Both my husband and I have no friends
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Anonymous
| Maybe you’re uptight and rigid, with a touch of desperation. People don’t consciously pick up on desperation, but they do hate it and move away from it. |
Anonymous
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Agree with the PP that you guys are at a really tough age. I’m in it as well and shule I do have friends we aren’t really hanging out or even connecting all that much. Especially as our kids are moving into tween and teen years.
Keep making the effort, but lean into yourselves and find hobbies that nourish your soul. And stay optimistic that once your…our kids are older then there will be time and space to nurture friendships. |
Anonymous
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Ok. My husband and I rarely drink and have friends that are drinkers and non-drinkers. We have a lot of friends and a lot of acquaintance type folks.
Here are a few things I would say. 1. All our teetotaler friends are from church. Church is a good place to find that group. They are also going to be older typically. We have always joined marriage enrichment groups at church and you make deep relationships with couples if you have a good group. Our current group is six couples and we have been a group for 8 years or so. One couple in the group is really one of our “best friend” type couples. 2. You have likely made the mistake of trying to find friends in the same age and stage as you. Our friends are all over the map. Older, younger, married, unmarried, with kids, without kids. We have a child with profound special needs so making “family friends” was basically off the table for us very quickly. We hire sitters and do grown up stuff mostly. I will say our low amount of drinking and profound SN kid means we don’t have friends in our neighborhood as much. The families around us are whooping it up drinking in their backyard around a fire with all the kids running around — that isn’t what we typically get invited to. The neighborhood families are our “acquaintance friends.” We like them and go when invited, we also invite them to larger stuff we host — but we know how far it will go. Our friendships tend to be with people we can connect with about work, movies, etc. 3. We made good friends by inviting, inviting, inviting. My husband is insanely good at this. Total social extrovert. He is good at identifying women I will like as well or asks enough questions about wives to have a good sense of what might be a couples fit. It isn’t enough to attend an activity. It is “I met this new person, let me invite them to lunch, dinner, a game night, a basketball game, etc.” We invite people to individual stuff with only one spouse, couples stuff and large group stuff. We have hosted large events at our home where we stick invites in peoples mailboxes and probably 80 people float in and out. Covid killed so much of this and we are working our way back to this. During Covid, we pivoted within 2 months to set up an outdoor movie set up. We had people over every 2-3 weeks to sit in our driveway. We might invite 40 people to get 4-12 to come and sit far apart in the driveway brining their own chairs and snacks. Now, we are getting back to game nights in our home. |
Anonymous
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We are the same. We moved here after grad school. So no family, no school friends.
Friendship is all about unstructured time and proximity. You don’t make friends in knitting class; you make friends by going to coffee after knitting every week. Same with work — people are too busy at work generally, so it’s after work that matters. For us, we don’t live anywhere near coworkers (nearest is two towns over) so meeting up outside work is difficult, and most people don’t stick around after work for events because of long commutes. Neighborhood friends are a work in profess — we just moved here but rarely see our neighbors because we all are working parents with kids in multiple activities. No unstructured hangout time. We would love to invite more but our house is always a disaster. Old neighborhood had zero families so was a bust in that regard. Most people make friends when they are young at first jobs before kids or early on with neighbors when walking babies (or dogs, get a dog). That’s generally only time to meet neighbors. Home on maternity leave, hanging with neighbors at park, etc. but they have to live close so dropping in is possible or they either. Finally, family friends are driven by the moms. Social dad can help, but moms drive calendar |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
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Anonymous
Sorry, this got inserted in the wrong place above. I blame the wine from last nights movie night. Charlia is not wrong. In my neighborhood, we have book club, game nights, fire pits, girls weekends- all lubricated by alcohol. |
Anonymous
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I'm someone who went from having no local friends in my 40s to a varied group of friends. It took about 2 years of looking a building friendships as a parttime job (or unpaid internship). I started making friends after I got divorced, and I think my spouse was a big block while I was married. She was socially fine/not awkward but not really interested in meeting people, very picky.
