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

Forum Index » Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)

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

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm just about 50, married and kids are in high school. Our eldest is a senior. 
[b]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.[/b] 
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. 
[/quote]

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

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.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics