By KBC Associate :max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(672x441:674x443)/woman-left-out-050225-tout-26bfbba9493a4d12892d08b0440bd97e.jpg?ssl=1 "Losing Friends in Your 40s? Woman Asks If This Is Normal")
NEED TO KNOW
- A Mumsnet user shared that she is going through a phase in her life during which close friendships are ending “one by one”
- Many Mumsnet users expressed how they related, admitting that their friendship circles are also getting smaller as they age
- “There is that old saying that friends can be either for a reason, a season or a lifetime,” one reader commented
A 40-something woman feels “isolated and alone” after several of her close friendships have unexpectedly ended in succession.
The concerned woman is now wondering if it is “normal” for people in their 40s to lose many friends, so she turned to the community forum Mumsnet to find out whether other 40-year-olds are experiencing this.
“Many of these women and I are growing, putting up boundaries and being less tolerating,” she explained. “I feel my network is crumbling away, one by one — and that people don’t care about each other.”
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Among the friendship fallouts is one friend having a “meltdown” about her re-homing her cat. She then continued to list more rifts in her friend circle.
“Another mom friend chose not to continue our friendship when our children fell out, and now I discover a very good friend who I’ve known since childhood betrayed my trust by telling another friend of mine she’d met once at my birthday party some confidential things,” she wrote.
“Another friend dated a man after I asked her for his number as I liked him only for her to suddenly open her eyes to him and start dating (well, f—— only actually),” she continued, before opening up the forum.
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Many Mumsnet users expressed how they related to her, admitting that their friendship circles are also getting smaller as they age.
“Same! For me, it’s been due to just not keeping in contact during child-rearing years, when my working commitments also drained my energy,” one reader replied. “I see it like when you don’t water a house plant, it dies. All people my age (mid-40s) have their established networks.”
“There is that old saying that friends can be either for a reason, a season or a lifetime,” another wrote. “Some of these could still be lifetime friends, but they are all human, have their own agendas and it’s unrealistic to expect any of them to offer you everything you need in terms of support.”
“Widen your circle, see more people less often and try to let all this poor behavior wash over you by focusing your friendship time elsewhere either temporarily or permanently,” the same person recommended.