’s amazing!
loneliness isn’t a nice feeling. I’ve got so many hobbies so I think I’m an interesting person, I don’t understand it.

I think if you are suspicious of other women that comes across. People can pick up on your reservations unfortunately:

And this is nothing to be ashamed of. I had no idea what healthy friendships and relationships looked like until I was much older because I never saw my parents lead this example. All I knew was hatred and shouting and being taken the piss out of. It took a while until I learned how engaging and investing in people I liked lives’ and interests is so important. I remember being told I’d upset who is now a dear friend by buggering off at an event he had invited me to we had gone to together. No one had told me before and it sounds ludicrous now but it just wasn’t something I knew not to do. It’s the little things, inviting someone you’ve met and liked to an event you fancy or just coffee or lunch is such a great way to get started.

Helpful and not justifying op’s point at all.

I was bullied at school by some right bitches but those girls certainly didn’t represent all girls. As well as being bullied I had a group of lovely friends. Just like men, some women are horrible but many many are wonderful. Try not to let it be your default to dislike all women because that isn’t real, just your damaged perception. Just one good female friend can be enough.

I think some of the comments here just prove why OP doesn’t like women 😐

@WhatcomesafteraRainbow So sorry I missed that, I am so sorry about your miscarriages. Sending you a big hug.

@WhatcomesafteraRainbow stand out comments on your posts

"I’ve got so many hobbies so I think I’m an interesting person, I don’t understand it."

"I’d like to learn how to become a more interested person in others."

"I'm misunderstood a lot in life"

You've answered your own dilemma really.

That sounds awful. I am glad you found your way out. That's amazing.

If you wrote off women as bitchy and disloyal because you were bullied in school you are likely to spot those traits in women thanks to confirmation bias. You will be hypersensitive to any hint of something you could interpret as disloyal or bitchy.

I empathise about the bullying. I was bullied in school for years, I had to hide in the boys’ toilets (so humiliating) because that was the only play bullies wouldn’t look.

What I did not do was tar all women and girls with that same brush.

If you are cautious or distrustful of women, that will be picked up in your interactions. That’s a fairly big obstacle to friendship.

The way to seem interested in people it to actually BE interested. To want to hear their stories. You will remember them because they are interesting, not because you have a great memory.

Bluntly, you have no friends because of your own assumptions about and behaviour towards other people, and, probably more importantly, your total lack of insight into either. Why on earth would you be surprised that your hen do wasn’t more enthusiastic or more about you, given your attitude to women? The women invited must have been baffled by someone who visibly didn’t like or trust them inviting them to a celebration generally involving the bride’s closest women friends and relatives.

I was bullied at an all-girls school, but that didn’t mean I wrote off half the human race because of the specific experience (being clever at a rough school was a bad way of being conspicuous). And I’m also married, but have continued to have good, longtime male friends. Inevitably, in my many years, I’ve occasionally had a female friend do something that let me down, or a male friend make a pass or do something else disappointing, but that’s life, and can be got past. In some cases the friendship survived with clear communication, and even got stronger, in others not. Still not any reason to decide that all women, or all men, are untrustworthy.

Re. "I don’t think OP said anywhere she doesn’t like women as a demographic."

At school I found girls bitchy, jealous and not very loyal. I got on better with boys as I found them more honest & down to earth... I still feel the same way about boys & girls

She has issues with women and won't be friends with men because she's married. This is not a problem with other people and there's not some code she can crack to suddenly be genuinely interested in them. She needs to work on herself to get over the attitudes formed in school that are still affecting her now.

Most of the responses back up what OP said 🤣🤣🤣🤣

I'm going to respectfully agree with most of the posters here, OP.

You've had a rough time in school and I'm sorry you went through that. However, I was also bullied in school and I never deduced that because some girls bullied me, therefor all girls must be bitches. That's your own deduction, and it's rather unfair.

You then seem to glorify your male friendships, but when we dive deeper into the story it seems to be the case that they all tried to flirt with you, pick you up, and all faded out of contact after entering a relationship. I don't see anything positive in these interactions. They were never based on mutual respect or friendship, but rather on sexual attraction on their part and your ego being stroked by their attention.

You come across (I don't know if you intend to, but it is how you communicate) as if you think you're better than all girls, and this gets validated in your male 'friendships' because they all tried to flirt with you. This could be a coping mechanism you developed to shield you from the harmful impact of the bullying.
However think of this as an energy you're giving off. If I met a woman who gave off this vibe, I'd run a mile the other way. No way I'd consider being her friend.

You're also very focussed on how interesting you are because you have hobbies, but lack the skills to show basic interest in the lives of others. Claiming you're not 'good at it' is really just a way to say 'I've not mastered this skill but I don't think I need to bother because people should find me interesting, not the other way around'.

Look, I'm a very friendly person but you're not giving me any kind of vibes to want to be your friend. You don't come across as someone who wants to put in the effort to not just have good friends, but also to be a good friend. And people are going to match the energy you bring.

I came on to say similar to @mymindispuff. I think if you’d said in your OP that you were bullied by girls at school you would have received a different response. That experience has stayed with you and affected your life. People here are usually a lot more understanding of that.

Perhaps if you can bear in mind that your past might be colouring your perspective you might find it easier to make friends.

True, and also it's worth saying that lots of kids in school are going through stuff. I'm struck by how many bullied people there are versus how few people believe they were bullies. The numbers don't stack up and it's often because the ones bullying were going through shit of their own and saw themselves as victims too. We're all formed by what we went through as kids and few childhoods were free of conflict and difficulty. At some point we have to come to terms not just with what we went through but also, through doing that, to see that other people were/are more complex too, and that writing them off as bitches and bullies is no better than writing ourselves off. There's a next step OP has to take towards a deeper understanding of herself and other people that isn't about looks, hobbies, hen parties and the external/surface side of things. As PP said, it's not about a good memory, it's about remembering things because they really matter to you.

Ignore pp having a pop about your ‘attitude’ op, you’re literally asking for support and advice and instead getting unkind remarks which says much more about their personalities than yours.

So even though you label women as bitchy, jealous and disloyal, you feel entitled to their emotional labour? Work on your misogyny.

They don’t. They’re offering her trenchant responses to her dilemma and levels of insight she seems to lack herself. She has a deep-rooted prejudice against women (‘bitchy, jealous and not very loyal’) and and says she can’t be friends with men (despite them being ‘more honest and down to earth’) because she’s married, so she’s ruled out the entire human race.

That’s why she doesn’t have friends. She’s ruled out everyone.

She will continue to be lonely unless she decides it’s ok to be married and have male friends and/or she works on her prejudices against women. Lots of people were bullied at school without developing prejudices about half the human race based on a few unpleasant years at school. And yes, bullying leaves scars, but in this case, the OP is only hurting herself.

What was your relationship with your mother like OP? Mine was really bad - jealous, manipulative, bullying etc, hence I was similar to you in earlier years. After a while I actually had little interest in female friends as I couldn't see anything beneficial at all.

I had a lot of therapy and it helped. I realised I was missing out on so much and now have some lovely female friends and good boundaries.

If similar I'd say it's probably more a blind spot so you don't purposely attract this type of energy. It took me alot of work to see this. Good luck x

Loads of people on here will have been bullied at school, and don't post about how they don't like women because they're bitchy 🤷🏼‍♀️