Menopause made me lose all friends

[bluebells34]

I am 54 and having a difficult time with the menopause. Not sure if this is the reason but slowly I have lost all of my friends. I shared the health issues I have with friends related to the menopause, think I have had every symptom and found the changes and challenges alarming. I am also caring for my father who has dementia plus holding down 2 jobs and caring for my daughter. Slowly friends started to cancel meeting for coffee and stopped texting - I literally have NO friends left and feel I have bored them with my issues. I also could not relate to any of the friends I had as they are all married, live a comfortable life and do not work so maybe they didn't feel they could cope with my situation.

Maybe it's not the menopause itself that's the issue, but the fact that "I shared the health issues I have with friends". It's really not a good tactic - especially as your friends possibly have similar issues - and can be very wearing for the people who have to listen.
Maybe try to find a therapist or counsellor for the offloading, and then you can just have fun with your friends.

There is only so much friends can take. It becomes very tiring having to hear about other people’s problems.

I think friends should be supportive when rubbish stuff happens but if everything became all about you and your misery and no reciprocal support, asking and being interested in them, then it wears thin. (I'm not saying that this is what you were like, you may just have had fairweather friends!) but it could explain it if you did get a little like this.

Share info or only talked about this?

I'm sorry you're having a hard time OP.

I follow this lady on Instagram. She's inspiring, absolutely lovely and is/has been in a very similar situation to you. I wonder if you might find some help in reading what she has to say. https://www.instagram.com/jomoseley/?hl=en-gb

What's happened has happened. Learn from it and start over again and do everything you can to get exposure to new people and potential new friends. Maybe find a menopause support group in your area for this kind of chat. Who knows there might be new friends there, too!
Just don't beat yourself up and keep positive x

Are you on HRT?

I think your comment that your friends couldn’t understand your position because they are married, comfortable and don’t work, is quite telling. Everyone can have problems.

@OsfameronTanamoril I am on HRT and have a menopause support group at work where we have a forum once a month to chat.

I think its depends on how much you have been sharing and how often? If you are meeting up with them and its all you are talking about, and not taking on board that they may have their own struggles then it can be very draining.

Think back to your meet ups? Is this is what has been happening? That you are constantly talking about how tired/emotional/achy etc you are.

Do you ask them about their own lives and allow them to talk too?

Sometimes friends want to meet up to get away from life's crap and struggles and have an escape. Some light chat and some laughs over lunch or coffee and not constantly be dragged down by someone's woes.

I regularly meet up with friends. Each of us has our own shit going on, which we address as we sit down together. Each asking how the other is doing, having a brief conversation about it and then we move on. Our chats are then light and fun. That is not what we meet up for.

However, if any of us wanted to talk more in depth for support, and to talk about our struggles then we only have to ask and someone is always there to listen.

I fear you have been using light breezy get togethers to massively offload and it has become tiring for them. It is very hard listing to someone else go on and on about their struggles when you have so many of your own.

How much did you ask your friends about what was going on in their lives?

I have always been mindful to have a two way conversation - in fact they probably spoke more about themselves than I did about myself to be honest.

So what do you think has caused you to lose all your friends, then?

It's a difficult one OP.

I work with a woman who in the last 5 years, has changed pretty dramatically.

Everything about her is menopause, menopause, menopause.

It's like its taken over her whole personality. She's in every menopause group imaginable and I don't recognise the woman she's become.

And on top of that, most of us are the same age or older and we all have our menopause problems, we just don't want to keep talking about them.

Is there any way you could stop sharing your issues with them?

@GramercyPark not in the same social circumstances I guess - different life styles probably no longer have anything in common

I don’t think it’s menopause. I think it’s that you don’t have much in common with them, so the friendships are hard work for everyone. Also, yes, it’s true, it’s a difficult time of life for everyone and people do get tired of being emotionally dumped on. But to me it sounds like you don’t have much in common and the friendships have run their course. They probably have met new friends who they are more alike, but you haven’t. If you want friendships, you need to cultivate them with people who you share commonalities with. You probably need to focus on yourself right now, not on friends. Build yourself up. Create a happier life. Then you will attract the right sort of people who connect with you.

Like what?

If they're your actual real friends, you'll still have plenty in common surely?

Concentrate on what you do have in common rather than what you don't.

You could probably stand at a bus stop and still have something in common with most of the people standing beside you.

I'll brave a battering on this one.

DP has been going through peri-menopause for a few years now. A good few health issues as a result, in particular a massive uptick in the frequency of her migraines. HRT seems to have helped massively over the last year or so.

For a good while, she was incredibly unpleasant to be around. Now I get why, she was having a shit time, she felt like crap almost constantly, she was miserable.

But even on the good days, she was still different. Her tone was sharper, she was quick to snap, things frustrated her more easily. Everyone else's problems were utterly unimportant, and hearing that I'd had a bad day in work just pissed her off even more. Even conversations where she was happy, when she was telling me about a lovely day out she'd had with DD, felt like they had this undercurrent of anger and frustration just from her tone.

After nearly a year of this she got upset one night because she felt like people were avoiding her. And she was right. DD was disappearing to her room instead of hanging out with us, her friends and family were often "busy" when she tried to organise something. My brother had asked me if he'd offended her because she kept being so short with him. I'd tried my best to ignore "the tone" as DD had come to call it, but some days I'd come home from work and know just from the "Hello" I got that tonight was a night to make myself scarce.

Obviously I can't "get it", I'm a man, I'm never going to have to deal with menopause, but I tried to empathise. Honestly though, I'm glad HRT helped DP so much, because I honestly don't know if I could have lived with that version of her for the next 5 - 10 years.

For contrast, about 6 years into our relationship DP was very ill, to the extent she was almost bedbound for the better part of a year. It was incredibly difficult, especially as DD was only 4. And obviously she was upset and miserable during that time. But I never considered leaving her then, never thought for a moment that I wouldn't spend the rest of my life with her. I can't say the same about what peri-menopause did to her.

DP's sister is a few years younger than her, and DP came home a few weeks ago from visiting her and told DD "Ok, I think I finally understand what you meant by 'the tone'"