Lonely in middle age but finding that I don't like many people

[Anonymous]

I'm 56 and i see the people I like no matter where they live a few times a year. I have a group of 4 people I know I go hiking with 1-3x a month. I golf with 1-2 friends about 5 times in the summer.

If you are comfortable with yourself and don't need to go, go, go all the time seeing these people a few times a year should really be enough.

I travel 1-2 times a month visiting people (friends/children) or vacationing.

I go to the gym, do yoga, hike, paint and play piano.

Why do you need so many people.

[Anonymous]

A few months ago, I told a younger co-worker that I could be friends with people who are not perfect and that everyone has some unwelcome traits. I do think that is true for many people, myself included.
She was outraged because one of the coworkers she hated was gossiping—true, a terrible trait. However, the colleague who was upset about the gossip is a liar! So, she was upset that someone was a gossip, yet she lied all the time.
My point is that you accept people as they are, and if they are generally good friends, you forgive and know that they might also accept you as you are.
I don't know if this is relevant to the topic, but I think it is to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like a few people have mentioned that their kids are in private school. No wonder you're meeting awful people. My community in DC (built largely from my kids DCPS school) is full of interesting and chill people. Sure, a lot of nonprofit idealist types, but there are worse things to be.

Honestly this is one of my #1 concerns with going private. If you don't like the parents, imagine your kid learning alongside their kids all day. Sounds awful.

NP here. I think you've unwittingly demonstrated some things about DC culture that bug me here. I am also a DCPS parent and we'll never be able to afford to go private in DC. But a lot of what you say here demonstrates this very specific kind of competitiveness and anti-social behavior I encounter constantly in DC and really struggle with. You're making all these assumptions and saying all these disparaging things about people you don't even know. It's pretty obvious that the main reason you have for doing this is to make yourself feel good about your own choices. And again I say this as a fellow DCPS parent so I am not judging your choices at all -- I made the same ones.

But this passive aggressive one-upsmanship and the need to put down others just to prove to yourself that you are doing it right sucks. And people are like this all over here. Including among the idealist nonprofit types (who can be every bit as competitive and judgmental and cut throat as the consultants and corporate lawyers and media people just about different stuff). I find it exhausting. People act like you have to prove that you are the right kind of person -- their kind of person. I increasingly don't feel like I'm anyone's kind of person here. And I don't like having to perform for others just to be part of a community or feel welcome -- I don't like feeling like my belonging is that tenuous.

Like others we are exploring moving out of this area and kind of hoping this is specific to DC. But maybe it's everywhere. I don't know. I didn't really start feeling this way until my late 30s. I still have friends in DC that I made in my 20s and those are still rock solid friendships. But we're scattered and some people have moved away and as much as I love those friends it doesn't feel like a cohesive community which is definitely what I crave at this stage in life.

+100

I don't generally like this term, because it's been co-opted by a certain kind of far-right and chronically online male, but "virtue signaling" is the only way to describe it. I just want to have a pleasant conversation, not constantly prove my progressive cred to you. It's just as exhausting as the opposite group that the first PP described.

[Anonymous]

You really build your community when your kids are young and the parents are all engaged with school activities and that fosters friendships. But as your kids age out so do many of those relationships. As the kid connection fades so do many of the adult connections because you no longer have a common interest. We’ve been empty nesters for quite a few years and we’ve definitely experienced this. We still have some very close local friends but not nearly as many as 15 years ago. But, life goes on. I now have a few grandchildren living locally and they are a joy so I don’t feel lonely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm 56 and i see the people I like no matter where they live a few times a year. I have a group of 4 people I know I go hiking with 1-3x a month. I golf with 1-2 friends about 5 times in the summer.

If you are comfortable with yourself and don't need to go, go, go all the time seeing these people a few times a year should really be enough.

I travel 1-2 times a month visiting people (friends/children) or vacationing.

I go to the gym, do yoga, hike, paint and play piano.

Why do you need so many people.

This sounds lovely, but my guess is most people are stretched to have this type of free time.

You do have a good point, though, that you shouldn’t discount people that are not local. You can keep in touch with people via text email, and phone if you can’t see them in person. Also, I agree that you don’t need a big friend group, especially of those that you see in person, one or two or three local good friends are enough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm just about 50, married and kids are in high school. Our eldest is a senior.
I have a number of ride-or-die female friends in DC and elsewhere but my husband and I don't have a great social community in DC.
So many people we've invested in over the years have moved away or we've drifted apart (we were friends of mutual convenience in a season of life--a sports team, a school, etc).