I think to make friends in mid-life you need to be able to try a lot of things that don't work before you try something that does. I see many people who are just not persistent enough "oh, I reached out to someone this month for coffee and she declined, so I'm done." Every week, you need to be inviting people or putting yourself in places where you are meeting people. |
Anonymous
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OP, I really feel for you. I moved for college and then grad school and then to this area. The women I know with close knit groups of friends ( real friendships, not cliques based on some external connections) all grew up up and stayed here, going to college locally or in the DMV. Many of their spouses know each other for the same reasons. I have a couple good friends who I met through work but over YEARS turned into real friends. My best friends from grad school are somewhat far away and I am not so good about keeping in touch but I try. I had PDA/PDD and really struggled and isolated myself when my oldest was born and that really didn’t help.
I am yet to meet another mom through my kids who I would say has become a real friend. My oldest is 8 and just now I think I am clicking a bit with one mom who lives nearby. However in the meantime I have decided to change my attitude to one of gratitude for every relationship regardless of whether or not it looks like a BFF relationship like you read about in women’s fiction. There are a couple Girl Scouts moms I like chatting with, who are kind and pleasant. I am grateful for that outlet, especially now that I WAH all the time. Same for my neighbors. One of my sons friends has the same medical condition as my daughter and his mom and I are resources for each other on that, though we don’t have that much in common otherwise. Anyway I am gently suggesting you make sure you are not being rigid in how you define “friends” and it may take some of the stress off some of your relationships. I read (ok didn’t quite finish!) how to win friends and influence people at one point and you might like that. But the biggest take away is just to be warm and interested in other people. I think he says something like be the gold retriever who just is so happy to see you every day. I used to be so worried about assuming too much or playing things cool and I’ve really changed my attitude. I smile a lot and warmly greet every person I meet. I am not afraid to make polite chat with people I only sort or recognize. I introduce myself to all of parents and try to remember names. If there is some one I click with even a little I invite them to things - like a mom I know also wanted to get back to the sport we both used to play and I gave her my number and invited her to come with me to the next lesson I was going to. Here’s the thing- even if they don’t take you up on it most people like being invited/included in a low key/low pressure way. And if they don’t then they aren’t the friend for you. Finally, the situation with your DH does sound a little extreme. I would concentrate on making individual friends and not couple friends, and maybe have him see a therapist or something? Having no friends and being pointedly excluded at work must feel awful. Does he want to make an effort to change things? Not everyone does; my friend from school is married to a guy who is an extreme introvert and gets enough interaction from her and their kids. |
Anonymous
They do not have local family. Very common in this area. Not all families are close. I do not know why people are acting like this is unusual for two working parents not from this area. It is not that unusual. This area is a grind. |
Anonymous
Fat and ugly do not mean socially awkward. Perhaps your coworker behaves awkwardly because they know they are being judged. |
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Anonymous
My brother is like OP’s husband. He is perfectly happy. He told me “I have my family…what do I need friends for?” He does not want to spend his free fine word friends…he only wants to spend it with family. He is a multimillionaire. Many men do not have they same need for same-gender friends if they are happy in their primary relationship. |
Anonymous
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DH and I don’t drink either. I think this can impact social life, or at least who you spend more time with, but it doesn’t dictate it. We both used to be big drinkers and remain friends with many of the same people but just don’t partake anymore.
I’m curious, what is the flow of conversation when you are talking to people, especially 1:1? Is it mostly an exchange of information - how was your winter break? What camp is your kid going to? Do you click with people? Have a moment where you are exchanging information and realize you both have the same attitude or approach to things and have a little connection moment? Have a moment where you realize you really like someone’s personality and want to hang out with them again? My DH and I are not super social - meaning we don’t host a ton and we barely go out after 8pm. But I am very present with people 1:1. I ask questions, try to make a connection, remember people and their details, and am friendly. In return 95% of people are very friendly back. Sometimes this takes a year or 2 but I try to be on good terms with people. I am not a part of a mom group either, but I am friendly with enough moms and will reach out occasionally to coordinate things like classes or activities between our kids. My DH is such a homebody, but again we try to be very present with people when we are with them. I’m just wondering if there is a breakdown in how you are connecting with people in the moment… |
Anonymous
To add, I think I good question to ask yourself is, how do people feel after they’ve hung out with you or had a conversation? If they enjoyed it they will be happy to connect again, even casually bumping into each other at school. |