I spend my time wishing we had a better community but as I near 50 I also find myself with less and less tolerance for people. So many annoy me. Maybe it's the crowd we're in (private schools) or DC in general. People often feel like such extremes of personality: intense, odd, self-promoting, etc. Gosh. I'm probably just as odd and annoying to others. I think feeling this way may be due in part to being middle aged. I've become far less likely to put up with bull sh$%T or people that annoy me.

Sigh. I'm probably not making much sense. But anyone else have an ongoing tug-of-war between REALLY and genuinely wanting a better community and yet just not meeting many people you actually want to know better or spend time with? Please don't just jump all over me on this. I recognize that I'm probably not many other people's taste either. Just wondering how much this resonates (or doesn't) with others.

I don't understand why your "number of ride-or-die female friends" don't count as your social community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like a few people have mentioned that their kids are in private school. No wonder you're meeting awful people. My community in DC (built largely from my kids DCPS school) is full of interesting and chill people. Sure, a lot of nonprofit idealist types, but there are worse things to be.

Honestly this is one of my #1 concerns with going private. If you don't like the parents, imagine your kid learning alongside their kids all day. Sounds awful.

NP here. I think you've unwittingly demonstrated some things about DC culture that bug me here. I am also a DCPS parent and we'll never be able to afford to go private in DC. But a lot of what you say here demonstrates this very specific kind of competitiveness and anti-social behavior I encounter constantly in DC and really struggle with. You're making all these assumptions and saying all these disparaging things about people you don't even know. It's pretty obvious that the main reason you have for doing this is to make yourself feel good about your own choices. And again I say this as a fellow DCPS parent so I am not judging your choices at all -- I made the same ones.

But this passive aggressive one-upsmanship and the need to put down others just to prove to yourself that you are doing it right sucks. And people are like this all over here. Including among the idealist nonprofit types (who can be every bit as competitive and judgmental and cut throat as the consultants and corporate lawyers and media people just about different stuff). I find it exhausting. People act like you have to prove that you are the right kind of person -- their kind of person. I increasingly don't feel like I'm anyone's kind of person here. And I don't like having to perform for others just to be part of a community or feel welcome -- I don't like feeling like my belonging is that tenuous.

Like others we are exploring moving out of this area and kind of hoping this is specific to DC. But maybe it's everywhere. I don't know. I didn't really start feeling this way until my late 30s. I still have friends in DC that I made in my 20s and those are still rock solid friendships. But we're scattered and some people have moved away and as much as I love those friends it doesn't feel like a cohesive community which is definitely what I crave at this stage in life.

+100

I don't generally like this term, because it's been co-opted by a certain kind of far-right and chronically online male, but "virtue signaling" is the only way to describe it. I just want to have a pleasant conversation, not constantly prove my progressive cred to you. It's just as exhausting as the opposite group that the first PP described.

PP and YES. Like on some level do I think it's better to be competitive or engage in one-upsmanship about commuting via e-bike and composting instead of the "prestige" of your private school or whether you have the right luxury brand SUV? Sure. But I honestly feel equally annoyed by someone who is going to judge me over something like composting as someone who is going to judge me because we didn't travel abroad this year. Especially because 99% of the time the thing I'm being judged over isn't even a reflection of who I am as a person. I don't compost because I'm tired and overwhelmed and it just feels like one more thing to do -- I think composting is a good thing to do it's just not accessible to me right now. Likewise I'd love to have taken a trip to Toyko or Buenos Aires this year but I cannot afford it. So people who judge me for this stuff aren't even judging my values or decisions -- they are just judging me for not having the resources to keep up with them on this thing they have decided is the dividing line between good people and bad people.

I just do not want to play.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm just about 50, married and kids are in high school. Our eldest is a senior.
I have a number of ride-or-die female friends in DC and elsewhere but my husband and I don't have a great social community in DC.
So many people we've invested in over the years have moved away or we've drifted apart (we were friends of mutual convenience in a season of life--a sports team, a school, etc).

I spend my time wishing we had a better community but as I near 50 I also find myself with less and less tolerance for people. So many annoy me. Maybe it's the crowd we're in (private schools) or DC in general. People often feel like such extremes of personality: intense, odd, self-promoting, etc. Gosh. I'm probably just as odd and annoying to others. I think feeling this way may be due in part to being middle aged. I've become far less likely to put up with bull sh$%T or people that annoy me.

Sigh. I'm probably not making much sense. But anyone else have an ongoing tug-of-war between REALLY and genuinely wanting a better community and yet just not meeting many people you actually want to know better or spend time with? Please don't just jump all over me on this. I recognize that I'm probably not many other people's taste either. Just wondering how much this resonates (or doesn't) with others.

I don't understand why your "number of ride-or-die female friends" don't count as your social community.

Not OP but I feel this way sometimes. I have a few great friends in this area and my DH and I also have a few great couple friends. But we are scattered. None of our kids go to school together and none of them are the exact same ages. We live in different neighborhoods and in some cases might be an hour apart. Yes we get together with them and our kids play together and when we hang out I'm so grateful for these friendship. But it doesn't feel like community because they are not literally in any of the physical communities we are in -- I don't see them at school events and or around the neighborhood. We can't just drop into the same yoga class or meet up after work for drinks. We do not work together and in most cases we don't even work near each other.

This is a huge shift from my 20s and pre-kid life in DC when most of my friends lived either in the city or close in near metro. We mostly worked in person downtown. So I had friends at work or nearby who I could meet up with for lunch or after work easily. I'd see certain friends in my neighborhood and then I had certain friends I saw every week at the same activities. I'm still friends with many of those people but as everyone married and had kids we all had to make choices about housing and schools that pulled us apart. And then Covid and WFH pulled us apart further as some people moved further out for more space and many of us started WFH full time or most of the time. Add in kids getting older and schedules revolving around them plus aging parents who become more of a focus and it just feels very disjointed.

I see my closest friends maybe once every other month at this point and often it's with our families so we are somewhat limited in 1:1 time. We text a lot and send pictures and keep up with each others lives but we are not IN each others lives the way we once were and I at least have not replaces them with others who live closer and are more convenient for get togethers. I had two neighborhood mom friends who were becoming that way for me but one moved to another neighborhood in the city and the other wound up moving overseas for a temporary assignment. So now they are yet more friends I mostly keep up with via text.

[Anonymous]

I am fifty-five & your post clearly resonates w/me.
Lol.

I just think as we all go through life + come into contact w/so many different types of people, we automatically become a little jaded to certain ones that share a similar personality trait that turns us off to them.

I have noticed that the older I get - the less tolerant I am to people.
I attribute this to “old age.” 😅

Which is kind of funny because as a kid, I used to think all “old” people were cranky!

[Anonymous]

OP, scale back "community", your desire for community, to one person. And then another.

Making one true friend at a time is more authentic. Have more confidence in this: you have the life experience to know what personalities you mesh with, most easily.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd look for friendships that are less all encompassing. Have one friend that you like to walk with (or whatever) have another friend you go to movies with have another friend you try new restaurants with etc.

I think putting all the friendship needs into one basket is hard. But we can share experiences and time with people who are not a perfect fit, but a sort of fit, much easier if we don't try to take the "go to the movies friend" and make them the "Saturday night dinner friend".

I agree with this approach. I have a number of friends who are a good fit in certain settings and not others. That partly depends on what we have in common. I don’t have a BFF and maybe never will again but I do have a number of people I enjoy and care about and I think it’s better than rejecting people because they are not “good enough”.

I also think part of the issue is people are stretched so thin they have really high expectations for their limited free time. They don’t want to waste it on someone who is an unknown quantity. I think it’s a shame. Or they are annoyed that the activity they did with a friend wasn’t perfect- they friend spoiled it by some relatively innocuous trait. I have tried to make more time for real life and not just have a hour here or there to completely rejuvenate myself if that makes sense.

[Anonymous]

There's a lot of DC bashing in this thread. I get it--people move to DC for a job and it can be hard to create a community. But please know that there are lots of people who are actual natives of DC who have decades-long friendship that span generations. And guess how these people became friends? Through school and work and being neigbhors. Maybe take a look at your attitude--adjusting it might make things more pleasant for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There's a lot of DC bashing in this thread. I get it--people move to DC for a job and it can be hard to create a community. But please know that there are lots of people who are actual natives of DC who have decades-long friendship that span generations. And guess how these people became friends? Through school and work and being neigbhors. Maybe take a look at your attitude--adjusting it might make things more pleasant for you.

NP here. I think it’s the same everywhere. Actually found finding friends very easy years ago as a single woman in NYC. Neighbors and colleagues were very social and welcoming. I do wonder if that’s all changed there post pandemic.

[Anonymous]

I'm ADHD, so I perpetually have this problem OP. To be friends with someone, they have to be interesting, and we really have to connect. It's not easy to find and maintain those friendships - it is not just that you find one set and they stick around forever. You have to constantly be finding and maintaining friends.

I also found something (that my daughter taught me) to be true - it is not just good friends or besties that one should find - but fill all the friendship circles - acquaintances in the neighborhood and shops, at the gym, or the volunteer activity. Even these more distant friends are important.

Friendship is work - especially for me as an ADHD person, so I understand your frustration but, having said that, something to consider is whether your irritability rises to a level that signals depression or anxiety.

[Anonymous]

People in DC are assh&*#s, and the private school crowd can be especially bad.